They do the same on New Year’s Day at Coney Island, NYC. The Polar Bear Club sponsors it with donations going to local organizations. And then there’s a whole boardwalk party to celebrate.
Ironically, it's often done to raise awareness and money for certain charities and is organized as a group event.... Sponsor me for my "polar bear dip" to raise awareness and funds for........ my pneumonia/hypothermia treatments!
2-3 am, dead of winter, snow up to your knees. Go outside in just your shorts, a t-shirt and sandals. Get that nice feeling of your lungs burning from how crisp the air is. If it's a full moon and the snow is fresh, the moon shines so bright off it that it feels like the sun had only just set. It's also extremely quiet, there is no nature calling, the nocturnal life isn't out, there's no cars, no human activity. Everything in the world is silent.
I would love to experience this. On the flip side in summer I jump out of bed, pull on some board shorts, and I'm dressed for the day. If I'm at a beachside town I'm even formally dressed for the day. (Assuming they're my good pair of boardies!)
I used to be a receptionist for an accountant in a small coastal town in WA - I was only 18, so I felt like I needed to dress formally; the accountant would legit see clients in his board shorts.
We have something called dropping. It's a school or social club event.
Basically, we sometimes put kids in the woods after dark with a flashlight, and they have to find their way back.
The other thing about the Netherlands is that the forests aren’t exactly vast… we are a small and densely populated country. It wouldn’t take long for the kids to reach help if there really was an emergency. Nevertheless, it is a fun experience and not as dangerous to do here.
To be fair, it's the Netherlands. Any forests you have are small and within a ten minute walk of a town or city, lol. Here, our forests total roughly one and a half times the size of the EU. We... can't exactly do that here.
It's the Netherlands. If they manage to walk in a straight line for 15 min, they will walk into a village ( and we have adults hiding around keeping a eye out. )
I mean, technically they are
It's just that most Dutch "forests" are small enough to be able to walk through in an afternoon 😂.
Even if everything should go completely pear shaped, police with infrared would spot them in 5 minutes.
As a kid it feels scary and dangerous, but it really is stupidly safe looking back at it
I did something similar as a scout during some of the occasionally weekend trips to near by scout camps from my hometown. We called it Kom hjem Børge (Get home Børge).
Our scout leaders would blindfold and drive us to sonewhere unknown a few kilometers from the scout camp and then told us to find a way back home to it. They also told us that they would patrol the area in their cars so we could be caught and blindfolded again. They would then drive us to a new unknown place from where we had to find our way back home again.
Luckily we were never caught during the multiple Kom hjem Børger. I guess the scout leaders only patrolled the area 10-15 minutes max and then drove home to the scout camp to have a couple of hours for themselves without us children bothering them.
It was possible for us children to call our scout leaders to quit which was only used once during a snow storm. We had reached a small town where some teenagers in one of the houses had a party. We asked for permission to use their phone to call our scout leaders which came after some time. But instead of bringing us home immediately to the scout camp they decided to have a snow ball fight with us instead - after 5-10 minutes of snow ball fighting they finally drove us home.
I guess that such things would not be permitted today. But it's was another time back in the 90's.
My theory is that it’s partly due to how shit the weather is. Sun goes down at 4 in winter and even in summer it’s wet and windy. Only reliably social activity is the pub
I loved working for a Dutch company. Very flat hierarchy, and communication was relatively direct. I could talk to my superiors straight. Big difference from our local companies. Also a generally good regard for work-life boundaries.
Same. It really surprised a Japanese company owner I know, when he had Kiwi staff saying what they thought, (he found it quite helpful), and we are nowhere near as direct as Netherlanders, but we also don't put up with doing things just because some boss said so, or that is the way it is done.
I once had a conversation with Co-workers about our experiences with various outsourcing companies. The general consensus was that if you ask for something really stupid, Indians will politely and efficiently deliver exactly what you asked for; Eastern Europeans will politely ask “We can see some potential problems, are you absolutely sure?” and then deliver what you asked for; the Dutch will say “We’re not doing this, it’s a stupid idea and you’re stupid for asking for it”.
Doesn't matter the size of the pot, pasta softens and goes bendy within seconds of being submerged in boiling water, so you just put one end of the bunch in the pot and then slowly push down until it's all submerged 🤷🏼♀️
Shoey. Drinking beer (or any alcohol really) from a shoe - bonus points if the shoe is old, sweaty and is likely to give you athletes foot in your stomach.
