I was thinking about that when I was dropping my 6 year old off at some hobbies earlier - it’s pretty much expected to have learned how to ride a bicycle before starting school, and it massively expands the area you can go to by yourself. When she went to school by bicycle she can easily make a detour via a shop to spend some pocket money before coming home, while by foot that’d be rather time consuming.
Quite a lot of friends from outside of Europe either can’t ride a bicycle, or were learning it as adult after moving here, though.
edit: the high number of replies mentioning “swimming” made me realize that I had that filed as a basic skill pretty much everybody has - probably due to swimming lessons being a mandatory part of school education here.
Winter driving and shoulder season driving. Snow, ice, black ice, freezing rain, slush, hydroplaning, driveway clearing, walkway maintenance, windshield scraping, and keeping an emergency kit for breakdowns. Stuff like that.
Speaking more than one language. Being from Switzerland, we’re required to study 2 languages (+ our native one) at school. So it’s not infrequent to encounter swiss people who speak 4+ languages
Knowing how to swim. Basic life skill in a water-rich country, but many expats can’t.
Surprisingly, many Irish don’t know how to swim, even though it’s an island.
Never been to Ireland so apologies if this is stupid and wrong and dumb - I was under the impression that a large amount of the seaside was mountainous / cliff faces? If someone learned to swim under those conditions I’d say they’d likely be adopted by Poseidon himself.
It’s fecking cold!
Can confirm. Went swimming in Ireland in the summer once, my friend who lived there gave me a wetsuit to wear. Some other locals wore them, others didnt.
So are Irish conditions different from conditions over the sea in Wales, or…?
It’s not that cold. It’s the Gulf Stream, which flows south-north from a tropical origin so it’s warmer than the water on the US west coast, for example, which flows north-south from the Bering Sea on the Alaska Current.
The Gulf Stream is also why northwestern Europe is as temperate as it is while being at the same latitudes as southeastern Alaska and northern British Columbia which have heavily glaciated coastlines.
If the Norwegian fjotds were in Alaska, for example, they would be the mouths of giant glaciers, but they aren’t, again because of the warming influence of the Gulf Stream.
Not sure if that makes sense, but anyway.
I stayed dry and fully clothed while building a sandcastle and watched the locals go swimming in wetsuits. Can’t remember where, somewhere on the coast of Claire or Galway.
I was staying in Doolan, so it must have been Bishops quater beach. It was in 2004, so I could be wrong.
There are plenty of beaches and people often travel to thembfor the sake of enjoying the beach. The main issue is that for 11-12 months of the year, the water is fucking freezing. If people learn to swim, it’s often in heated swimming pools as kids.
I can relate to this.
We learned swimming in primary school in Germany, no opting out.
But having lived in several African countries and now in China, it’s surprising how many people not only can’t swim, but are deathly afraid of water.
If you can’t swim, bring desthly afraid of water is a good survival instinct.
After an incident of near-drowning as a toddler, my parents prioritized swimming lessons in my childhood. I can never remember not being able to swim. However, when I was in the military, there was a survival swimming section where you had to get in a pool with full clothing and a weapon, and swim a length. You were supposed to keep the weapon above water at all time. So you’re doing a side-stroke with one arm holding a 7lb weight above water, in long-sleeved shirt and pants (I recall being grateful no boots or socks). Most of us California boys made it; lots of people didn’t make it with the rifle the whole way, or tapped out without getting anywhere at all. The point is, near the end, when I was exhausted from fighting the water, and it was starting to get hard to keep my head above water, I felt an unexpected panic rising. I can easily believe that if it had gone on much longer, the panic would have taken over and years of swimming experienced would go out the window, and I’d have ended up thrashing futiliy in the water like the guys who dropped out at the start.
Drowning is a singularly frightening experience.
Crazy! I was drownproofed as an infant, and was a water baby my whole life. I joined the swim team in highschool and university. That swim test was stupidly easy if you knew how to backstroke. Just hold the weapon above the water in both hands, and kick. Your head will dip below the water, but will come right back out, so breathe then and exhale while your head is under the water.
