Questions That Don't Deserve Their Own Thread

Firenze (Florence)

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Florentia, -ae

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Ah, hoha-hola… Wonderful place, will definitely visit a third time. I like it much more than Rome.

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Question that doesn’t deserve a thread but bugs me to no end: Who’s in charge of Google’s design elements lately?? Why are they worse each time?! Who approves those monstrosities?!

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:man_facepalming:

:smile:

Let me know. I’ll bring you to our niche go club. :grin:

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I posted in one thread:

Vsotvep posted in another thread:

I think it’s helpful to connect the two. What’s a recommended way to do it?

It is probably the masterful work of some of their graphic design interns. It is always hard to find a good project for college interns to work on and their supervisors have likely run out of other ideas. :crazy_face:

On a more serious level, I honestly have no idea but I agree that they seem to be getting progressively worse. And I think it is funny that you are mentioning this because I thought I was the only one bothered considerably by it.

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I had problems once, while travelling in Muskoka, Canada for my honeymoon, to have some plain white yoghurt in the hotel restaurant.
There was a young waiter who didn’t understand what I was asking for.
Me and my wife spent ten minutes trying to explain “yoghurt without added sugar or flavour” but that man just didn’t get what we were talking about.
He offered to us strawberry yoghurt, blackberry yoghurt, pineapple yoghurt and so on but wasn’t able to say something like “we don’t have that, we’re out of that, we don’t eat that s#!%”… he was just simply stunned and confused by our request.

So my question is: is plain white yoghurt a thing in North America? Or was there a communication issue? Is there a different name for that?

It’s been 14 years ago and it still puzzles me.

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I don’t know about North America but I would call that natural yoghurt if that might have helped.

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I don’t know about Canada, but yogurt in the USA is typically flavored, especially in the single serving sizes and what might be offered in a restaurant. I think the perception is kind of similar to that of ice cream, where the bare minimum of flavoring that one could typically find in the USA would be with vanilla and sugar.

It is definitely possible to buy unflavored, plain yogurt in a supermarket, however this plain variety is typically sold in larger containers and viewed as an ingredient for other recipes.

Given the influence between the two cultures, I would imagine that the situation in Canada concerning yogurt is similar to here in the USA.

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I also don’t know about America but I’ve heard natural/plain yogurt but also here there’s a ‘Greek style yoghurt’ which seems to be natural/plain yoghurt.

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The original that I ate in Greece was delicious, with fresh fruit or honey.
You can find it in Italian stores too. Not as good though.

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I guess it also depends on the brand/availability. It is more likely to find a good tasting product if you can find almost ten different brands of yoghurt in a Greek supermarket, ranging from cheap to expensive, low fat, skimmed, full, made by cow milk, sheep milk or goat milk, sold in plastic cups or clay cups (which I always found an impressive idea tο be honest) and so forth.

There is a reason why Greece has the most goats in EU (source), because the product is getting consumed and there is a traditional market/need for it. Not so much in other places, because the market is different.

I’d expect Italy to have a more cheese focused market, while the US are known for their over-consumption and over-abundance of cheese (or in some cases cheese-like :stuck_out_tongue: ) products.

What I found impressive recently is this:
“Extra virgin” Olive oil in Walmart, imported from Italy: cost? 6.3 euro per litre
Same quality olive oil in a Greek Supermarket: cost? 6.75 euro per litre

HOW is that possible!?!

Fun fact, I can go buy olive oil directly from the processing plants in my village. Cost? 3 to 3.5 euros per litre (depending on the year), of the most freshly made, aromatic and sparkling olive oil you have seen. You do not get more “extra virgin” than that, I’ll guarantee you that much, so the processing of the oil is done and somehow simply putting it in a bottle or a metal container and shipping it around doubles the price? What on earth is going on here?

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One of the few things I believe to know about economics is this; The price is determined by supply and demand.

So my guess would be that the price increase is not due to high shipping cost. Presumably companies sell their product for the price where they expect the most profit. If people are willing to spend more money on it, then the price increases.

