# Your stupid questions about other countries and cultures **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [February 23, 2013, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stupid-questions-about-other-countries-and-cultures/651161 "2013-02-23T13:28:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Springtime_for_Spacers)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2013, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stupid-questions-about-other-countries-and-cultures/651161/161 "2013-02-28T00:04:33Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > In Spain there are several sizes of supermarkets. The little stores I called sundries are about the same size as a grocer’s or butcher’s; they’re similar to an American convenience store. Then there’s small _supermercados_ where the aisles are too narrow for carts, then the medium-sized ones with aisles large enough for carts, and the places which are in industrial zones and which often form the center of a mall are called _hipermercados_ - these are the ones where a saturday morning trip will see lots of families with children, they’re about the size of American supermarkets. And I’ve never seen a courtesy scooter in one. So what do people do when they’ve broken themselves, had a knee replacement or whatever? ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2013, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stupid-questions-about-other-countries-and-cultures/651161/162 "2013-02-28T00:15:33Z")
> [@Springtime\_for\_Spacers](#): > > So what do people do when they’ve broken themselves, had a knee replacement or whatever? I’m guessing the same thing people in the US do when going to a mall or supermarket that doesn’t have them - they bring their own scooter or more likely wheelchair. I can’t think of anyplace I’ve seen these courtesy carts except the warehouse club and amusement parks.Ordinary supermarkets and Targets may have a couple tucked away somewhere , but there aren’t loads of them in the front of the store in my area. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2013, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stupid-questions-about-other-countries-and-cultures/651161/163 "2013-02-28T02:34:07Z")
> [@AngelSoft](#): > > On the pizza topic. Every single ad I’ve ever seen online for pizza in Japan, has the thing slathered in mayonnaise. Is it really that popular over there? It sounds absolutely revolting to me and I’m curious as to how they ever got the idea to put it on a pizza in the first place! Mayo is used as a pizza topping in Japan, although it’s certainly not on _every_ pizza. When I lived there I’d get pizza ads in my mail and saw photos of pizza with toppings that looked pretty odd to me, like mayo, hard boiled egg, tuna, and octopus (not all on one pizza). ---
**Author:** ![the\_diego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2013, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stupid-questions-about-other-countries-and-cultures/651161/164 "2013-02-28T02:45:27Z")
“Poland is Catholic, right?” ---
**Author:** ![harmonicamoon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/65b543/32.png) [@harmonicamoon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/harmonicamoon)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2013, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stupid-questions-about-other-countries-and-cultures/651161/165 "2013-02-28T03:30:09Z")
Every time I go to the USA, I am impressed with the public restrooms. They are always free. They have toilet paper, toilet seats, water, soap, and paper towels or air dryers. In my country they aren’t free (in restaurants and finer stores, they are free), bring your own toilet paper and soap. Hopefully they have water. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2013, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stupid-questions-about-other-countries-and-cultures/651161/166 "2013-02-28T06:48:29Z")
> [@Norse](#): > > IME, you can find McDs and BKs in many urban/urban-ish places in Western Europe, but why would you want to? A good part of the fun of traveling is trying local food, isn’t it? Not everybody thinks new and unfamiliar foods are “fun.” Enjoying some aspects of traveling doesn’t mean enjoying them all. For example, I would love to see the desert southwest, but there’s no way in hell I’d spend a lot of time outside in it. I’ve never really traveled out of areas where the default color for everything is green, so I think it would _look_ really neat but _feel_ hellish. I’m sure there are people who would think I was cheating by not going on a nice long hike to _really_ experience it, just like some people seem to think that it’s not a real vacation if you don’t taste it too. ---
**Author:** ![HazelNutCoffee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@HazelNutCoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HazelNutCoffee)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2013, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stupid-questions-about-other-countries-and-cultures/651161/167 "2013-02-28T07:17:00Z")
> [@HubZilla](#): > > I’ve been told if you go to many large European cities (London, Paris, Oslo, Amsterdam), you won’t find your “stereotypical Europeans” walking the downtown streets. You’ll see a surprising amount of Arabs, Indians, or Africans in the central areas. Is this true? > > Non-American dopers: on the same vein, do you think of Americans as predominantly white people? I’d imagine most tourists and backpackers are white, while our pop culture, like TV and movies, show more diversity. I remember how surprised I was on my first trip to London; it seemed like there were no English people there. Paris was the same. I was still in college when I first visited and had never been to Europe, and I think I was expecting what you see in old movies: French people on bicycles carrying baguettes or something of that sort. Koreans always assume that white tourists in Korea are Americans. Drives my SO nuts (he’s white but not American). ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2013, 7:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stupid-questions-about-other-countries-and-cultures/651161/168 "2013-02-28T07:54:33Z")