They made me do it side stroke as well. That was much harder, but I could have kept going for at least 200m (down and back 4 times.)
I had no clue that us competitive swimmers have that much more endurance in the water than the average swimmer.
competitive swimmers have that much more endurance in the water than the average swimmer.
I swam from a young age and did swim team during elementary school, and I was always a strong swimmer but didn’t keep up with training after I quit. One year during uni wrestling cross training we were doing laps in the pool and the women’s polo team was also there at the same time, so our coach told us to go play with them for a bit. Despite both wrestling and polo demanding high endurance and total body fitness the muscles used are completely different and we had a fun session of almost drowning while the ladies shoved us underwater and hucked balls over our submerged heads.
My half-sister’s dad is Greek and she could swim like a fish. I have never had any skill at it, but it wasn’t a priority to my dad.
One of my friends is 33 and she and her older sister can’t swim. They grew up on a rural farm far away from any body of water. “Where would we have learned or practiced?” Over the years, I have learned that a lot of people in the US cannot swim, especially when they were poor as kids, even in major cities near water.
One of my friends is 33 and she and her older sister can’t swim. They grew up on a rural farm far away from any body of water.
Gen-X. Lived near a lake or ocean 80% of my life. Grew up poor. Swimming lessons were a costly luxury that didn’t make the budget. Ever.
I feel like swimming lessons are a bit of a scam anyways. Me and my brother grew up poor. We both can swim perfectly fine. We went to lakes / public pools often while growing up.
Never took any swimming lessons. My parents never did swimming lessons and neither did their parents. Just throw the kid in and let him figure it out while he’s still young. It’s an instinct sort of like dogs.
“Just throw the kid in” This works for just about everything, you’ll be surprised.
Dinner? Just gather the ingredients ( to be fair, they’re still kids ) and throw the kid in. They’ll be a master chef in no time, it’s natural.
But seriously, i also learned by instinct, but i remember lots of kids were cautious of and some were really afraid of water and needed a little teaching and patience. It was part of school here in Germany, no opt-out.
(Un)surprisingly, the US had lots of public pools, but they got removed because of racism. Definitely affects everyone especially the poor with little means of travel. https://www.marketplace.org/2021/02/15/public-pools-used-to-be-everywhere-in-america-then-racism-shut-them-down/
Ever indoor pool I’ve gone to in the UK has offered Swimming lessons. Not having natural bodies of water isn’t a great excuse for basic swimming. Seems to just be a culture difference since everyone I know had lessons at an indoor pool as kids
It takes money to pay for swimming lessons. Not everyone has that money.
How much do you think I’m talking about? You’d be spending more going to the cinema then a swimming lesson. Obviously it may not translate but if so then at least we’ve found a cause
There are limited spots for public swim lessons in my city and they are $150 for a set of lessons. If you go the private route, it is generally at least double that.
Well that definitely solves the issue. It might be £5-15 a lesson in the UK depending on your age
I never went to the cinema until I was 22. Poor people don’t do that shit.
Typical for colored people
Maybe that’s different from state to state. I grew up in Hessen but don’t remember having mandatory swimming lessons. I learned it mostly on my own so I don’t even have a „Seepferdchen“ and know a few people from NRW who don’t either. I remember there was the option to do it in school but not sure why I didn’t take it then.
Either way, not being able to swim at all is pretty rare in Germany because going to the pool is a popular activity for kids here.
Same in the US. Most schools do not have their own pool and swimming is not a required skill. Tons of people don’t know how to swim here.
Many schools in Germany also do not have their own pools. You will be transported on a bus to the closest one.
There is schools with their own pool? Heck, half the inner city schools dont have a proper gym hall and use public ones.
I think one of the schools close to mine actually had their own pool for some reason. We always went there.
For me it’s not for a lack of trying. It just hasn’t stuck I guess.
