In Spain it is forbidden to sell alcohol to people under 18, but as is aid, on Saturday nights, which is when people hangs out to drink youll find many people your age drinking, and nobody say anything to them.

By the German law you're allowed to buy alcohol up to 22% at an age of 16, harder stuff, when you're 18 and older.

Actually there is a discussion to make 18 for all. We have problems with young alcoholics. Sometimes the police or the ambulances are picking up 11, 12 or 13 year old childs, totally comatous drunken.
It's a social problem, too. Often these young alcoholics have a bad family-background. But not at all. Nowadays "flat-rate-parties" in disco's are forbidden. Pay once and drink, as much you like, this wasn't a good idea for people, who cannot control their consumption.

Anyways, if the kids want to have alcohol, finally they get them somewhere/somehow. Some dealers aren't looking for their ID-cards (but if they will be caught by the police, they have to pay a high penalty) or just an older guy is buying the stuff for them.

Does Germany have the alcohol-fuelled yob culture that Britain has? I don't know if you've heard about it, but these days British cities have a bit of a problem with young people going out at night and getting drunk and behaving badly as a consequence. In many countries people like to go out to town and drink a lot on friday and saturday nights, but sometimes it seems like Britain is the worst country in Europe when it comes to the way people (usually in the 18-30 age group) behave after a few drinks. It's probably not as bad as the media would have believe and many can still be fairly behaved while drinking (like me and my friends) but the British police have to put up with a lot in town centres at night. When I go out for a night on the town, even if it seems like everything is pretty in order, there's still police vans driving around. And there seems to be a real lack of respect for the police in Britain, partly because they are so many scumbags and louts around.

I suppose everyone has their own preferences when it comes to food, but we British don't all eat porridge! I think it's OK but I very rarely have it, and I didn't know it was considered strange by Europeans! Marmite is the classic "love it or hate it" food, even the TV adverts acknowledge this! And some people like marmalade on their toast. We do have things like croissants but over here it's a bit of a novelty, not the kind of thing people eat all the time. Even though there is the "Full English Breakfast" (eggs, bacon, beans etc.) the difference between Britain and American is that we don't really go out to diners like IHOP for breakfast and eat loads of pancakes and waffles etc. But perhaps the average American just has breakfast at home. For breakfast I usually only have a bowl of cereal.

And I don't eat fried Mars Bars! That sounds revolting! But I have no idea what percentage of the British population eats fried Mars Bars.

I have done that like once, maybe twice in my entire life





Me too

Also, European alcohol standards make America seem stuffy!

No one under 21 can legally drink ANY kind of liquor here.
Of course, many people under 21 do drink anyway. Not me of course, as I find alcohol quite unpleasant smelling, and it is cheaper (and more legal) to just buy a pop, or even better to just drink water.

I thought that was more of a Scottish thing (and creme eggs, and pizza). You know they have the highest rate of heart disease in Europe? Wonder why...
Of course, Americans have deep fried Coke. It sounds really good to me, I keep hoping I'll see it around here.

Canada seems pretty stuffy about alcohol too, but a little different then the US. Here (the west coast, but I think it's the same everywhere) you can only get alcohol in liquor stores*. Up until a few years ago, all the liquor stores were owned by the government as well. The drinking age is "only" 18 though, sometimes we get American teens crossing the border to get drunk.
I wonder how we got like this when Europe is so liberal about alcohol.
(*I don't know what the limit is, but there are some types of beer and wine that have 0.5% alcohol or less, and any place can sell those.)

One thing I keep hearing about Europe that I can never believe;
What do you call this stuff?:

This is 'corn' in North America, but I keep reading that in Europe it's called maize?
Really?

Now that's something I don't understand. Why don't people don't make American stereotypes about corn? I mean, corn is a purely American thing, it has been since Colonial times. I think every American has had corn on the cob at least one in their life.
But instead, Europeans make stereotypes about "cheese"?

@BlackIce GTS: Yes, the German word for corn is "Mais" (in Italian and Dutch too), in French the same word, but with two dots over the "i", in Danish and Swedish "majs".
Good to have the old tourist-dictionnaries

@Max: corn is coming from Mexico. Wikipedia.de says, that it was domesticated ca.2700 BC in the area of the Rio Balsas. The Spanish have brought corn to Europe in 1525.


@BlackIce GTS: "Korn" in German means all kind of grain. Misunderstandings are possible, because "corn" and "Korn" ist not the same!

By the way: shortly after the war, there were differences between the USA and Germany, after the USA had founded the "Marshall-Plan" to built up Europe again (to hold against the Soviets).

The hungry Germans have asked for "Korn", but the USA had delivered "corn" - and the Americans were getting angry, because the Germans weren't happy about that.
In America "corn"-products were always important and accepted food - in Germany "corn" was only used to feed chickens.

Before the WWII, the American influence in Western Europe was much smaller.

Yes, we do - but not about the Americans. We German say "Kaaskop" ("cheesehead") to people from Holland!

These US-related jokes from English guys about cheese are new for me, too.

But at least pop-drinks are much worst for your health than a (classic made) beer or a (chemical-free) wine! Especially, if you think about the huge amount of sugar in a Coke, Sprite and so on. Also the sugar-surrogates in Diet Coke ("Coca Cola light" in Europe) and that stuff aren't really good.
Yes, me and my wife have always a box with Coca Cola zero in our house, but we don't drink only that stuff.

A propos pop-drinks: I must say, that in the USA you can get really extremely ugly pop-drinks (Root Beer for example), so, when we've been there, we have looked to get stuff, we know from home.
Yes, over here the Coca Cola-company also throws "Cherry Coke", "Vanilla Coke", "Pink Fanta" ("Fanta" is the orange-lemonade of Coca Cola) on th market, but mostly the people don't buy it.


