Re: Maybe this will help, maybe it won't

[Susanne Ebrecht <miracee ( at ) miracee ( dot ) de>]

Koen Martens wrote:
> There is no such thing as 'the european'. I just had a discussion about
> this in a different setting, and we were discussing the way Dutch people
> differ from Germans. Although we are neighbours, there are quite some
> differences in cultural orientation. We concluded that, generally
> speaking, the Dutch are much more atlantic-oriented. 
>   

Hey, I just was downtown. My town is at the border to Belgium, 
Netherlands and Germany. I always like, that you will hear as much 
French and Dutch as German downtown. Of course, you can hear lots of 
French accented, German accented or Dutch accented English too.
I really like this. And when you ever will visit my town, you can get 
this feeling of Europe.

> There is basically not a lot, culturally, binding me with Italians or
> Polish people. Worlds apart. I can not even begin to understand the
> deep-rooted catholicism of the Italians for example, it scares me even.
> The recent hate and violence against gay people in Poland made me think
> 'and why should i be considered european along with Polish people'? Just
> some examples of why i don't really feal like a 'european', and why i think
> no-one can. There simple is no such thing.
>   

Therefor I don't have to look to Italy, its quiet enough to look to 
Bavaria. :)

The characters of the people are different in some kinds. But our laws 
and justices are not so different. US is lots of more different with 
this stuff.

The same with social stuff and taxes.
I think our Queens, Kings and Presidents enjoy playing the game: tax 
monopoly (who reaches the highest taxes is the winner).  :)
Social stuff: I think, we all have stuff like this: a kind of automatic 
illness insurance, a kind of government help when you are workless, 
homeless,  ...,  rules for pensions when you reach a higher age.

Look to work: Never tell a US guy, that 4-6 weeks/anno of vacations are 
usual.

Education: every country and in some countries (like Germany) every 
region has its own school system.  The way, how we  will get our 
education is very different, but the results are  very similar. Afaik 
all European governments don't let the people get a bad education for 
political reasons.

Pictograms as street signs.  We all know, that a white or yellow 
triangle with a red border and a picture of an animal (cow, elk, dear, 
...) at the middle means,  that you have to be careful, because there 
could be one or more of these animals pass the street.

You will find lots of more of similarities.

Of course, there are huge differences too, like: UK and Maltese guys are 
driving on the left side, Italians and their catholicism,  French people 
expect you to speak French when you are in France (when you really are 
not able to do this, they will help you in English or German too). Dutch 
and Scandinavians are very good with foreign languages. Germans are the 
poets and thinkers,  Czechs are very good in making fairy tail films, 
Russian are very good in mathematics and algorithm, and so on. But 
usually, we know this stuff and we accept/respect it.

I don't know much about Poland. Only, that the catholicism rules there 
more then in Italy.

Looking back to PostgreSQL. We just figured out, that we have lots of 
similar issues, which are different to US. Like the difficulty to get 
donations, Encoding problems, less man power and so on.

Therefor it doesn't matter if the Italians are catholic or still believe 
to Zeus, Aphrodite, Mars, or whatever. It also doesn't matter that the 
Germans use to drink beer or the British guys won't to get disturbed 
during tea time.

And we all have one big similarity: we all have the same hobby, which is 
called PostgreSQL.

Susanne


--
Susanne Ebrecht
52066 Aachen, Germany

PostgreSQL European Group
Email: miracee ( at ) miracee ( dot ) de