I cannot understand how someone can not learn how to swim. Idk, it’s like never learning to jump, or skip, or run?
I know things get harder to learn when your brain isn’t plastic and malleable (i still can’t roll my Rs), but it’s still strange and seems dangerous.
I cannot understand how someone can not learn how to swim.
Poor kid. Couldn’t afford lessons. Revel in your privilege! :-D
I understand that in America, at least, there are certain elements that kept certain people from being able to learn to swim. To me, it wasn’t lessons. I was just around water? Maybe I was too young to remember any formality to me, I was around water, so I learned to swim.
Are there not more physical elements involved?
Sand. It’s coarse and rough and it gets everywhere, but that shouldn’t stop you from learning to swim, it can be made easy. Start by practicing floating and familiarizing yourself with the medium. Being at ease is essential, so stay wherever the waterline reaches your shoulders. Breathing is an important part of the ordeal, because full lungs keep you afloat. Breaststroke and sidestroke are good starting points, whichever resonates more with you. Personally I think sidestroke is better because it’s very smooth and the body falls quite naturally into this position (look it up on youtube for tutorials, it’s very simple). Last but not least, we learn by playing, so have fun. 😀
Well if I’m where it’s at my shoulders, of course I’d be floating because I’d be standing. Otherwise the water proves itself to have other plans no matter what is to be said about it.
You’ve been standing all this time ?
Whenever there was any place to do it on.
I can’t help but commend the legitimately useful comment above me, but also, yes.
Yes, swimming is more complicated than I could possibly understand because I knew how to do it before I knew what I was doing. I’m a native English speaker, so I understand privilege, but swimming seems like such a primal thing to not be able to perform. I have a relatively close friend who can not swim and is scared of open water. It’s weird to me. Maybe there’s a privilege to swimming ability in America, but he’s a white dude, so it’s weird.
English wasn’t the language of my first environment, but other than that, nothing about me, ethnically or not, seems to suggest being underprivileged. Maybe it’s just my luck.
In Australia it’s not just knowing how to swim but where to swim and when. A lot of tourists drown in the ocean here because they don’t know how to read the waves / don’t have an understanding of the local area.
Never swam in an ocean, could you elaborate?
As an Aussie what the person below has said is a big one here. We just call them rips. Basically if you just try to swim in them normally you won’t go anywhere and will just make yourself tired. Same goes if you’re caught in a rip and trying to get out. It can lead to people drowning from tiring out and going under. What you want to do is swim diagonally across the rip. Then you can go about your swim or swim safely back to shore. Another tip is if you don’t know what a rip looks like then it can be hard to see them from the shore or while your in the water. They aren’t waves.
Another one I think people usually have issues with or you hear of a tourist going missing is swimming in water inland. This is more of an up north Aus thing. Basically if you can’t see into the water your going to swim in them don’t. Crocs like to hang out in that sort of water. Very easy to not see them at all.
Great advice, appreciate that! I’ve only swam in small lakes, a couple of rivers, and the Black Sea, so yeah, I could easily see myself making some mistakes in Australian waters. Not that I’m planning to anytime soon, but if I do, I might as well stay alive thanks go this thread.
Cheers, mates!
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Except for the crocs, this also applies to New Zealand waters.
If you feel yourself being pulled away from shore, relax, swim across not against.
Also suffers love rips, express line back behind the breakers.
He must be referring to riptides. In some spots the water hits the beach as waves. In others nearby, the water gets pulled back into the ocean, and those are the spots you need to avoid.
Then depending on the ebb and flow of the twice-daily tides, the riptides are stronger or weaker.There are ways to see where the riptides are, yet many people from my own coastal town are oblivious to these dangers. Inland/landlocked tourists are even more oblivious and vulnerable.
These are pretty common in northern California and Oregon as well. Just had 4 adults and 2 kids rescued from one yesterday at Cannon Beach, for example.
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If the internet has taught me anything, it’s taught me to never swim in Australia. In freshwater, crocodiles will eat you. In the ocean, sharks and saltwater crocodiles will eat you.