To talk bad about Americans again: you cannot make chocolade, chocolade-bars and other sweets, too!. Even the most Hershey's-products have the taste, we Europeans are used to know from the low-price-no-name-chocolade of the supermarket.

Swiss chocolade is premium-class, German, Belgian and some Italian productes usually, too. English stuff (Cadbury's)is not good either, also "sandy" (too much sugar, less cocoa) on the tongue, and with an ugly taste in the throat after eating it (low-quality cocoa).

I'm not a chocolade-expert or -gourmet, but I like it and I can find out, if it's good quality.

The same is with ice-cream - US-made ice-cream is only sometimes really great, often you can taste the low-quality-indigrents.
Sure, European ice-cream is often not premium-class (Italian is the best), but the choice of better ice-cream is bigger than in America.
The great "Häägen Dasz" (Europen "assembled") is available over, here, too. But it's very expensive, so we don't buy it often.


Potato-chips are popular in Germany, too, but the choice of it is much smaller than in the USA - and in Britain, too. Even in Holland and Belgium you can find more.
German customers prefer chips with pepper-taste or the classic ones. Noone likes abnormal (we say "perverse") chips like "salt and vinegar", "ready salted" or "brown sauce".

Indeed, "maíz" in Spanish.




Trust me we do it with corn as well, more than with cheese, i eat corn, but thresed ( is this a correct word to use?) in bottles, and just for salads not only to eat it "alone" without any condiment, but trust me that in Europe we have it as american, always, and we wonder how the hell can you eat it like that, i bought a cob once to try it and oh gosh, i dindt like at all, but i suppose it is a question of customes.

@CCF: you can't generalize that. I know corn-cobs from the grille. My father-in-law is a big barbecue-fan (annother US-word, "Grillen" in German, "barbie" in Australian slang, "braai" in South African/Afrikaans-slang), so sometimes we grilled corn, too.
The cobs we've "found" on the farmground in the neighbourhood.

It's not a clean thing, to eat the corn from a grilled cob with butter and salt
Anyways, you eat it outside in the summertime. For me a grilled cob is like spare-ribs ("Rippchen" in German) or chicken-wings: dirty to eat and more waste than eatable material.

So I don't like chicken-wings and spare-ribs. It's a kind of fooling the customer for me. No premium meat, no big plain pieces, just waste with bones from the butchery.

A good tip for your next BBQ: just put bananas with peels on it and let them getting black (or light brown, it depends on your taste). Then cut the peel and put vanilla ice over it - I can recommend very much that as a topping:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advocaat

On both toppings you can put choco-splits.

We're talking more about American stuff, but in Europe you can disvover so many nice things:

Perhaps atom will tell us more about his natinal Swedish speciality "sur strömming"

Well, you did you use butter and salt right? Because it's no good without it
And of course as ingo said, it's a very messy thing to eat, so if you don't like that kind of thing it's not for you.

I didnt eat it with salt and butter, perhaps that's why i didnt like it, but note that i love the corn in bottles, i love it for salads

Well, perhaps it is different for Germany but here nobody eats corn in cobs at all, we always have it as american, and even if in some places of certain countries it is eaten it will always be an american custom and typical from there, not from Europe.

Surströmming is fish that smell so bad most people puke just by the smell. You put it on tunnbröd (=thinbread) and swallow it down with
brännvin (=moonshine). It's pretty embarrassing to say but I haven't tried it, I think it's more on the east coast (I live on the west coast)

Another Swedish party is the Kräftskiva (Crayfish party) and that I have done many times!
Just suck out the good parts of the crayfish, and ofc the brännvin!

More Swedish food:

Knäckebröd: A hard type of bread, I have seen that it's for sale in Germany also.

Blodpudding: Black pudding, made of mostly pigblood, tastes good!

Every Thursday we eat Ärtsoppa and pannkakor. Soup made of yellow peas and pancakes (yes at the same time but not mixed together).


Alcohol:
The only place that is allowed to sell alcohol higher than 3.5% is the Systembolaget (know as 'Systemet') a government owned monopoly.
You can go there when you are 20 y.o. or older.

When you are 18 you are allowed to buy folköl (=peoples beer) it's 3.5% and all stores have them.

You are allowed to drink any kind of alcohol when you're 18 (but most start earlier ofc!).

Fastfood:
We have McDonalds in almost all cities and Burger King in some. MAX makes a big deal of making "swedish hamburgers". Pizza Hut is only in some mayor cities.
We dont have KFC or Taco Bell (what I know of).

My favorite is the 'Korvmojj' or 'Korvkiosk' a smaller, mostly independent
place that sell korv (hotdogs) hamburgers and some other stuff.
My favorite is “Hel speciall med västkustsallad och stor Pucko” =
Hel special: Full special (one hotdog bread, two hotdogs, mashed potatoes)
Västkustsallad: West coast salad, hmm whats this? Think it’s mayo mixed with shrimp and some other stuff.
Stor Pucko: The larger Pucko (29cl instead of the small 20cl ) (chocolate drink).

If you’re in Gothenburg you can ask for a Hel-speciall with a Stockholmer (you will get a Full special with Pucko since pucko also is slang for idiot)

Here is a picture of a Korvmojj: http://imcdb.org/vehicle_149730-Volvo-Amazon-P130-1967.html
(Sibylla is a franchise of korvmojjar).

Wow that’s my longest post so far!

You don't mean pig blood as in the red fluid that runs through the veins of this animal, do you?



Are you a vampire?





How do you survive???

Yes the blood from pigs
Looks like this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/Blodpudding.jpg
The red stuff is lingonberry jam.

I haven't tried KFC but I loved Taco Bell when I was in the states, hope we will get them here some time...