That too!

Yeah that's another thing. A few years ago there was no shortage of cards with free withdrawal, but now, suddenly it's harder than ever to find one. My old card expired and I had to start looking for an alternative, and found there were basically only two banks (out of the 20-30 I researched) which didn't have a ATM fee nor a card/account fee. Everyone else either had one or the other. Free card but they don't let you use it for free unless it's specifically for card payments/online payments, or a debit card without restrictions, yet you pay a yearly fee to use it.

Finding a card that doesn't add a margin to the default currency exchange rate's no easy task either. In the end I have 3-4 different ones for different purposes, for travel, for ATM, for regular playments.

Fortunately alternatives like The Cash App and N26 seem to be making it a bit harder for banks to compete with unnecessary restrictions, just hope the game-changers don't eventually grow to the point they start imposing the same restrictions.

Ah, well in that case it makes sense. Back in the day though, even the smallest towns had their own... as a kid I remember going to the post office to make a deposit. Every town with at least a couple hundred inhabitants seemed to have one.

Yet you can pay with Finnish cents in Latvia, and maybe you'll get some from Spain in change? ;) The global order of things reduces the appeal I feel. A souvenir needs to be truly tied to a particular location to have any personal value. Collecting items isn't as fun if there's not a certain challenge to it either.

That's true, but if it's a battle of comfortability verses individuality I'd definitely go with the latter. I'm not a great fan of the 'anything that makes life easier makes life better' approach. Too leisurely a lifestyle and you lose your competence, and confidence, and sense of accomplishment when you do something worthwhile.

May seem like cash is a trivial aspect of it all but still... I don't mind those extra calculations. It's one of those small challenges that actually make travel fun IMO. :)

Haha yeah I remember those discussions earlier. :D Those additional challenges just add to the sense of accomplishment if you do learn it though *hint hint*

Anyway that's cool to hear, and that studies are possible even with their more traditional form right now. You definitely do learn a bit easier with real interaction.

Suddenly it seems you jumped straight to level 3?! Maybe the numbers aren't calculated immediately anymore... either way Congrats!

Gets me wondering what kind of submission/fan ratio some of the most prolific artists have here, maybe you'd actually be higher up than most with these equal amounts. :)

Congrats on the posts!

Luckiyl I can get by with two cards. One from my regular bank and one for my savings book. I can use that one to withdraw cash abroad wihtout additonal costs a few times a year.

This town was mostly farms a few decades ago. We don't have a post office either (but the next one is only 2km away, so there's that). But we do have a McDonald's, because the Autobahn is close by, lol.

Yeah, but you can't really do anything with the coins, except for collecting them. If that's you thing, great. But for me it's another inconvenience to stack up on piles of money that I can't use. ;P

*clears throat*

Sju sjösjuka sjömän på skeppet Shanghai sköljde sju skjortor i sjön.

How was that? ;P

Anyway, I've come across some random swedish news anchor on YouTube a few weeks ago (don't even remember the video title, I think it was something about different languages in Europe) and at first I thought she was speaking Norwegian. It's amazing how similar they sound.

Totally missed this: 54,000 XP!

Congrats! Mine isn't as good as yours, but I seemed to have had one sneak right up on me as well.

YOU HAVE PASSED 37000 TOTAL B/P POINTS - SPECTACULAR!

Awesome. :) Maybe your banks are still a bit better at this.

Oh that's crazy. XD Fast food but no post office, interesting place to live...

2 km is a pretty short distance between towns too no? Are they usually grouped so closely together over there?

You're all about minimizing inconveniences huh. :) I do like collecting things...

Vocal recording plz. :P

Nice one though. I must've heard that at some point in time but I only recognize the 'sju sjösjuka sjömän' bit. Teaching me Swedish tongue-twisters, man, I need to hone my own lingo a little...

Nice. Yeah if you learn one you do at least learn to somewhat understand the other.

No no you got it! It's all there. Even more. :P

Congrats!

Yes. Germany is very densely populated. 233 inhabitants per square km, Sweden has 23 per square km.

