:smack: :smack:
I used to spell it correctly, I swear.
Heh. I remember that thread.
Washing Up: My parents come from the straight-from-the-soapy-water-to-the-rack school of thought, and as a child I knew no different. Now, my SO is Vietnamese so we wash the dishes under continuous running water with a little side bowl of concentrated soapy water to dip the sponge/brush into. This is good, but it wastes a lot of water (a no-no here), and to be honest, I’ve never noticed any soap residue doing it my parents’ way.
Toilets:
I did the wadding up the paper and throwing it in the bin thing in Vietnam. In Australia, all modern toilets are dual-flush (to save water), and I didn’t realise we were unusual in that, but overseas tourists often comment on it.
Electronic Funds Transfer:
Same as Canada. It’s been ubiquitous since the late 80s. I get paid directly into my bank account, and I can buy pretty much anything, anywhere using a debit or credit card (my choice). I pay all my bills on the net, then I pay for groceries at the supermarket with my card. Ditto petrol, etc. I only need a little cash for train fares and beer money, and I often get that cash from the store when I am making an electronic transaction (the store is happy to get rid of the cash for security reasons, so you are always asked “any cash out with that, sir?”).
Window Screens:
I live in fly city. One lone fly in the house will drive me batshit - gotta have them screens. OTOH, in Vietnam, nobody - even the rich - has any screens. People prefer the hassle of mosquito nets over their beds at night. I don’t get that.
Eggs:
Yes, you’ll see some shops in Australia with eggs sitting out unrefrigerated. Others have them cold. I’ve never been able to tell the difference. I think they are fine on a shelf.
What is “dual-flush”?
The mind boogles! Mosquitos drive me crazy. I can’t imagine being able to sleep, hearing them buzzing around.
Oh, about the “shoes in the house” thing. It’s not necessary to remove them in every home. Basically, I just look to see if shoes are lined up near the door and if the homeowner is wearing them and I follow suit. I never insist anyone remove their shoes in my apartment, but most people pause for a moment before they come in to assess the situation.
Like TheLoadedDog, I grew up in a non-rinsing household. But way back then, Australian households had only one sink. I assume that’s the reason no one thought to rinse the dishes after washing them.
One peculiarity I’ve noticed in the way our UK cousins wash up is that they use a plastic tub inside the sink. I’ve never understood why and, to hell with being shy, I’ve asked why they don’t just fill the sink itself with water and detergent but no one has ever really explained why not.
Well, I can’t speak for your UK cousins, but I use a plastic tub for a couple of reasons: 1) my crappy sink stopper won’t hold water for more than a few minutes, even after being replaced multiple times and 2) my husband likes to leave dishes in the sink “to soak”. When I need our one and only sink, I like to be able to lift the dishes out.
I know some people do it because they think they’re less likely to break dishes from them clashing against stainless steel, or they have a porcelain sink and they’re worried about chipping it.
There are two buttons on the cistern instead of one. There’s a normal flush, and a half-flush. The half-flush uses less water, and is used when there are no solids to be flushed away. I have heard these are available in North America, but are very rare. If I’m not mistaken, they are a regulatory requirement in all new homes here, and have been for some time.
That’s a good idea! I’ve never seen such a thing. Here, most new homes have “low flow” toilets in them and I hate them with a passion. When you actually have something to flush, you need to flush several times. I don’t think that saves us water at all!
I do pretty much everything electronically too, in the US. The only things I regularly write checks for are doctor’s visits (many don’t take plastic at all, and I usually don’t carry more than $5 cash), day care payments, and for one particular store I shop at that won’t take my bank’s debit card. Mortgage payments, car payments, insurance payments are all automatically deducted, just as our pay checks are automatically deposited.
However, I saw this in France before seeing it in the US. The first job I had in France required direct deposit, so I had to open a checking account there for the money to go into. Never got any checks for it, though.