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You wouldn’t believe that in Italy we have the same issue the other way around: Greek oil is cheaper than Italian. :laughing:

Market is crazy

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I don’t know about America, but in Japan it’s hard to find as well. Most supermarkets have only a single non-sweetened yoghurt, which is called “Bulgaria” (but is nowhere near as good as actual Bulgarian yoghurt). And then there are 500 types of fruit flavoured yoghurts.

Another thing that’s annoying is that it’s always in these tiny containers, with the largest being about 200g. I’m used to buying yoghurt in liters…

Greek yoghurt is one style, but there’s many types of yoghurt. The usual yoghurt in the Netherlands is more liquid and sour, while Iceland has yoghurt that’s almost cheeselike. In the Middle East they have kefir, which is salty or sour (the best hangover cure).

If one is to sweetly flavour yoghurt, definitely do it by adding fresh fruit, honey or good jam to plain yoghurt. The pre-sweetened things you buy at the store can’t beat it by far.


By the way, similar question: do you have non-sweetened breakfast cereals in North America? Something like rolled oats, nuts or dried fruit, but without added sugar, honey or chocolate?

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I understand that, but it is pretty illogical having an area that produces something to sell it to the producing plant at 2.5-3 euros ( even small producers can sell the oil to the plant instead of keeping it for their own consumption), then the plant putting a semi-normal extra 0.5 euro “hat” on the price and sell if back to the populace of the area directly and then the same plant send the rest of the oil to the central market/factories, where it is put in bottles and it returns as a double-price product.

In our case, there is direct supply at a low price and there is almost no demand for it in the supermarket, yet it arrives here at the same double price it has nation-wide, even though most places in Greece produce at least some olive oil. It really makes no sense. We made the product here. Shouldn’t it be cheaper in our own country?

I have at home some 50litre barels for olive oil storage. I can fill one up for 50 * 3.5 = 175 euros. If I buy the same amount bottled that would be 50 * 6.75 = 337.5 euros. So, how does “supply and demand” even work when the locals have their own supply at half the market price? It is really baffling to me.

This! ^^

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Hahaha, yes we do. A lot of the breakfast cereal aisle is heavily sweetened, but very plain forms of cereal do exist on the shelves. Plain corn flakes, cheerios, shredded wheat, etc.

Do Europeans generally call it Greek yogurt? It’s funny because I’ve had several different Turks on separate unsolicited occasions tell me quite insistently that this style of yogurt actually originated in Turkey and that the “Greek” is only a product of marketing. They have pointed out that even “Chobani” (a popular brand here in the US) is actually the Turkish word for shepherd, as an acknowledgement of its true origins.

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In our supermarket we have Greek, Turkish and Bulgarian yoghurt, all very similar, but with slight differences. The Greek one happens to be my favourite.

On the other hand, if you go back far enough, Turkey used to be Greek, and more recently Greece used to be Turkish. So, “meh” I guess

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No clue, but they are correct that yoghurt is a turkish word and the whole thing is just marketing.
Chobani seems to be of persian origin though both the turkish language has the word ( çoban ) and the Greek language used it ( τσοπάνης ).

The Balkans are all one huge melting pot.
Heck, at some point the Eastern Roman Emperor even had actual Vikings for merchenaries.
It remains true though that even within the confines of the same prefecture (let alone larger areas or even countries) you can indeed spot the differences between the people and their traditions and their cuisines.

You’d be surprised at how different you could find the people to be in their traditions/mindset, even if you move 20 kilometers away. Sometimes even neighbourhoods (upper village vs lower village) (1) can be totally different.

EDIT:
(1) I am not talking about upper class or lower class here. A lot of small towns are built like that. The lower village was built at the beach by the fishermen and traders. The upper village was the residential area and the farmers/foresters. The arrangement was made to protect from pirate raids and attacks. Even though the danger is long gone, the arrangement - and the differences in the mindset - remain. :slight_smile:

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