When in Rome do as Romans do

Perhaps the question would never have arisen if I’d gotten around to watching this:

I’d better see it now.

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citing Cato, this stuff here is made with “cheese” by which I suppose they mean some kind of Ricotta rather than, say, Gruyère or Cheddar.

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I wonder if they went from laganum to doughnut by influence of a Prussian scholar who calls German doughnuts “Berliner Pfannkuchen”. Pfannkuchen are literal pan-cakes, but all other normal Germanians use this word for, well, pancakes and crepes, but not for the deep-fried thing. So when our scholar wanted to find a word for what he calls a Pfannkuchen, he found laganum in his dictionary.

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This is also relevant.

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A related video:

So about food customs in my country:

For breakfast, there’s buns, bread or croissants with butter, jam and honey. Dry meat, charcuterie, cheese and Cenovis (like marmite, but better) are also popular, as is the famous Birchermüesli (basically oat flakes and various fruit bits soaked overnight in joghurt and milk). Also, cereals, fruit juice, coffee, tea, hot chocolate. On Sundays, a plaided bread of white flour and yeast. If we’re feeling fancy, we have eggs.

Lunch is like everywhere else, I think.

Dinner at home falls in two categories. In some families, the main meal is lunch and their dinner is only ever bread and other stuff that goes with it, similar to breakfast, but more on the savoury side. Other families make dinner to be another main meal with “serious” cooking. In my home, we had it mixed, depending on what my Mum fancied. On weekdays simpler, on weekends more opulent.

In the late afternoon, Swiss people sometimes indulge in what is called Apéro: a glass of wine or orange juice or even champagne, some finger food, standing or sitting with others and talking. Very popular as company events. There is a new coworker? Apéro. A coworker has his 20th anniversary? Apéro. The next year’s budget is ready? Apéro. A conference? Apéro. Apéro? Apéro.

After a dinner, desert or cheese is served. After that, coffee and schnaps. When invited, you are expected to leave soon after you finished your coffee. When you finished coffee and schnaps and are then asked if you want something else, you say No, thank you and start saying how nice an evening this was and that we should totally do this again sometimes soon.

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From the Chinese cultural humour channel 杰里德Jared

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This is slightly relevant, but has it happened to you to either be abroad or to watch a show or something and go “hey, that dude is from my country, I just know this”.

In my last trip abroad I noticed that in Eindhoven there were a lot of Greeks, but there, of course, our short kind does stand out in the much taller crowd, so I didn’t really give it much thought. But, while making a small break from a stressful day I stumbled on this instance of Hell’s kitchen auditions:

and immediately, almost literally no time at all, my mind went “that dude’s Greek” and, sure enough, he started walking and then talking and it was as clear as the sun within seconds, but how own earth did my mind know it beforehand?

I am an ardent proponent of physiognomy, but that was just so odd that I thought I’d ask if that happens a lot … days like these I firmly believe that our minds would have been a lot faster and more efficient without “us” on the steering wheel. :thinking:

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It’s more the other way 'round for me. Like, when I see a movie and some character is supposed to be of one country, I can tell “nah, that person looks way too American/German/British for that”.

Though, when I was watching Versailles, I though that “Henriette” really looked like many young women around here, and Noémie Schmidt is indeed Swiss.

Though I really have no idea what makes people look Swiss.

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I guess that’s a common feature for all citizens, it’s harder to know how you look yourself.

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My suspicion is that the subconscious mind is very well attuned to small distinctions in the face that indicate a specific racial profile.

You don’t know why a certain person looks Greek or Swiss, but your subconscious does – it has analysed the shape and size of the nose, lips and ears, the colour of the eyes and hair etc.

A similar answer can be provided to the question: “why is it difficult to tell people of other races apart?”

In different genetic groups, different parts of the face vary more or less widely. So the subconscious decides to focus on, say, the nose, or the ears, depending on the people who it’s had to distinguish. Then, if your subconscious is focusing on noses when ears are the key variant, or vice versa, we encounter the “Jackie Chan syndrome”.