Also riptides will pull you out, small venomous fish will crawl up your urinary tract, volcanic gases will take away buoyancy from the water so you will sink (plus the poisonous gas will kill you). Oh, and the sun will give you cancer. That is, if you don’t get bitten by a spider or snake in your hotel room before you even get to the waterline.
Btw did I mention that basically the entire population is descended from criminals who were sent there as punishment?
This guy is just cranky, not trying to kill you, just make you Go Away!
Mate, you forgot to mention the drop bears. Nasty little fuckers, fall out of a tree and maul your face.
This was news to me. My morning is now worse.
Swimming in Australia? Are you suicidal? Hell, even just being in Australia is a threat to life, if the internet is to believed. If it isn’t animals that want to murder you in a painful way, it’ll be plants or fire or plain water.
Our first nation’s people are one of the oldest cultures in the world which is really amazing if you consider just how harsh the country is to live in.
It could be me but I think all cultures are “the oldest”. It’s not like the Dutch just magically spawned into existence 50 years ago and the first Nations people today are culturally very different from the ones a thousand years ago.
Beyond that, if you survive living in Australia for thousands of years then you deserve it
I don’t really see that- there’s a difference between a contiguous culture and genetics. If you’re living in western Italy, you might be descended from and still inhabiting the area of the ancient etruscans, but it doesn’t mean you have the same culture. One could make an argument that you’re from the Roman or florentine culture, but you are from a culture that’s younger than etruscan culture.
Aboriginal Australians (I’m not sure about Torres Strait Islanders, so I hope that’s the right terminology) have been practicing elements of the same culture for longer than any other civilization we know about. You raise an interesting point about them now vs them 1000 years ago, but I grew up wildly differently from how my father did, and we’re still part of the same culture. It’s sort of like the question of stepping into the same river twice- the water is different, but it’s guided by the same constraints.
They were the only ones who managed to make it work and when they managed they could chill because noone else would go there. Until the stupid europeans came.
Knowing where to swim is easy in Australia.
You go to a beach patrolled by our awesome Surf Life Savers. Think like Baywatch, but they are real.
The life savers put flags out in the safest area, and they keep an active watch in the area. You swim between the flags.
No flags, no swim. Simples.
i never been to australia. For me as a good swimmer even as a kid the flags at the balticbsea cost meant nothing. my sports club would regularly go for a camp at the balticbsea and the stronger the waves the more fun we kids had. With such a background that the flags are just a hint for old and unsporty people, it is easy to underestimate the ocean.
A lot of people who don’t grow up here don’t know this though. I used to go on trips to the beach with my international student friends and they had no idea what those flags are and why you should swim between them.
Riptides are scary shit. Even if you do know how to spot them, and what to do if they catch you. Thankfully my 42 year old ass brings a surfboard with me every time I go to the beach. I dunno if our beaches in SoCal are as dangerous as your beaches though.
Even the beaches in Australia want to kill you!
/j
Recently had a similar discussian with an Australian-German who went to elementary in Australia and a German life guard and the “how” is certainly interesting as well. Apparently, you get drilled to crawl in Australia (which is just called “swimming”) because that’s the only style that’s powerful enough to save your life in the face of strong ocean currents. Meanwhile, Germans start by learning the breast stroke in elementary because it’s the most efficient/least tiring form of swimming and the most dangerous water scenario here is people swimming too far out into lakes in forests in the middle of nowhere with no life guards, so the no. 1 priority is stamina to get you back on shore.
In Ontario, it’s often swimming.
Lots of lakes here, children need to be taught to swim
Italy.
Cooking, every foreign person I know eats 20x more takeout and fast food than I do.
You remind me of chatting with a friend from Hong Kong and how surprised she was that I, as a young man, knew how to cook and did it for fun.
I technically know how to, it just tests my patience a lot.
The challenge for me has been finding dishes that you can split out the thinking in to nicely separated activities, rather than committing to everything in one go. Marinades and slow cooking are great for that.