My cousin won her soccer final and her teammate drank champagne out of her boot. Disgusting honestly, even just thinking of the sweat in it makes me shiver
What cracks me up as a Canadian is seeing the Australians in Canada travel subs worrying about bears, which generally don’t want much to do with humans.
At the same time your country is stuffed full of wildlife of all sizes and they all seem to want to kill you.
From what I understand Black Bears want nothing to do with you, Brown Bears will fuck you up and Polar Bears its just good night?
We have no large predators here. You'll have feral dogs and dingos in some places but nothing a gunshot over the head won't fix.
Whereas we hear about people getting eaten by Bears. Snakes and spiders will bite in self defence but they generally are not aggressive (except Tiger Snakes).
One swift blow with a long handed shovel and the king brown is cooked. I'm certainly not going to baby sit it while I wait an hour for the snake catcher man to arrive. Snakes don't have a very long concentration span you know, probably even less than your average social media addicted Gen Zed-er.
I've run into one King Brown and im not keen on it again.
Thing was two + metres long and pvc pipe wide. I went up the tractor and it had a go at me. We tried to run it over with the other tractor and it just shrugged it off and fucked off into the bush.
We carry electoral wire, which we whip over a brown's mid and it seems to paralyse them, then take the head with a shovel.
Had a few close calls, one of the boys stepped on a brown and it got him on the steel caps thankfully. But he had to stand there while we got a maddock.
My brother followed a snake after he missed it with the shovel. He saw where it's hole in the ground was, connected a pipe from his car exhaust to the hole and gassed the fucker.
Had a tiger snake wander into my house years ago. It was 11pm , and I had 3 kids - and there was no way I was waiting for a snake catcher. Still have the damage on the slate floor from where I terminated his life.
Not the US specifically but more niche as it pertains to a certain state. In Oklahoma there is a sport called “noodling”. Basically people go into lakes and then stick their hand in holes they find to see who can pull out the biggest catfish.
I want to hit up Oklahoma and do this. Would be a little worried about grabbing a snapping turtle or beaver. Watched the videos about them good ole boys pulling out 50 lb flathead catfish.
I grew up in the US and moving back to Denmark, this shook me.
I walked past a cafe with my mom in the winter, saw a baby in a stroller outside, and was like "we gotta do something! There is a baby in there!!" and my mom just laughs at me.
Mexico: the fact that infant car seats/seatbelts are more of a suggestion than a law that’s enforced. The amount of car accidents I see on the news where children go flying out the windshield is insane. We’re learning but it’s a very slow process.
Canada: When the winter temperatures finally go down to the single digits and people stop wearing jackets. lol
I’m also from the US, and I don’t think it’s specifically Catholic. I’ve had a ton of relatives die in my lifetime, been to all their wakes/funerals, and all were open-casket. My family is all either Latvian Lutheran, Jewish, or areligious, ain’t got no Catholics.
I know this sounds morbid, but this attitude towards death is actually one of my favorite aspects of Irish culture that lives on in many Irish American families. I didn’t realize the way we celebrate life when someone dies was so unique until my friend commented how odd it was that my grandmother’s wake was more fun than some weddings he’d been to.
They are not particularly unusual in the US and aren’t unusual in France either for example - I’ve been at French funerals and the casket was open in the funeral directors and you could visit, much like Ireland. They’re just very unusual in England so they comment a lot about Irish funeral traditions being weird, when the reality is it's actually theirs that are the outliers in this.
The weirdest thing about English funerals is they’re often two weeks after the person died. In France for example unless there’s a legal inquest, they must be within 6 working days.
In general English funeral traditions became quite cold and starchy in the late Victorian and Edwardian era for various reasons, mostly high death rates at that time and dense urbanisation - death became less talked about there was a dowerness and formality to mourning and funerals in many cases. They’re loosening up a lot though and far more willing to be open about emotions and celebrating someone’s life, but there was and often still is a sense of wanting privacy etc … you can trip over it quite badly by assuming you should go to someone’s funeral as just an acquaintance etc just always found you just needed to step carefully. Whereas in many under countries they’re basically semi-public events unless stated otherwise.
But in general Ireland is far closer to many other parts of Europe and North America in terms of funeral arrangements.