> [@HazelNutCoffee](#): > > Koreans always assume that white tourists in Korea are Americans. Drives my SO nuts (he’s white but not American). I find it weird in the US the way lots of people don’t twig I’m Irish. I love in Germany that most people don’t twig I’m a tourist. ---
**Author:** ![shijinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@shijinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shijinn)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2013, 8:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stupid-questions-about-other-countries-and-cultures/651161/169 "2013-02-28T08:32:22Z")
oakay… i wooden normally do this, but i can’t leaf this alone - i don’t twig what you just seed. ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2013, 8:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stupid-questions-about-other-countries-and-cultures/651161/170 "2013-02-28T08:46:07Z")
> [@HazelNutCoffee](#): > > I remember how surprised I was on my first trip to London; it seemed like there were no English people there. I well remember being asked for directions when I was in London. In truth, I had been there long enough to know my way around, so I answered the gentleman’s question. “You’re not English!” the gentleman said, twigging to my Canadian accent. “No, but you’ll get where you need to go if you …” I reiterated my directions. “But you’re not English!” he maintained. And he stormed off. Oh well. I just continued on my way. ---
**Author:** ![gracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8e7dd6/32.png) [@gracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gracer)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2013, 10:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stupid-questions-about-other-countries-and-cultures/651161/171 "2013-02-28T10:17:41Z")
> [@hogarth](#): > > One question I have: > > How often does someone have to bribe public officials in Central America/Eastern Europe/Asia/etc.? When my wife’s mother died in China, my wife had to bribe someone in order to get a copy of the coroner’s report. Outrageous! (Well, it was to me.) I spend a few weeks in Romania every year, and have been going since 2005 which was before they joined the EU. IME they have improved significantly on that front. I work in a home for children with disabilities there, and that first year we sent a lorry over from the Netherlands, several months ahead of time. This lorry was full of children’s toys, essential equipment (incl nappies and a big washing machine) and also tools for the work we were going to do. Customs hadn’t let us open the lorry before we arrived, and then when we arrived they made us come in with them every day, after which they would shake their heads and say no, we couldn’t open it. It seemed so utterly heartless to me at the time, to keep essential items from disabled orphans and to prevent us from doing our work in the short time we had there. Eventually we cottoned on to the fact that they just wanted money. It has been getting steadily less frequent, and I haven’t run into anything similar the last few years. I’ve no doubt there is still plenty of it going on, or that Romania still struggles with corruption, but the vast improvement in just a few years is commendable. In Brazil we usually bribed officials for all sorts of things. The most frequent one was to extend our visas. There were also some land disputes, and sometimes issues with the documents of our children. There were other issues as well, with permits for festivities on our premises. Checks on the facilities and condition of the orphanage always seemed to run smoothly and didn’t require bribes, IIRC. “Um jeitinho”, it’s called in Portuguese, should you ever need it. [QUOTE=shijinn] oakay.. i wooden normally do this, but i can’t leaf this alone - i don’t twig what you just seed. [/QUOTE] “To twig” - to understand. I associate it with Irish, so I think they use it a lot. I could be wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2013, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stupid-questions-about-other-countries-and-cultures/651161/172 "2013-02-28T11:07:22Z")
> [@Lord\_Feldon](#): > > Not everybody thinks new and unfamiliar foods are “fun.” Enjoying some aspects of traveling doesn’t mean enjoying them all. > > For example, I would love to see the desert southwest, but there’s no way in hell I’d spend a lot of time outside in it. I’ve never really traveled out of areas where the default color for everything is green, so I think it would _look_ really neat but _feel_ hellish. I’m sure there are people who would think I was cheating by not going on a nice long hike to _really_ experience it, just like some people seem to think that it’s not a real vacation if you don’t taste it too. Go in winter. The temperatures are much more moderate. And if it’s December or January you might even wake up one morning to see snow on the cacti which is pretty different from what I’m used to. Also, instead of a hike I took a hot air balloon ride over the desert. Definitely some advantages to that mode of sight-seeing. ---
