Tell us something about your country that most people don't know

Lounge EndeavourOS pub
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I’m from Austria and I think that most ppl don’t know that Austria has some of the best football teams in Europe!

First, there’s the Vienna Vikings. They exist since 1983 and won the national championship 15 times. They also won the Eurobowl 5 times and currently compete in the ELF (the successor of the NFL Europe) where they are 5-0 after five rounds.

https://europeanleague.football/stats

And there are two other teams which are, or were, among the best teams in Europe, The Tyrolian “Swarco” Raiders (which also play in the ELF) and the Graz Giants.

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The rest of Europe would probably disagree. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of an Austrian team winning a UEFA title… ?

Hold on.

Grr.

:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I’m pretty confident they do disagree. Name one European country that isn’t passionate about their football teams. :grinning:

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Dudes, that’s soccer you’re talking about. And yes, Austria isn’t among the very best when it comes to soccer :wink:

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In Europe, we call it football because we actually use mainly our feet to play the game unlike American football… :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I think in the interest of neutrality, we should simply call one soccer and one foozball. No one gets to be ‘football’.
And frankly, I don’t care which gets which name.

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If it wasn’t clear, my comment wasn’t serious at all, hence the smiley. :wink:

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Hah, neither was mine…though I really don’t care. As long as we all use the same word for the same thing, we’re communicating.

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You’re just jealous 'cause the Netherlands don’t have good football teams :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: :wink:

BTW: What happened to the Amsterdam Admirals? They played in the NFL Europe some time ago.

edit: I’m jealous of your coffee shops :face_with_spiral_eyes:

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Italy: has the major number of World Heritage Sites by Unesco in the world (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Heritage_Sites_by_country); has the worst criminal organisation (for human being and animals). About soccer clubs: I dislike soccer, but I heard it was altered many times.

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:scream: :scream: :scream: :dizzy_face: :dizzy_face:

But on your last remark about coffeeshops, this is a fun fact:

Although everyone in the world thinks having Canabis is legal in The Netherlands, it isn’t.
Technically it is still illegal, but it is a tacit acceptance. (And most Dutch don’t use it as a household good. The majority in Amsterdam that uses it openly on the street are tourists or foreign exchange students.)

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Yeah, I heard about this. FWIK it’s legal for the shops to sell it but they are forced to buy the weed on the black market. A bit weird, but still much better then most of the rest of Europe. Here in Austria there’s up to one year in jail for the possession of Marihuana.

I’m curious if and when Germany will legalize it.

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That’s not entirely true, they run under a strict policy with the government looking over their shoulder.
It depends which glasses you look through in this case. There’s a general complaint that the cannabis that is supplied under the governments eye has too many rules and regulations, so the coffeshop owners feel “forced” to go the black market route.

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He is of Indian origin.

  1. There are as many as 19,500 known languages and dialects across the country.

  2. Chess was invented in India.

  3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_Hill_(India)
    Magnetic Hill

  4. Mawsynram in the state of Meghalaya, is the wettest place in the world, holds the record of the annual rainfall of 11,871 millimetres.

  5. There is a Living Root Bridge in Meghalaya, which have been noticed as the strong roots and estimated to be 500 years old. The beautiful thing about the bridge is unlike the traditional bridges, these get stronger, as they get older.

  6. And more…

:grin:

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OMG! Does it often happen that ppl don’t unserstand each other? Or does anyone speak Hindi anyway?

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Nope, sometimes the easiest way to communicate is through English

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The necktie became a popular fashion accessory when French gentlemen saw Croatian mercenaries wearing colourful pieces of cloth tied around their necks, during the Thirty Year War in the 17th century.

The French word for the necktie is cravate, which is etymologically related to Croat.

:necktie:

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In German it’s “Krawatte” but I still didn’t know where this comes from.

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Krawatte comes from French cravate, which comes from Croat, which comes from Hrvat, which is the name of my nation.

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Here is another fact about my nation, Croatia:

Throughout centuries in Croatia one of the official writing systems was the Glagolitic script, which was invented in the 9th century by the same two men who invented the Cyrillic script (St. Cyril and St. Methodius). In some jurisdictions, it was used as an official script until the early 20th century.

Ever since the East–West Schism of 1054, Croatia has been a Roman Catholic nation. The Roman Catholic liturgy used to be conducted in the Latin language, but in addition to Latin, Croatia was the only Roman Catholic nation (or one of the very few, I know of none other) that had a Papal exemption to conduct the Mass in a language other than Latin, namely Church Slavonic (similar to the Orthodox Churches). The liturgical texts in Church Slavonic were written using the Glagolitic script in Croatia, unlike Cyrillic which was used in Orthodox Churches. The use of Glagolitic script in Roman Catholic liturgy in Croatia officially stopped after the Vatican II in 1965.

Here is an example of a book written in Glagolitic:
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Here is an example of official documents in Glagolitic (cursive):
image

The first printed book in Croatia was in Glagolitic (22nd February, 1483).
image

In the video game series Witcher, the Glagolitic script is used for some inscriptions:

image

image
This image literally says: “Kingfisher Inn” (Glagolitic is not very suitable for writing English, since it lacks letters for Q, W, Y, X, J and contains many other letters which do not exist in English). It would be more correct to write it like this: ⰽⰻⱀⰳⱇⰻⱎⰵⱃ ⰻⱀ.

Even though Glagolitic is taught to young students in Croatia, it is not used any more (except for souvenirs for tourists), so almost nobody here knows how to read it. I am one of few people in Croatia who can fluently read and write Glagolitic, even the cursive variant.

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