Jenniffer is the LatAm version - which goes to quite some length to nearly always misspell those aspirational anglosaxian names …(e.g. Jhonatan, Brayan, Mikol …)
Thanks. Cornish is tolerably obscure these days.
Their hens are widely known.
That means that both the first and last bridges across the Mississippi satisfy @Chronos’s description. I wonder if anyone has made that connection before.
A similar geographic oddity is that when you transit the Panama Canal from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, you travel somewhat to the west.
Which is what everybody would assume, yes? You’re traveling from the east side of Central America to the west.
The reality is that the Canal runs mostly north-south, from the Caribbean Sea in the north to the Pacific Ocean in the south.
Sorry, my mistake. From the Pacific to the Atlantic goes west; the opposite of what one would assume.
It does run NNW to SSE, but the Atlanic end is further west than the Pacific end.
That bass player is really doing everything he can to draw attention to himself, isn’t he?
Around the city of Saint Paul in Minnesota, the Mississippi gets diverted by a chain of glacial lakes and the confluence of the Minnesota River into flowing northeast before finally turning south again.
Bonus points if you know who wrote the melody without looking it up.
Today, two Sundays before the first day of Advent, Germany celebrates the Volkstrauertag, which can be translated as the Official People’s Day of Mourning, whereby we commemorate the fallen in all wars, members of the armed forces of all nations and civilians who died in armed conflicts, including victims of violent oppression. Here is the Wikipedia page about it in English.
Those commemorations differ from one Bundesland to the other, special restrictions may apply for certain types of activities, such as concerts or dance events. What I personally find most curious is the interdiction to wash your car, be it by hand or in a car wash. Here is a random article about that, this is the translation of the relevant parts:
Is car washing allowed on Remembrance Day?
Washing your car is prohibited on Remembrance Day - but not in every federal state. In the federal states of Bavaria (depending on the municipality), Schleswig-Holstein and Thuringia (depending on the location), you are allowed to wash your car on Remembrance Day. Check your local media and community information beforehand to find out which regulations apply in your area.
Prohibitions on Remembrance Day: What is allowed? What is prohibited?
Because it is a day of mourning, public dance events and entertaining performances are prohibited on Remembrance Day.
However, the bans generally depend on the respective public holiday law of your federal state, which we have linked to in each case. The following is prohibited in the federal states during a certain period:Baden-Württemberg: 5 a.m. to midnight - public entertaining events in and outside of restaurants, entertaining dance events. In health resorts, the ban begins at 2 am.
Bavaria: 2 a.m. to midnight - public entertainment events that disturb the serious character of the day.
Berlin: 4 a.m. to 9 p.m. - sporting events with entertainment programs and music, music performances in restaurants, (dance) events that disrupt the day of mourning.
Brandenburg: 4 a.m. to midnight - operation of car washes, (dance) events in restaurants, public gatherings outdoors and indoors, parades and processions, entertaining events without a higher interest in art, science or public education.
The list goes on, you get the general idea.
Are these things seriously followed by the majority of the people? If someone was washing their car on Remembrance Day would an average observer be shocked/outraged? Would anyone call the police? Would the police respond?
I don’t know for sure. It probably depends on where in Germany you are. In more rural areas it may be taken more seriously, perhaps. Car wash installations will be closed, I guess. And restaurants will not allow dancing, I suppose. In an country where shops still close on sundays, why not? And the Ordnungsamt (the English wikipedia redirects to Code Enforcement and opens with a picture of the German Ordnungsamt: I am not surprised) are known to be nitpicking Korinthenkacker who will not let the oportunity to write a ticket go unused.
Perhaps @EinsteinsHund can confirm or refute my impression?
Well, I was surprised about that special prohibition for washing your car on Totensonntag (or on any other “quiet holiday”, Good Friday being another one), because first I thought that in most municipalities, there’s a general prohibition for washing your car on private ground because of environmentally concerns, and second that in the municipalities where it is still generally allowed, there’s at least a general prohibition for it on any Sunday.
This brings us to the matter of “Sonntagsruhe”, the general prohibition for things done on any given Sunday, for instance mowing your lawn, operating a chainsaw or a leaf blower or anything else that makes a lot of noise. These laws are generally accepted, at least here in the countryside where it would be an absolute scandal if somebody mowed their lawn on a Sunday. But to get fined for it, some of your friendly neighbors would have to report the infraction to your local Ordnungsamt or to the police, and few people would go that far. Same with washing your car on a Sunday, eyebrows would be raised, but the danger of getting reported and fined is low.
And yes, you also are not allowed to dance in public on Totensonntag or Good Friday, a law that during the last years has been broken openly and deliberately by many people to make aware of the absurdity of that law.
You guys are lightweights. On Israeli Memorial Day, all “places of entertainment” are closed by law - that includes all restaurants, bars, clubs, movie theaters and so on. You want to eat? Make yourself a sandwich or something. TV can only show Memorial Day-related content, and at least one channel must show nothing but the names of the fallen. I don’t think shops need to close, but most of them do. Nobody goes shopping on Memorial day.
Washing your car is legal, though, although I don’t know anyone who does, when you can go through most car washes for free with the purchase of a tank of gas.
Free car wash? In the US it’s getting rare to find free air at gas stations.
TIL: American-style Thanksgiving is a thing in the Netherlands,. It’s not their traditional harvest feast like other countries have all over the world, but an American import of turkey dinner with all the trimmings because of its own appeal. (And not, as one might think, the Dutch celebrating the Puritans leaving after 12 years in Holland, silently judging their hosts).
The UK is definitely lightweight on the Remembrance topic. The formal solemn ceremonies that were introduced after WW1 were switched to the nearest Sunday after WW2. Social pressure (nothing legally mandated) was and is on buying and wearing a poppy to raise funds for the British Legion (to the point where it was practically compulsory for anyone appearing on BBC TV in the few weeks beforehand, on pain of tabloid snark), and on the Two Minutes’ Silence on the Sunday morning. At that time on a Sunday in November, most people wouldn’t be that busy outside the home anyway, but unless someone’s actually disturbing a Remembrance ceremony*, any breach of the silence would most likely be met with a stiff glare, if noticed at all. Normal Sunday activities (or inactivities) would apply for the rest of the day.
In recent years (because of the various anniversaries of the world wars) there has been a custom of observing the silence on the actual 11th itself, but that seems to have been dying away again, and the poppy-sellers and advertising seem to be less ubiquitous this year.
*This year the late unlamented Home Secretary, with the enthusiastic support of the usual tabloid suspects, tried unsuccessfully to get a pro-Palestine march (on the Saturday, miles away from the Cenotaph where the national ceremony is held on the Sunday) banned, accusing the police of being biased. One of the extreme right hooligan loons called on his followers to rally to “protect the Cenotaph”. The pro-Palestine march went off with little trouble, considering the thousands who went. At the Cenotaph, the loon leader turned up, looked around, went home. His followers stayed, attacked the police and 80 or so were arrested. The Sunday ceremony went off as normal, and on Monday the Home Secretary lost her job.
I mean, when you’re paying $100+ for a tank of gas, I wouldn’t exactly call it free. Gasoline costs about twice as much here as it does in the U.S.
Is that out of respect for the day of memorial, or because public gatherings would be too easy a target for terrorists?
It’s because it’s a day of mourning. It’s a small country; most everyone’s lost someone, and those who haven’t respect those who have. The day after Memorial Day is Independence Day, and believe me, people definitely gather for fireworks, parties and BBQs.