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I recently read a related explanation (only one of several, which probably act in combination) of the “uncanny valley” effect of overly realistic androids or puppets.

This explanation was that the subconscious has analysed the android or puppet and found that it exhibits unhealthy features, and tries to dissuade the conscious mind from breeding with the “individual” observed.

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I dunno. I thought that cultural traits may be more determinant as physical in that kind of recognition.

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Another “cultural difference” came to my notice recently and I remembered this topic.

Maybe you have heard about some complaints about people not knowing how to behave in sports events anymore. Someone threw a bottle in an NBA game. Another one dropped pop corn on Russel Westbrook and minor stuff like that and everyone was shocked.

As you can see, most comments are in favour of Westbrook and rightly so.
Meanwhile in Greece :

And, of course, maybe one of the luckiest throws in the history of sports:

Especially in the last video, everyone in the comments is against the athlete :rofl:

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This is blasphemy, this is madness!

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Well, not really. There are actually very real cultural reasons why this happens:

Sports are a show in the US, for various reasons.
Basketball teams in the US are foremost company franchises that do not really represent anything, other than the company. Often they pack up and leave and go to other cities altogether (like the Oklahoma City Thunder which was once Seattle Supersonics) and they have no other sport under the same name. (E.g. New York Nets and New York Mets are totally different ). So the teams are usually seen as disposable, they are comparatively young with their counterparts in Europe and, more often than not, people support superstars and not the teams. E.g. When LeBron was in Cavaliers, millions supported the Cavs. When he moved to Miami, a vast majority of fans moved with him to support Miami.

Sports are a war in Europe, for various reasons.
a) The teams are established for more than a century, in most cases (E.g. Panathinaikos 1908). Chances are your great grandfather was Panathinaikos fan, and your grandfather and your father and now you and your children.
b) The clubs represent a very specific area and so people love the teams that represent them. There is no notion of a team ever packing up and leaving, else the fans are gone too (happened sometimes in England)
c) Also very important, under the same name a club has multiple sports. There is Panathinaikos in almost everything you can imagine. From basketball and volleyball and boxing and teens and women teams and EVERYTHING is under the same brand (even though the owners of each branch might be different). You can expect ultras to show up even in a teen volleyball match with drums and flares and make noise. Over a sport that usually has little audience or even competitive bragging rights. The ultras will go.
d) So, instead of the clubs being disposable and the people following star players, in Europe it is the opposite. The players are disposable and if they switch teams and go to a hated rival (e.g. Luis Figo moving from Barcelona to Real Madrid) then fans get angry at the player. Noone follows the star to his new team.
e) Europe has a history of war and conflict that spans millenia. Sports are now the accepted outlet for that competitive drive of “overcoming thy neighbour”. Local derbies within the same cities or countries are especially brutal (e.g. Manchester United Vs Manchester City, Partizan Belgrade vs Red Star Belgrade etc etc)

I could add more, but I think the point is made :slight_smile:
A special kind of fondness is generated from all these. For example, in the video, at 4:14 the game hasn’t even started yet. A lightning strike took the power down and the fans were already in and chanting a long time BEFORE the local derby even started. No power? No problem. Flaaaaares … in a basketball game. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Very rarely and very controversial I think. The exception that proves the rule maybe.

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Exactly. It proved that this is something that just doesn’t fly here in European sports clubs. I cannot remember which was the most famous example that happened recently, with a team that once was even famous, that had declined a few decades ago, but I just cannot remember it :confused: I do remember that the fans were furious and they founded another team of their own, when the old one “departed”, but other than that, my memory is blank.

The only one I know about is MK Dons now in Milton Keynes which used to be in Wimbledon (suburb of London).
Since clubs are all named by their area is a bit hard for them to move I think. Wimbledon was unusual in that they outgrew their ground and Milton Keynes is fairly unique really being the largest new town (designed and built more or less from scratch in 1967) and had no significant football team.

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Yes! I think that’s the one. Wimbledon and MK Dons. That’s the one I couldn’t remember. Thank you! :slight_smile:

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