I was thinking about that when I was dropping my 6 year old off at some hobbies earlier - it’s pretty much expected to have learned how to ride a bicycle before starting school, and it massively expands the area you can go to by yourself. When she went to school by bicycle she can easily make a detour via a shop to spend some pocket money before coming home, while by foot that’d be rather time consuming.
Quite a lot of friends from outside of Europe either can’t ride a bicycle, or were learning it as adult after moving here, though.
edit: the high number of replies mentioning “swimming” made me realize that I had that filed as a basic skill pretty much everybody has - probably due to swimming lessons being a mandatory part of school education here.
If the country is big enough (aka Canada) these differences can be between provinces. People from Ontario can’t ride bulls, but every kid in Alberta can. Newfoundlanders can fish but Manitobans are afraid of water. In British Columbia you are taught how to roll marijuana cigarette in high school but in Nova Scotia scotch is the bag lunch drink of choice.
Male being good at talking and flirting with girls. Where I grew up (south of Italy) you have to be able to know what to do as a young heterosexual man, otherwise girls would completely ignore you. When I was young, italian girls expected “work” from boys, a lot of work. You could not throw money or take shortcuts (I don’t know if it is still valid).
When I moved to north of Europe, in 3 different countries, I realized that for north european guys existing was enough to get many girls. It was so easy, girls flirt with you, they literally go after boys. You could do nothing and a girl would start flirting with you. And being decent at talking with girls meant that any average Italian guy abroad was a Don Giovanni.
So everyone in Italy has “acts of service” as their love language? Noted.
If a guy is interested in me, I just expect him to be his best self.
Don’t know what to answer.
Normal and healthy mammals relationships start with courtship display https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtship_display.
It is the normal behavior in humans as well. Not doing it would be pretty unusual, and probably worrying.
The difference is that in Italy, girls used to require a long, complex and time consuming courtship. One night stands were not even a thing, they were unthinkable, some fantasy from Hollywood movies.
North European girls not only had much lower expectations from men, required much less effort, but many of them even proactively started the process themselves, flirting and clearly communicating their intentions. This made the process particularly straightforward, but it also didn’t allow local men to improve their communication skills. Therefore average Italians looked extremely good with women: charming, listeners, caring… Despite the language barriers
I don’t know if it is still valid tough, I have been married for a long time
Is it like that across all Italy, and is there an age group where that kinda does down?
I don’t know how it is now. I am an old millennial that has been “out of the market” for over 15 years. It might have changed due to social media.
I can’t say if it was all of Italy, because it’s rather big. But from discussions with other Italians, it was a pretty general feeling, particularly for those from south of Italy.
You could do nothing and a girl would start flirting with you
does this work for lesbians too?
I’m Danish. Opening beer with a lighter or other things that aren’t technically a bottle opener.
What if you do it wrong and you make the lighter explode, taking a finger with it
Perhaps the easiest (and most flashy) is a wooden table top. Wedge the cap onto the edge, and the smack it with your palm. This method is widely discouraged, especially on your host’s dining room table, as it usually takes a small chunk of wood off the edge and damages the table.
Like the Dutch, Germans have an impressive lexicon of commonly-known ways to open beer bottles without a bottle-opener.
Just do the same move on the 20 bottle plastic case you bough the beer in. The cases are sturdy and the breweries dont care for the scratches
A few methods that come to mind
- put the side of the cap on the edge of a table and hit the top with your palm
- get a fork (or anything else), grab the bottle’s neck a bit under the cap, put the end of the fork just under it, the middle part on your fingers, push the other part down to open
- find a door, put the bottle cap inside the metal rimmed hole in the door frame that the latch sinks into (sorry, don’t know the word in English) and use it as a normal opener. Be quick as your beer might spill.
- get a screwdriver and a hammer, put the screwdriver to the middle of the cap and gently hit it with the hammer. The cap will slightly sink into the bottle and the sides will release their grip
(sorry, don’t know the word in English)
You got me thinking for a moment there but that thing’s called a mortise.
This guy has around 60 YouTube episodes showing how to do it. Have fun!
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Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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A bottle. As some Dutch person said in another comment, cigarette lighters, edges of tables and another bottle are popular options. Please don’t use your teeth. I have a nice, rounded tooth that I used to use for opening beers when I was younger - I was lucky I didn’t damage it more.
Bottles. It’s similar in The Netherlands, it’s a bit of a sport to open beer bottles with anything and everything, except dedicated bottle openers. Quite popular are Bic lighters, other beer bottles and the edges of tables.
Beer cans usually have pull tabs, they’re just soda cans with a different brand on it.
I’m American and this is how it was when I was in college and went to parties. I rarely, if ever opened a beer bottle with a bottle opener. My bic lighter was the most common tool, but as you said, learning how to improvise with whatever was on hand was key. It was a proud day when I found that the trucks on my longboard had a sweet spot for cracking beers open
I thought these were popular for pulling out the little stick to pack a joint with. Never seen anyone open a beer with them.
I’ve seen people open beers in a lot of different ways though. I had an alcoholic friend in my early 20s who could do it with anything. Even his teeth. He chipped his tooth once and stopped doing it with his teeth though, lol.
Hold up - as a Canadian, this isn’t a skill everyone learns in/around high school??
In the dry SW US the answer is drink water when it’s 100F or worse 115F+. Having a half liter of water from the hotel for the half day mountain hike, or pounding a half gallon of ice water and throwing up five minutes later. Your body doesn’t tell you when you should drink, it tells you when you are already behind on drinking.
This is no joke. Even experienced hikers won’t bring enough water for their trek and will end up either being emergency heli-evac’d out or just plain die.
I just carry a half gallon thermal jug with me all the time. Hiking or not. If my mouth feels the slightest bit dry, I need to drink more water. I tend to piss clear, or very pale yellow cause of this, but the upshot is that I was fine wandering around Anzo Borrego national park, and two of my friends (who thought that my idea of covering myself head to toe in jeans, a trench coat, and a trilby was a bad idea,) damn near got heatstroke. I basically threw my water at them when I noticed they weren’t sweating anymore.
This is a real killer. People have no idea and tend to overestimate the risk from wildlife and underestimate the risk from weather conditions and exposure. Far more people are killed by hypothermia caused by extreme heat or cold than anything else in North American wilderness areas.
I’ve been part of my local SAR community here in Oregon for decades now and while we don’t have to worry so much about the heat, what gets people here is the cold.
If you are somehow lost or stuck in the high Cascades at night without adequate clothing or a heat source, you are in big trouble, especially if it rains or snows, both of which can and will happen even in the middle of summer.
River crossings are also a big danger since the current is always much stronger than it looks and the water is near freezing and if you fall in and don’t have dry clothes and it starts to rain and blow, you are fucked.