20 years later–my current employer in the US had optional direct deposit until only six months ago, when it became required for all full-time employees. (Part-timers can still receive a paper check, if they prefer.) My employer before this job (about five years ago) only offered direct deposit to salaried employees, but not to hourly employees.
I don’t have a clue why anyone would actually prefer to get a piece of paper that they have to manually cash or deposit, rather than having the money go straight into the bank. I have even less clue why an employer would refuse to provide the service, given how much money they probably lose in having to track down lost checks.
We don’t use our home phone for long distance at all, since long distance is included in the time we’re already paying for on our cell phones. If we didn’t have a 10yo son who might need the landline for emergencies, we would probably cancel it all together, since we don’t use the phone very much on a regular basis, and we have cable Internet connection. As it is, we use the landline only for local calls in the evening (which is the only time we’re really home). Otherwise, we use the cell phones. VoIP phones are starting to look tempting, but since 911 (the US emergency number) doesn’t work reliably on them yet, I’m still holding out.
I do the straight from the washing up water to the dish rack to drain, as did my mother before me, and her mother before that. 
Never caused any of us any health problems that I can tell.
I’ve never been to a supermarket here which keeps eggs refrigerated, they’re always on the shelf that I’ve seen. And I never refrigerate eggs, even in hot weather, I just keep them on the bench in their cardboard carton.
Let’s see … I don’t have a drier, I hang my clothes outside on a clothes line to dry, if the weather is wet I might bring things inside and hang them on a clothes horse to dry.
I have a wood stove for heating and in the winter I use it for cooking as well … I have a gas stove, but I’ve run out of bottled gas and don’t really need it this time of the year when the wood stove is running 24/7.
When I was in the US the things I found oddest were the pickle that always came with a sandwich … what is that? And the toilets that flush from the bottom so that everything sort of swirls up and then down. Australian toilets flush from the top of the bowl.
The spike thing for making hot dogs is common in Australia in lots of shops.
We like pickles?
Seriously, there is no deep meaning behind the pickles, afaik. It’s just the traditional side for a sandwich.
The last time I saw a pickle beside a sandwich was at the racetrack. Then again, I don’t order a lot of sandwiches. My grandma used to take me to the type of place that would serve a pickle with the sandwich.
I’m still weirded out that it’s a Canadian thing to take your shoes off inside. I wouldn’t feel I was at home if I had my shoes on. My mom used to have that bag for putting her dress shoes on when she went to someone’s house. Some of my aunts did too. I think that’s more of a family function thing though. I would expect to keep my shoes on at a dinner party or something more formal.
Will the eggs last outside the fridge? It seems so wanton to leave them out!
Wonderful.
My only observations come from Germany, since that’s the only other country I’ve ever been to.
All of the mannequins are nipping. The houses have nifty things to make boiling hot water right above the sink.
Oh, sorry. I’m done.
Eggs eventually go off, but I wouldn’t try and keep them for more than a week or so anyway, but I don’t notice any more rapid deterioration on the bench. I try and buy eggs locally, so they’re probably a lot fresher than supermarket eggs, so that might make a difference.
In the winter I keep my butter out of the fridge too … am I a daredevil or what?
Sorry. I used the expression ‘UK cousins’ as a sort of generic term for residents of the UK (rather than saying Brits or Poms). It’s just something I’ve noticed with people who’ve grown up in the UK and also when I was visiting there. Certainly a faulty plug or only one sink may explain it. I’ve just never noticed anyone else do it but residents/former residents of the UK.
This is about the only way I see sandwiches packaged, unless you go to a store and they make it in front of you.
There’s a place here called a German Sausage Hut (or something like that), run by an Asian couple, that sells hot dogs exactly like that. Good stuff.
I’ve never been to another country, so I can’t give any observations.
In the spirit of ‘International Laundary’ (I really like that phrase for some reason), I’ll be shocking my well today. This will be a first for me.