I am. ;)

But I do like to collect things too. Just not coins. XD

Oh no... My phone just stopped working and... Oh, behind you! A three-headed monkey!

I mean, I could teach you some German tounge twisters, if you'd like. ;P

YOU HAVE PASSED 29 LEVEL - FIVE-STAR!

Ah, that's quite the difference. That said the majority of the population here is also centered around Stockholm, a tenth of the people in an area equivelent to maybe a hundredth or less of the total landmass, so in the countryside the density is even less. But maybe the number above gives an accurate comparison after all if it's the same way in most countries, everyone gathering in the main cities...

Apart from digital numbers? ;)

Honestly I suppose I'm not much of a coin collector either. I just usually save a few each time I've been somewhere exotic and return with a little spare change. An otherwise inconvenient monetary surplus becomes a set of simple souvenirs just like that. :) I do collect a bit too much of too many different things though.

Seems the tape over my webcam isn't working as well as it's supposed to hmm!

I mean wait, something seems phony here...

Yeah, why not! :D I wouldn't mind expanding my currently very vague German vocabulary a bit too.

Congrats Zom!

I think in Germany it's very evenly distributed. Of course there are "hotspots" like Berlin (3 million), Hamburg (1.5 million), Munich (1 million) and of course the Ruhr Area (5 million). But there really isn't an area like the Finnmark, where you can drive for an hour and never even see another car, let alone some small town.

I know exactly what you mean...

I guess the most famous is "Fischers Fritz fischt frische Fische, frische Fische fischt Fischers Fritz", it's a guy (maybe the son "Fritz" of a guy named "Fischer") who fishes fresh fish.

Another good one is "Brautkleid bleibt Brautkleid und Blaukraut bleibt Blaukraut" (Wedding dress remains wedding dress and red cabbage remains red cabbage).

Not a tounge twister per sé, but still funny: "Tschechisches Streichholzschächtelchen" (little match box from the Czech Republic). Basically it's a sort of shibboleth: if you are not a native speaker, you will have great problems pronouncing it correctly.

And if you are from the Ruhr Area, you most likely will speak 8 "sh" sounds, instead of only 4 (note that "st" and "sp" are pronounced like "sht" and "shp" in high german, with only a few exceptions).

Well, the ranking list doesn't lie. Says it right there. I'm now in the top 40 for EXP rankings.

Now can I reach the top 30 at some point? 🤔

That's quite an achievement, congrats!

260,000 Total

At some point and with great perseverance most probably. :)

Congrats!

Sounds population-wise pretty dense then! :O I'm trying to picture how many people per square km there might be further up North here... in a lot of areas it's probably not more than 1-2/km at most.

Interesting, and somewhat depressing, as one who's not a huge fan of large cities or populations...

Whaaat is that one about? XD

Nice. Seems you really chose the most difficult ones too, Googling around ones like 'Zehn zahme Ziegen ziehen zehn Zentner Zucker zum Zoo' are so much more beginner-level. ;)

I'm probably pronouncing these way off at the moment, seem to adopt a Russian accent with the second one for some reason, and the other two will probably take a while to master...

Interesting how similar to English the "Fisher Fritz fishes fresh fish one is too. Could be an international tongue-twister. Extended Swedish alternation: Fiskare Fritz fiskar färsk fisk, fräsh fisk fiskar färskfiskfiskare Fritz.

Btw 'Fischer' wouldn't be just 'fisher'? Name implied only because of capitalization? Though why is Fische also capitalized?

IM SO OVERWHELMED RIGHT NOW

YOU HAVE PASSED 10 LEVEL - OVERWHELMING!

I'm just going out of my way to find the bad ones. I find that I can grab somewhere around 5 a day. Might not be a lot in the later levels, but at least for now it's kind of easy keeping about even when depositing experience points.

I also ran into someone who had 240 copy/paste reviews of the same exact 1 word "lol" over and over that were too old to clear without being marked first. That helped quite a bit. :P But yeah, at least 2-3 stolen submissions weekly that I mark up as well. I try to B/P right at midnight and I'm always finding something so I just switch over to this account when I do.

