Party Vibe

@Izbeckistan 562066 wrote:

I just dont know how anyone can derive pride by something geographical.
Englans a pretty decent place as it goes and I like the culture. That has nothing to do with me personally, I just happened to fall out of an english womens vagina, in england.

Couldn’t agree more. I don’t have any national or regional pride whatsoever. It simply doesn’t make sense to me. It’s not like I chose to be English, or to born in Lancashire.

I try explaining this from time to time to some of my mates who are so patriotic it borders racism, my ethnicity and nationality are merely a result of my two white parents having unprotected sex in England. Really what part of that am I supposed to take any personal gratitude in? I understand why I should be grateful that I wasn’t born in a war torn nation, stricken with poverty, and I am. But why does that mean I should celebrate my British heritage; would make more sense to celebrate not being from every other underdeveloped nation in the world. But then trading St George’s day for thank fuck I’m not Somalian day would seem very racist lol.

@General Lighting 562068 wrote:

this is common practice in the rest of Northern Europe; and it does seem the folk in Cornwall have genuinely proven that they are of Celtic origin.

Their language is most similar to Welsh but more diverged than just a Welsh dialect. In school I was taught about Angles, Saxons and Celts but that the Celts were rarely found in England but were mostly Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and that Angles and Saxons came from Germanic countries (probably due to the North Sea flooding their own countries), later to be invaded by the Scandinavians. The Normans from France invaded the lot in 1066. This is a report from the times in Old English (presumably after the Vikings had arrived as it has Germanic and Scandinavian elements, modern English has more elements from French).

In reality all these people originally all came from Germanic countries, having been displaced from them in around 535/536 due to what the Dutch and Germans refer to as “unweather”; weather that is so rough even by North European standards that it is positively dangerous. The whole world got this; causing various tribes and peoples to swarm into whatever bits of the world hadn’t already gone under water, and somewhat predictably wars broke out along religious lines, which still have an impact on modern Europe to this day.

Many of The original Saxon lands are now between NL and DE. In the two border provinces of Twente and Drenthe they have similar minority status for their local dialects and cultures. This doesn’t cost the taxpayers any great deal extra, gives them a distinct identity away from Amsterdam and Holland (which is only part of the Netherlands), encourages people to hold concerts singing in dialects not too far diverged from the above and keeps them away from the darker sides of extreme nationalism and Germanic culture (which are still in the memories of many folk alive today). They also do the same in Germany. Similar things happen in Scandinavia. The nearer to the sea you get, the more common this sort of thing is. It happens to some extent here in Ipswich, and there are some events to celebrate various English traditions. Compared to previous decades/centuries when everyone actually had a war it is all harmless.

A few days ago I was listening to a stream of a pirate station from Groningen; they started the broadcast with the provincial song “Stad and Ommeland”, the two presenters (possibly a grandfather and grandson) announced in both Dutch and German; the older chap “inviting the neighbours round for a beer”, although anyone who could listen to their signal is most likely to be in the bird-watching huts the other side of the border and already be stocked up with Bier (the bits nearest the sea are as you would expect muddy, prone to flooding and fit only for geese and other similar waterfowl, which is why the goose paradise is on the NL side, and on the DE side there is what appears to be a 2km exclusion zone left wild for forests, birds and other creatures. The Germans have a similar station; they both play a mixture of country music, polkas, oompah music and songs in NL, DE, EN, plat (a mixture of DE/NL/lolcat) and give shouts out to the Dutch. It is all like if our dads went and started up pirate stations.

In any case the old guy had drunk much of the bier already, as he was advising the Germans to dial 00 49 to text the Dutch studio (he did quickly correct this, as that would have only ended up with random texts going to a DE landline, and those things robocall you ; and if its an old granny lady at the other end they will get both Agentschap and Bnetza + possibly both nations putting them off air. (they now share intelligence info and the two VW transporters across borders)

The most important bit is these folk do not think of themselves as being any less Dutch or German because their provinvce has a local scene, and they regulary visit each other for events and it keeps middle aged folk and youmg people out of bother.

Do you do audiobooks?! You have so much knowledge, I could just stick you on at night before going to sleep, and I’d wake up having acquired a new trade skill or vast geographical and historical knowledge of Northern Europe in my sleep lol