I tend to make multiple portions so it lasts me a few meal. Losing so much time every single meal seems crazy to me.
Dude, you live in Italy, the food is amazing! That said, after a two week trip to Italy, my wife is a much better cook of Italian food now. …In America.
Guessing it’s high income country, where I live eating out the most expensive option, but from what I gather about US for example there’s a big eating out culture there and cooking at home can be a pure hobby for most of them
I’m in the UK and in my mid 20s and I’d say anyone over 30 has learnt to cook at home to save money and 75% of eating out is due to just being out over mealtime or doing something specific like taking someone for dinner.
I’d say I’m not a great cook. I enjoy following recipies and the presentation of food but generally I’d avoid cooking for anyone but my partner and closest friends because I don’t feel good enough to cook for others. When I’m cooking for myself I generally make something quick and easy that would either impress nobody with its 2-3 ingredients or all comes from one packet, but that’s less because I can’t cook at all and more because we culturally don’t care about food enough here and I’m gonna enjoy that pack of instant noodles with old spring onions just as much as a homemade curry because it’s faster, I won’t inevitably get the measurements just a bit wrong and I have a weak British palette.
I’m from the US and moved to Germany. I’m still regularly surprised at how little Germans cook. Tbf, lunch is the big warm meal, so I get not cooking much during the week, but it’s very different from what I’m used to. Everyone seems to be surprised that Americans ime eat out less than Germans, so I don’t know if it’s just that I moved from a home cooking hotspot to a takeout hotspot.
German takeout doesn’t make me feel nearly as shit as American takeout though, so that might be the real answer
In the dry SW US the answer is drink water when it’s 100F or worse 115F+. Having a half liter of water from the hotel for the half day mountain hike, or pounding a half gallon of ice water and throwing up five minutes later. Your body doesn’t tell you when you should drink, it tells you when you are already behind on drinking.
This is no joke. Even experienced hikers won’t bring enough water for their trek and will end up either being emergency heli-evac’d out or just plain die.
I just carry a half gallon thermal jug with me all the time. Hiking or not. If my mouth feels the slightest bit dry, I need to drink more water. I tend to piss clear, or very pale yellow cause of this, but the upshot is that I was fine wandering around Anzo Borrego national park, and two of my friends (who thought that my idea of covering myself head to toe in jeans, a trench coat, and a trilby was a bad idea,) damn near got heatstroke. I basically threw my water at them when I noticed they weren’t sweating anymore.
This is a real killer. People have no idea and tend to overestimate the risk from wildlife and underestimate the risk from weather conditions and exposure. Far more people are killed by hypothermia caused by extreme heat or cold than anything else in North American wilderness areas.
I’ve been part of my local SAR community here in Oregon for decades now and while we don’t have to worry so much about the heat, what gets people here is the cold.
If you are somehow lost or stuck in the high Cascades at night without adequate clothing or a heat source, you are in big trouble, especially if it rains or snows, both of which can and will happen even in the middle of summer.
River crossings are also a big danger since the current is always much stronger than it looks and the water is near freezing and if you fall in and don’t have dry clothes and it starts to rain and blow, you are fucked.
Dealing with winter. I live in the rural upper Midwest, where winter can hit -20 with whiteout blizzards, week-long power outages, and car-burying snowdrifts. I’ve seen too many people move here from warmer places and think “I guess I’ll buy a warmer coat and a snow shovel”, rather than “I should have a backup generator, a backup heat source, a few barrels of spare fuel, a month’s worth of stockpiled food, and at least two different pieces of heavy snow-moving machinery tested to be in good working order”.
I had a friend visit from London, (the real one, not one of the many towns in the US) in February one year. I warned him he needed heavy winter gear. I picked him up in Indianapolis. He deboarded the plane in a track suit. I pulled the car as close as I could to the terminal, and he made a mad dash for the car as I loaded his luggage. I asked him if he had any heavy winter gear, and he replied, “I’m wearing it!”
