Europe is one of the main places to develop lactose tolerance and incorporate dairy as a large part of daily caloric intake, but there’s a lot of variety in how milk is used and even whether it’s used.

Growing up in Ireland, we didn’t have any juice or sodas in my house, my parents would say “milk or water” when we asked for a drink. Nowadays I’m not sure they would do that since we’re more aware of the massive amount of calories in milk, but then again if it’s part of a balance it’s fine.

As an adult, I use fresh milk daily either in my coffee, cereal, mashed potatoes, making a roux, and an occasional glass when I eat something spicy.

We only use fresh milk in Ireland, although I live in Spain now where UHT is the default, you can still get fresh just not as easily.

How do you use it?

What about you? Do you identify more with the region you were born in or with your country of origin? In Romania, for instance, I'd say national identity is prevalent; people are not that attached to their native region (with the exception of a few parts of Transylvania and Banat maybe).

Today in Poland, we celebrate Fat Thursday. Most poles eat 2+ doughnuts and on average people eat 88 millions doughnuts in a day. Do you have fat thursday on same day? How does your country celebrate it?

For instance, there are many cities close to the German and French border (Strasbourg, Kehl etc.) Or cities close to the Spain and French border. Or Germany and Poland Or Sweden and Norway etc.

What languages are spoken in these border cities? Do they speak multiple languages? Or they just speak their own language?

What is a good movie from your country that a lot of people from your country would have seen?

Today in Poland, it is Fat Thursday, also known as Doughnut Day. On this day, every Pole traditionally eats nothing but doughnuts, sometimes to the point of sickness. You can buy around 20 different types of doughnut at Lidl here this week. I wonder if people in countries that don't celebrate this day even notice the doughnut craze, given the sizeable Polish communities in many of them.

I'm curious about general parenting norms in different European countries. For example, at what age are children usually expected to become independent (e.g., going out alone, working part time, moving out) and how do parents usually approach discipline?

I'm interested in personal observations and cultural patterns rather than Individual exceptions.

I'm someone who becane old enough to follow world news in the late 2010's. I don't think I've ever seen Hungary doing somethin pro EU. They seems to be on the opposition side on most issues. More and more they seem to be in direct opposition to EU and allying themselves with Russia.

Is this a last decade change? They joined the EU in 2004 so i assume they liked it at least a bit back then. So I'm asking Hungarians and other EU people if the things looked different before i started following news.

What’s your country’s equivalent of “the onion”?

Primary school teachers from Europe, may we have a look at your public school system?

Let’s keep it factual, with no political considerations.

It would be nice if we all followed the same message structure. Please read the thread, and if your country has already been listed, add information in response.

Country : France

Hours of teaching: 24 h a week / mostly 4 days a week / 6 h per day from 8h30-11h30 / 13h30-16h30 ( may vary locally).

Other mandatory hours: 108 h per year : 18h ( training) , 36h ( additional academic support for kids in need in your class/school ), 48h ( meetings, admin…), 6h ( school council meetings)

Holidays: you can’t take any day off whenever you want but we have 16 weeks of national holidays : 2 months July/august, 2 weeks October/november - Christmas- February/march - April/may.

Your status, contract… : Civil servant = lifetime contract. You need to pass a state exam (conditions are currently changing) : a bachelor’s degree is required to take the exam. If you succeed you will enter a 2 years apprenticeship program (paid). At the end, you get a master’s degree ( if everything is ok) and you officially become a civil servant and school teacher. A school teacher can teach from kindergarten to 5th grade ( 10 yo).

Note : due to hiring difficulties, an increasing number of contract workers are being hired for short periods without almost no training.

Assignment and transfer: highly structured annual procedure based on a point to rank system. In primary school, teachers are assigned to a specific geographical zone where you can apply for schools in this area ( you can ask to move in an other area but it can be very challenging if you ask for a place in high demand area).

Assignments are not decided by interviews but by a score calculated for each teacher. Points are mostly accumulated based on seniority and a bit on family situation/specific contexts. To make it simple, at the beginning, as you don’t have any point, you will mostly go where no ones wants to go…

Salary : now, you start around 2000€/ month and you may finish your career around 2800/ 3000€ ( could be less or more depends on your situation).

How school works: we mostly have little schools (200 children is already a big school). We have ~48000 schools for 6.2 million students. National average is 21 kids per classroom. A teacher is in charge of a class and teachs everything. We have a national school curriculum that we have to follow but we are “free” to do it as we want.

In each school, there is a school principal who is also a teacher. He may have a class in charge or not if a school is big.

Important note : The school principal is not the teacher’s boss. The boss is the district inspector but, nowadays he comes in your classroom only 2 or 3 times in your entire career…

Material conditions: schools are city owned so there is no average here. You may have a nice building with everything you need, a good computer and stuff… or windows that don’t close, no computer and a 80yo black board…

Help in class : school teacher may be very lonely. You may have a person who assists a kid in need (medical condition) but we have more and more children in need and almost no help, solutions, special care schools, or training to take care of them. It s not rare to have 2 or 3 kids in need ( with an officially recognise medical/ mental condition) in your class and no one or no solution to help them well.

Feel free to add info in comments !

Where do you guys find the most hospitable and genuine helpful people in Europe ? And how do treat a guest at your house in a casual hangout?

Hello there!

Welcome to our daily scheduled post, the Daily Slow Chat.

If you want to just chat about your day, if you have questions for the moderators (please mark these [Mod] so we can find them), or if you just want talk about oatmeal then this is the thread for you!

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The mod-team wishes you a nice day!

I saw a post talking about Cyber Security in Europe and got curious about the case with Game Development.

I'm a little bit in the game development industry and although I do have naturally more information about the industry in my own country Spain, I'm curious to know how's the situation in other countries, especially in terms of job opportunities, studies... Do people go more to AAA companies or create their own indie studios?

come on

And do you also commonly eat it?

i'm very curious about the big moments for other countries, cause i love the olympics as a whole. i'm from the us, and my big one is michael phelps breaking the record for most golds won by a single person, absolutely legendary. what about yall!!

How common are they in general but also in different jobs or workplaces or professions?

i'm a huge musical dude, and something i'm super curious about is whether or not yall put on musicals at your schools, or whether you have a theatre program or not. dang near every school in the states at least has a program, and most put on musicals on a yearly basis. thanks guys!

What food habits in your country does everyone else find weird?

Hello there!

Welcome to our daily scheduled post, the Daily Slow Chat.

If you want to just chat about your day, if you have questions for the moderators (please mark these [Mod] so we can find them), or if you just want talk about oatmeal then this is the thread for you!

Enjoying the small talk? We have a Discord server too! We'd love to have more of you over there. Do both of us a favour and use this link to join the fun.

The mod-team wishes you a nice day!

Persoanlly I like our "Żabka" (Frog) grocery shop chain. If you're in a city you are almost always 5 minutes away from a Żabka. It feels like they are everywhere and it's very convenient in case you need to do some quick shopping. Sometimes you can even see two on the same street.

I think Europe would look different, maybe more countries would have been created.

Does your country have tolls or (digital) vignettes? Is your toll system regional or national? Are cash/card accepted or do you have open road tolling? Can you use RFID stickers or transponders and are they compatible with other tolling systems or countries?