This might seem like underwhelming congrats but: Congrats!

If you can keep it consistent it'll all amount too.

Nice find! And what a grind.

How do you usually know what's stolen? Easy to figure out via submission descriptions if the user isn't why they say they are? Doesn't seem so easy if the submission doesn't happen to be on the site already though. If you don't know the real artist's style already.; frequent a bunch of other content streams.

I like big cities, so I am all good, lol.

It's a good speaking exercise, for voice actors for example. :)

Yup, that one is easy. A better one is "Zwanzig Zwerge zeigen Handstand, zehn im Wandschrank, zehn am Sandstrand". Even I have problems saying that over and over again. :D

Good thing that German pronounciation is pretty straightforward most of the time. XD

Nice. "Färskfiskfiskare" means "fresh fish fisher"? And, in Swedish "r+s" isn't pronounced as "sh" like in Norwegian, right?

EDIT:

In German every proper noun is capitalized. Yes, we are weird. "Fischer" can be a name, or it can be a profession. But since it's "Fischers" at the begining it implies possession, so either the guy who is a fisherman possesses something or the guy who is called "Fischer" does. Impossible to tell. If the guy "Fritz" was a fisherman, then it would be "Fischer Fritz", without the "s". I'm sure such a variation exists, too.

40k EXP today!

Did you happen to grow up in one? I do wonder sometimes how so many people can have such an affinity for such an artificial style of life. :) Makes sense if it's all based on familiarity though. Or maybe if you're just extroverted enough to want to always be around people.

Right. :) Was thinking potential correlations between wedding dresses and red cabbage over there?

One of those that seem deceptively simple the first time hmm... nice.

That is a good thing yeah! Not so simple for an outsider but very similar annunciation/grammar otherwise. or at least the grammar seems similar when you read these bits.

Yupp. As for the second question though it is pronounced that way in Swedish too. Trying to think if it might be different in certain words but it seems like this is the norm... interesting. Never realized we have some silent r's too.

Seems the r in rs might not be silent with say Finnish or Icelandic, maybe some hybrid dialects exist here too where the sh doesn't apply.

Oh, interesting. Does this impact how you title things over there overall - products, media, etc? Does the rule of proper nouns being capitalized take precedence over other capitalization trends? Still common with all words capitalized in titles?

A possessed fisherman huh. :) Good to know.

Congrats!

I grew up near Hamburg, yes. And I think it's nicer in big cities for introverts like myself. No one cares about what you do, as long as you are not misbehaving in an outrageous way. In small villages everyone knows everyone else, so fuck up once and the whole village will know in an instant, heh.

But I think being used to larger cities does have it's advantages. When I traveled to Glasgow for example, I felt pretty comfortable running around in the city centre. I didn't feel overwhelmed like maybe people that are used to small places might feel like.

I see. No, it's just the different position of "l" and "r" in those words. "Brautkleid" is 'r ... l', while "Blaukraut" is "l ... r'. Other than that they are of very similar structure, both start with a b, have three same amount of syllables and both end with a sharp "t" sound (yes, a 'd' at the end of a word is spoken like a 't').

Oh, that's good to know. I learned that in Norwegian it depends on how you pronounce the "r", if you speak a "rulle-r" (don't know if that term exists in Swedish too... It's a rolling r, just like an angry Scotsman would use lol), then r+s = sh (even across words, which is really unusual for me, "vær så" is pronounced "væshå"). If your 'r' is a 'skarre-r' (at the back of your mouth, like the French do), then r+s are pronounced separately.

I haven't really been paying attention to that, but I think capitalization rules apply to titles as well. Apart from the yellow press of course, they just write their headlines in all caps.

Hmm personally I feel like you're much more anonymous in the middle of nowhere. :) You can scream, you can shout at the top of your lungs, you can run around half-naked even when you're not in optimal beach shape... so much more freedom to be yourself and be anonymous I guess. You're right the middle ground small town gets much more personal on another level.