Shocking as in killing any bacteria. With bleach. We have a rust problem, and some types of bacteria contribute to it (or so I have been told).
Gotta pull the well head, and poor a gallon or so of bleach down the well casing. Run the pump and then let it sit for 8 hours or so.
Never done it before, but according to the County Environmental Health Dept. it’s common practice.
Hope I can get the well head off……
Anywhoooo. I have enough bottled water to get through the day, and a stream I can get water from to flush the toilets. I’ll fill up the tub in the bathroom first though (for toilet flushing). If I run out of water, I may just have to revert to barley pop.
I don’t suspect we will be drinking any of our water for a few days. Gonna need more beer. 
Enipla you pour bleach into your well head? !!!1111eleventyone!!111!!
With a septic feild? I’ve never heard of this. ( I am a congenital idiot, so do not be alarmed by your actions and my response to your actions.) Couldn’t you do a gallon of white vineager or even CLR down the well head to de-rust it? (I’ve never heard of a wellhead rusting, but see the above paranthetical nonsense.)
Back to the OP, ** German Cooking**
I am not sure if this is regional, national or just my husbands family.
When they cook something ( soup, for example) instead of putting the big soup kettle in their small frigs ( which it won’t fit cause they are some bizarre sizing between an average frig and a college dorm room frig) they leave it out on the stove until the next day.
Since no one his his family has died from this, we were not alarmed and did not die.
But the entire eggs in the unrefrig section at the store blows my pea sized mind.
And then I start thinking that we American’s are just a tad to Obsessive Compulsive about Eradicating Germs
Also, it seems to be very pro-green over in Germany ( yay for that!) of hanging dry your laundry and very few that we saw had dryers. And if they did only used them in the winter months.
I would bet that every store in the UK displays its eggs on unrefrigerated shelves. I have never come across any eggs being displayed otherwise. This also seems to be the case in the rest of Europe. I have shopped in France , Spain, Portugal, German , Belgium and Greece and always the eggs are sold at “room” temperature. On the other hand most people will keep them in the fridge when they get home.
Yep. I’m not going to get rid of the rust in the well casing, just trying to kill any little microb guys. Some of which actually cause the rust.
It does sound odd. But it is a recommended practice from County Enviornmental Health. I have a hand out from them. What could possibly go wrong? Heh.
see -
http://msucares.com/pubs/publications/p1865.htm
or google ‘shock well’.
Not to worried about the septic field, though I know bleach is not recommended.
As far as the drinking water is concerned, we don’t drink much of it, and I think that a few days of showering and other water use will clear it up. I bet I’ve gulped a lot stronger concentrations of clorine from swimming pools.
Anyway, I’ve just replaced most of the plumbing in the house, including the hot water heater and installed two filters for the water system. We are still getting some rust stains. It used to be an afternoon job with toilet bowl cleaner to clean up the shower every two weeks. That was dangerous duty. Nasty, nasty stuff.
Now, the rust isn’t as bad. But it is still there. This, the shocking of the well, is a final step.
I won’t give in, I won’t falter, I have bleach and rusty water.
Or maybe it won’t work. Whatever.
::Walks off humming the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’::
My brother and his wife, who is Russian, do that. Especially, they leave out pots of kasha or buckwheat. It seems to be fine for a day, or maybe two, but my brother did get quite sick once from eating some buckwheat that had been out for a couple of days. It probably did not help that their stove has pilot lights on the burners, so everything is kept slightly warm.
I wonder if this might be a bad idea in the US, at least in summer. It’s quite a bit warmer here in many areas than it is in Europe. I can’t even leave ordinary bread out of the fridge right now; it goes bad very quickly (I don’t normally keep bread in the fridge).
I lived in Denmark and we had no dryer. I think it was partly that it was still considered something of a luxury item. It took forever for stuff to dry in the winter–I really had to plan ahead, because jeans would take a few days, even inside.
Danish people don’t rinse their dishes either. I didn’t think much of it.