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

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