Definitely. It's not only the people I'm adverse to though, I can enjoy the anonymity you mention above, but the sense that you don't really have control. You're forced to act according to the set of rules that govern the city. Everything costs. Everything's regulated. I feel caged whenever I'm in places populated to the point they require some sort of order to stay pleasant for all.

Not that I do go around screaming all the time when I'm in the wild, it's just that it's possible. Anything's possible. You're not trapped either behaviorally or geographically the same way. There's fresh water to drink if you know where to look. There's plenty of food too if it's the right season. Nature provides, and people take. Too much city = too many people = too much taken away.

Ah right. Makes sense similar words would be used like this, just seemed maybe there was some backstory too. :)

Rolling r yes (ruller = rullar in Swedish btw). Your example above's the same in Swedish. If you want to be very articulate you can pronounce the r in the example above too though, when the words aren't connected, but I don't believe it's that common. You could say it's the older/more formal form of annunciation. Alternatively if you're trying to sound aggressive/tough. Possible it's also dialectal...

I don't think I've ever thought this much about how and when different r accentuation occur in our language. XD

No back of the mouth r's here. :) It's all tip of the tongue r's, both rolling and no. In 'rullar' for example, if you're somewhat articulate the first r will be a rolling r, and the last one will be more like the r in a short dog bark (the actual sound, can't think of a way to write it so it comes across the same, hopefully you hear the same sound in your head). The softness/amount of roll in the r depends on how articulate you are, how much emphasis you put in the word, and which part of the country you live in.

Up North the r's roll stronger and slower, down South actually maybe we actually do have those French r's after all... it's not a dialect I'm too fond of though. :P Skånska or småländska.

Good to know.

Many thanks! Admittedly I like to see it as an early 30th birthday present, although it's nothing compared to what I'll actually get IRL for my 30th. New hifi to play CDs and vinyls and I now have a vinyl collecting addiction.

Aye, always the way with EXP. I say it's somewhat reachable looking ahead now but it's gonna take some time and a few more above me to drop off.

Many thanks! Be back for.... 59k in August.

Just seen this. I was actually in Hamburg last year for my dad's 60th. Dunno about you but I didn't quite see many stein glasses about.

Oh yeah 31k exp.

So I'm now currently rank 328 and also 428 for b/p.

I can relate to that.

NOW you are telling me?! Where did your dad celebrate?

And to see stein glasses you'd have to travel further south. Bavaria should have plenty.

Hit level 26. I prefer the level 25 icon, though, so I'm keeping it for now.

Just got past 28,000 total b/p points!

Depending on which city you live in, you could get away with all of that. ;P

Too late. Now I imagine you running around screaming whenever I see one of your posts. ;)

That's definitely true. But on the other hand, you have much more job opportunities. I really can't understand people who drive 2 hours, only to get to work (and then 2 hours back, of course).

At least I am not aware of any, and a quick google search didn't turn up anything useful. But I guess I will see a lot of ads for wedding dresses now.

It's funny how little we think about our native languages. I've discovered many new things about German during the past 1 1/2 years I am learning Norwegian now. I think I've mentioned it before, but it's so obvious that our languages are closely related, we even use the same figurative language on many occasions. For example how you can use "å dra" to indicate movement, we use "gehen" (to go) for the same thing, or how "å tilhøre" is used to indicate belonging, we use "gehören", and as you can propably see, "å høre" and "hören" (=to hear) is present in both these words. Fascinating!

The same over here. If an "r" is at the end of the word as in "Wasser" (water) we more or less swallow it, and the word becomes "ˈvasɐ" in the phonetic alphabet.

Haha. I actually forgot which part of Germany you lived in. The thought didn't occur to me at the time but around that then lot of personal shit was going on.

We explored many places, although many names escape me now. However, thanks to Google Maps I did manage to find the name of the two rock bars we went into for most nights. They were Zwick St. Pauli and Grotte if you recognise either of them. We also went to Lehmitz a few times for live music.

Additionally we explored the areas where The Beatles statues are (even though we live near the city they originated from and see plentiful of them).

Well that explains it. There I was expecting to find stein glasses in any place like finding Guinness in any Dublin bar. Come next visit to Germany I'd like to go where I can find them steins.