**Author:** ![DrumBum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e79b87/32.png) [@DrumBum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrumBum)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2013, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stupid-questions-about-other-countries-and-cultures/651161/173 "2013-02-28T13:21:25Z")
On the topic of pizza, the ones here are pretty good but they have nowhere near the variety of toppings and crusts as would be available in the US. The crusts are the normal size - no deep dish, thin, or stuffed with cheese - and the toppings are usually vegetables and ground beef. A few of them have a whole fried egg on them. There are no US style fast food places here, although that might be an opportunity for McDonald’s or Pizza Hut. A fast food joint here are street vendors that sell grilled corn, meat kebab, and other tasty items. Some erect a tarp as cover during the rainy season so I suppose these would qualify as a drive through. It is certainly easier to understand them as opposed to some static box at a McDonald’s in the US. One notable fast food “chain” ( there are three of them ) is [Wimpy’s](http://www.pbase.com/image/130835873) which has good burgers with clean ( and functioning ) restrooms, with a nice view of the beach. What amazes me here is the number of different languages that are spoken by the Angolans, particularly amongst the technical people. At minimum, my colleagues speak English, Portuguese, and Bantu. They attended university in former Soviet bloc countries so they might also speak Russian, Spanish, Bulgarian, etc. ---
**Author:** ![SanVito](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sanvito/32/2805_2.png) [@SanVito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanVito)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2013, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stupid-questions-about-other-countries-and-cultures/651161/174 "2013-02-28T13:32:37Z")
> [@Spoons](#): > > I well remember being asked for directions when I was in London. In truth, I had been there long enough to know my way around, so I answered the gentleman’s question. > > “You’re not English!” the gentleman said, twigging to my Canadian accent. > > “No, but you’ll get where you need to go if you …” I reiterated my directions. > > “But you’re not English!” he maintained. And he stormed off. > > Oh well. I just continued on my way. Was he English? because I’d be surprised – Londoners know that Londoners come in all shapes, sizes and nationalities. You don’t have to English to be a Londoner. London is like New York. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2013, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stupid-questions-about-other-countries-and-cultures/651161/175 "2013-02-28T13:47:34Z")
> [@shijinn](#): > > oakay.. i wooden normally do this, but i can’t leaf this alone - i don’t twig what you just seed. > **[twig - Wiktionary, the free dictionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/twig)** ---
**Author:** ![shijinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@shijinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shijinn)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2013, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stupid-questions-about-other-countries-and-cultures/651161/176 "2013-02-28T14:02:19Z")
thanks ---
**Author:** ![Reeses\_Monkey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reeses_monkey/32/2885_2.png) [@Reeses\_Monkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeses_Monkey)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2013, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stupid-questions-about-other-countries-and-cultures/651161/177 "2013-02-28T16:41:35Z")
**Harmonicamoon** , where do you live? I’d like to know where it is I have to bring my own toiletries with me just to use the restroom! ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2013, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stupid-questions-about-other-countries-and-cultures/651161/178 "2013-02-28T16:44:53Z")
> [@the\_diego](#): > > “Poland is Catholic, right?” Very much so. I’ve been visiting Poland since the late 70s (although I haven’t been back in 10 years), and it strikes me as one of the most (if not the most) God-believing and observant countries in Europe. [The Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholicism_in_Poland#cite_note-10) states that 54% of Poles goes to religious service at least once a week. Only 6% are atheists. Contrast that with their neighbor, Czech Republic, where only 19% believe in any kind of god. I don’t know the numbers for Hungary, but it felt similarly irreligious. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2013, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stupid-questions-about-other-countries-and-cultures/651161/179 "2013-02-28T16:49:48Z")
And some more info [about Poland](http://features.pewforum.org/global-christianity/total-population-percentage.php?sort=percentageCatholics). Poland, according to a 2010 Pew survey, is 92.2% Catholic. The only countries with a higher percentage of Catholics are Portugal (with 92.3%), St. Pierre and Miquelon, Wallis and Futuna, Malta, Timor-Leste, and Vatican City. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2013, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stupid-questions-about-other-countries-and-cultures/651161/180 "2013-02-28T17:05:15Z")
> [@HubZilla](#): > > I’ve been told if you go to many large European cities (London, Paris, Oslo, Amsterdam), you won’t find your “stereotypical Europeans” walking the downtown streets. You’ll see a surprising amount of Arabs, Indians, or Africans in the central areas. Is this true? You see everything. There have been a lot of immigrants from other continents in the last decades (in some places it started earlier than in others), but it’s not as if the “Euros” up and died. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stupid-questions-about-other-countries-and-cultures/651161.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stupid-questions-about-other-countries-and-cultures/651161.md?page=10)