Asklemmy

43950 readers

971 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

574

What's a skill that's taken for granted where you live, but is often missing in people moving there from abroad? (kyu.de)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by aard@kyu.de to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

500 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I was thinking about that when I was dropping my 6 year old off at some hobbies earlier - it's pretty much expected to have learned how to ride a bicycle before starting school, and it massively expands the area you can go to by yourself. When she went to school by bicycle she can easily make a detour via a shop to spend some pocket money before coming home, while by foot that'd be rather time consuming.

Quite a lot of friends from outside of Europe either can't ride a bicycle, or were learning it as adult after moving here, though.

edit: the high number of replies mentioning "swimming" made me realize that I had that filed as a basic skill pretty much everybody has - probably due to swimming lessons being a mandatory part of school education here.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] mattiasdrp@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

And that's one of the reasons why a big part of the rest of the world think that the people living in the USA are rude. It's not just about needless interactions, you don't interact at all. No hi, no please, no thanks, no goodbye, no have a nice day, no sorry, no time. I'm glad I never learnt how to be rude and that's not a skill I'll try to teach my kids.

[–] BigNote@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Actually the opposite is true. Most of the world tends to think that Americans are overly friendly and informal, though obviously there's a lot of variation.

[–] TehPers@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Having been to quite a few countries in Europe, I've heard more about UK tourists than USA tourists, although the few UK tourists I met were friendly.

The USA is a massive country with hundreds of millions of people. There are rude people, but there are also friendly people. It just depends on where you are (and unfortunately in some places who you are). Having been to Seattle, people were generally friendly, but you can't blame the barista for wanting to get through the line that goes out the door and two blocks down the road.

[–] akulium@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

Based on the Americans I met, I don't believe that is generally true. It varies a lot by region and social environment.

[–] MJBrune@beehaw.org 0 points 1 year ago

I don't think it's rude. I've been in many places where people just don't make needless conversation. We interact just fine overall. Specially if you go to some place like southern California. Just Seattle in particular is a lot like the UK not only in weather but in social grouping. People in the UK also don't needlessly interact.