Off to Walmart we go then, I pulled up right next to the door and let him dash inside. Parked the car. Found him bewildered and lost in the women’s clothes section. Took him over to the hunting and sports section to get him a real coat, and coveralls. He was much happier when he left Walmart, and asked me why I didn’t warn him.
I just asked him what he thought it meant when I told him it was -26° C
He said he thought I was exaggerating. SMH
Apparently there have been issues when US and British forces have worked together before du to the “I thought you were exaggerating” mindset.
The brits have a tendency to downplay really bad situations to the point where, “It’s actually quite chilly” means “We’re in deep shit”. I read somewhere that this caused serious miscommunications several times, because Americans didn’t understand that brits were downplaying things, while brits though the Americans were always exaggerating.
week-long power outages
Out of curiosity. How do you deal with week long power outages? I’m assuming you mean in the winter.
I’m in Eastern Ontario. We’re on well water and septic. We also have very dodgy power lines out here (supposedly the lines are over provisioned in this area and high wind days can cause overloads of some kind).
We have a portable generator as well as a wood stove.
Exactly why I will never move back to the Upper Midwest.
I miss being cozy in my living room at night—watching the snow fall down in moonlight.
But that feeling isn’t worth power outages or thinking you can pull out of your driveway without clearing it, just for your car to get stuck and make you late for work.
Here in Switzerland the question you ask is usually, “do you ski or do you snowboard”? It’s just assumed that you can do at least one.
How to walk on ice is a big one. How to cross a street is another one here in Chicago (hint: look at the cars, not the lights).
For the ice one you mean taking a running start, sliding on it, and yelling weeeeeeeee… Right?
Just like crossing a street.
In Chicago it’s the same thing.
I didn’t, but that’s another learned skill in this category, yes.
I guess here in Korea it’s eating with chopsticks. In Sweden it was Swimming (especially for my Indian work mates). In Germany it was opening a beer bottle with anything you just happened to have in your hand at that time. In Poland I’m not sure, but probably making those elaborate sandwiches for parties.
Southern Georgia, USA.
This is more of a regional rationalization about occasional weather hazards. Here in coastal Georgia, we get snow from time to time, about a half an inch to two inches once every three to five years. There’s a lot of people from colder climates that move here for work or retirement; they hear “a possible light dusting of snow” on the news or from a weather app and think that means nothing. Where they’re from it’s just normal, happens every year and there’s often more. They’ll even laugh at us for shutting down the schools and staying home from work for freezing rain. Here’s the thing: no one here knows how to drive in snow and will likely only see black ice a dozen times in their lifetime. Further, we have no salt/sand trucks, we have no plows, we have zero civic infrastructure to meant to deal with our very occasional ice storm or light snow. It happens so infrequently that there’s no way to justify spending taxpayers’ money to prepare in that way for those kinds of situations. So we shut down the schools and most businesses for a day or so and everyone mostly stays home. We’re not necessarily unprepared for winter weather, we just prepare in a different way that makes sense for the situation.
If the country is big enough (aka Canada) these differences can be between provinces. People from Ontario can’t ride bulls, but every kid in Alberta can. Newfoundlanders can fish but Manitobans are afraid of water. In British Columbia you are taught how to roll marijuana cigarette in high school but in Nova Scotia scotch is the bag lunch drink of choice.
Listen you can’t just make up places like “Canada” i mean come on.
I think you may be making some of these things up.
Manitobans are afraid of water? Half of the people who live there have a cottage on one of the lakes. The rest seems accurate. Carry on.
I like the idea that riding bulls and rolling joints are Life Skills, as though you need them to function.
Norway.
Cross country skiing. It’s basically expected for every kid in school to be adaquate at cross country skiing. P. E. classes during winter could often consist of a ski trip, and a couple times per year the schools would arrange ski days with different acrivities on skis.
Learnt this the hard way when moving from Denmark (some snow, but not enough for snow sports) as a kid.
Also no mountains in Denmark of downhill skiing
