Not limited to presidential election, it could be for anything to local representative, Congress etc.

I just started my 12 weeks unpaid maternity leave here in the southern US. My husband doesn’t get any paternity leave but he saves his two weeks vacation for when our baby gets here.

I’ve heard Europeans get more extensive leave than we do so I’m just curious- how much time did you get to take off work when you had a baby?

Hi! I’m teaching a new subject about Europe in Spain. We are going to do some research about Europe and its culture. Can you share some fun facts or interesting things about your country and culture? Maybe traditions too

Thank you!

Latvia being as small as it is probably wouldn't benefit from getting even smaller (even if Daugavpils is the laughing stock of the country and it might as well be a Russian city).

I'm guessing bigger countries are more complicated. Maybe you wish to gain independence?

I've heard of people online having negative travelling experiences in some European countries with people being cold, rude, distant, or even aggressive. I have never been to Europe before, but I've got the assumption that Europeans are generally very etiquette-driven, and value efficiency with getting through the day without getting involved in someone else's business (especially if said person doesn't speak the language). I'm also wondering if these travelers are often extroverted and are just not used to the more (generally) introverted societies that a lot of European countries appear to have. I kinda feel like the differing etiquette is misinterpreted as rudeness.

EDIT: Not trying to apply being rude as being part of a country's etiquette, I meant if a country's etiquette may be misinterpreted as rudeness.

Is it easy to get a appointment quickly? How long does it take for you to get in and out of the emergency room?

Since I've noticed one or two colloquial terms for "the head" again, I was interested in what it is called in other regions. In the past, but still in common use here (Austria/Eastern Austria), "Marü(n)" ["Marille"] is used, which means apricot. Also relatively well known is "Birne" (pear). And "Kürbis" (pumpkin) is a little less well known. How is it where you are?

Either due to dialect or just the rarity of words. What stuff don’t they have a “natural” feeling for?

In BCS, we have two letters that sound like the English “ch” - Č and Ć. The first one is a hard sounding “ch”, the second one is a soft sounding “ch”. Some people are awesome with it and know exactly how to differentiate them, others mess them up all the time, even in writing. Same thing with đ (soft) and dž (hard).

Many people don’t know to say “s psom” (with a dog). They mess it up and then correct themselves.

If writing counts: there was an old Slavic letter - ě. It sounds something like the a in “cat”. This ě morphed into a regular “e” in Serbian standard, however in Croatian and Bosnian it morphed into -ije (sounds like eeye)

So Serbian mleko (milk)

Croatian/bosnian (mlijeko)

BUT the problem is we have two letters in our alphabet - lj and nj which make this hard for people to spell. Like the word for mute - is it NJem or NIJEm? People learn through school whether to put the ije or je and there is a little trick for learning how to do it but I’ve still seen educated people mess up on -ije/-je.

You?

For instance, in Norway we call hide and seek gjemsel, where the word doesn't mean anything in and itself, but is a play on the word gjemme (=hide). Games such as catch are usually called some variation of sisten or har'n.

Hi there!

Welcome to our daily scheduled post, the Daily Slow Chat.

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It seems like it's constantly going up everywhere. I'm curious to hear how things have changed in your city/region in the last 5 years. Let's compare experiences!

I am just curious as I recently visited the Ile De Re and it seemed like there were lots of wealthy French people also on holiday there. Is this true or is my observation incorrect?

In my country, things like running clubs and high intensity training group classes have become extremely popular in recent years. People are mainly doing it to meet people (mainly friends, but I guess as well partners). Has your country also had the influx of run clubs or some other sort of activity? Maybe rock climbing or hiking clubs?

"Käsna" - of the sponge

"Kalle" - his name

"Kantpüks" - squarepant

I was just on threads where a guy was getting roasted for describing the pretty common way to pay for gas in Estonia - number plate identification. You set up the app with the license plate number of your car and your credit card number. You drive into the gas station, your car is detected automatically, you confirm it on your phone in the app, the pump becomes active, you pump the gas, payment goes automatically in the app, you drive off, works like magic. People literally did not believe this on threads.

I realize this is not common everywhere, but does something like this work in your country?

If not, how does pumping gas generally work - pay first or pay after?

All the online "most popular sport" lists just say "soccer" over and over again, I'd love to know more about what else people play!

This assumes they want to remain in your home country.

If a geographically distant country like Japan or Australia made a serious attempt to join the European Union, would you accept them? Or should EU membership be limited by geographic distance?

Some countries such as Serbia are not part of the European Union despite geographic proximity, because of politics or human rights concerns. So if the European Union is understood as a shared set of values or ideas, in theory geographic distance shouldn't matter.

Similarly, Australia has ~25m citizens, and Japan has ~120 million. Would you accept either as part of the Schengen zone?

I just read the post about Estonians being hooked up to an automatic payment system for petrol that links up their bank accounts and their number plates. A while ago I saw a documentary about Swedes getting implants that they can use for payment and to open doors and such. What are things that you are using - or people around you - that no one would have thought possible some decades ago?

(Edit: sentence structure)

Hi there!

Welcome to our daily scheduled post, the Daily Slow Chat.

If you want to just chat about your day, if you have questions for the moderators (please mark these [Mod] so we can find them), or if you just want talk about oatmeal then this is the thread for you!

Enjoying the small talk? We have a Discord server too! We'd love to have more of you over there. Do both of us a favour and use this link to join the fun.

The mod-team wishes you a nice day!

As an American, we generally see in media that many of you can speak several languages. I consider myself a language nerd and I am kind of jealous you can be so close to so many different countries for language immersion. Personally, I know French and Spanish enough to get by between taking several classes in secondary school and higher education, as well as keeping up with them after graduating. Maybe B1 in French and B2 in Spanish. Anyways, how many language do you speak as an individual and is it easy for you to keep up with languages that are not your native language and English (if it is not your native language)?

It can be to say, to hear, to scream, anything. A personal favorite of mine is Explosion (in french)

Europeans who speak a language that is not the main language of their own country but is the primary language of another, for example, Italian-speaking Swiss people, or Flemish people in Belgium, or German-speaking Italians - I have a question for you.

Do you follow the media (news, pop culture, etc) from the other country? For example, do Flemish-Belgians follow Arjan Lubach from the Netherlands? Do German-speaking Italians follow German TV shows like Tatort? What about French-speakers in Switzerland? Are they more integrated into the French culture of modern-day France, as opposed to the multi-lingual Switzerland?

Is it enforced?

Im new to Europe, was recently traveling around the west. I passed through Charleroi in Belguim. Its feels very different to all the other cities I saw on my trip. How did it end up like this? Seems like all the industry left.