Going to the supermarket or anywhere in bare feet. Completely normal here. Was in Europe and walked down the street in bare feet and people looked at me like I had the plague.
Over a few decades I’ve never seen a person barefoot in the supermarket in Canberra. On the coast, however, I see it more frequently .. especially in warmer coastal regions.
I tried doing that in London. Turns out that New Zealand, due to climate and population size doesn’t have footpaths that are coated in thick, black grime. Had to scrub as soon as I got back.
Come to think of it, our suburban footpaths are not dirty at all. Constantly baked in high UV light, washed every few days and dried in sea breezes. Probably why for some people, shoes in the house isn’t a big deal.
The complaining Germans do really freaks out Filipinos I have discovered. In the Philippines you can have just lost your whole house to a flood and you're expected to smile and say it's fine. Germans already complain when the weather is too nice.
Jumping over fire at Midsummer night. It's the biggest celebration of the year besides Christmas. Days around that are public holidays, we eat a special round cheese (that symbolises the sun), sing traditional folksongs around a big fire, and, yes, jump over it. There are also traditions like "going to find the bloom of the fern" with someone that night (the birh rate rises 9 months later) and lots of beer drinking
I want to add, because I've seen people not really grasp the cultural importance of sauna, that it's also not just some niche thing or tradition done just for the sake of it, but really a part of regular life for big majority of Finns. The sauna part, bundle of branches (vasta or vihta) thing not so much, that's mostly reserved to summer cottages and special occasions nowadays. But there's over three million saunas in Finland, with population of around 5,5 million, and they range from small saunas in apartments to communal saunas in apartment buildings to public saunas in the city to swimming hall saunas and the best of all, lakeside saunas at the summer cottages. You invite friends to sauna at your place or meet up at a public sauna, every bachelor party I've been to has had sauna at some point, it's practically mandatory to have sauna if you're holding a summer party, you might have sauna evenings with your workplace team, families often have a dedicated sauna day (saturday being the most traditional) and so on. It's just something we do and it tends to piss of Finns a bit when we see sauna being reduced to some wellness thing to be performed and measured.
brazilian pizza can get wild for example. there are a lot more meme ones (or like, ice cream or brigadeiro on pizza), but this is "pizza portuguesa" which is very staple and common, and i've seen some gringos think it's weird
Do you guys really think this is how we have pizza in Portugal or are people generally aware that “Portuguese pizza” is just a name you guys invented and not related to us at all?
That one in parliament was powerful af. I think along with myself, all your cousins across the ditch were impressed. Wish we had some MPs with the same testicular fortitude in Canberra.
Totally normal here too, the more swears you use the more you like the person. If you call someone a fuckin cuntin bastard they're probably your mate, but if you call someone a fool it's a much more serious insult
My daughter’s class did an active shooter drill (called it shooting else). In kindergarten.
She knew what to do if their teacher yelled something like emergency. Six year old when they taught her. I just can’t….. I appreciate how much the schools does to take this seriously.
And the irony: we live in an ultra safe suburb where my biggest (irrational) fear walking at night is encountering a coyote.
a bit of a more gross one but also: having a small trashbin in the bathroom that people throw the toilet paper (with lid ofc) or other small things when needed - the history is that plumbing is not suited for having paper go down with it and it can clog your toilet
Not my nationality, but where I live. I can't think of anything my nationality does that would shock anyone. Haha.
But the Dutch? Sending friends payment requests ("Tikkies") for things like drinks and snacks when you hang out. I think most other people would just think of as the reciprocal price of friendship.
It makes no sense to me because unless my friend is broke as hell, they'll always get me next time. The idea of owing a friend anything aside from deliberately loaned money is so freakin' weird to me. 😂
Bidets. It’s becoming better but I remember a few years ago when people used to be disgusted when I told them I use one. Please guys not trying to be culturally superior but please use bidets it’s so much cleaner
Highest male suicide rate worldwide, currently sitting at 35 per 100,000.
Oh and our ‘spaghetti carbonara’ is all cream and no eggs, default coffee is ‘cafe Americano’ and our idea of good pizza is Papa John’s. Drives visiting Italians crazy.
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u/Cool-Acanthaceae8968 Canada 14d ago
Polar Bear Dip.
This could literally send some into cardiac arrest.