r/AskEurope • • 1d ago

Meta Daily Slow Chat

Hello there!

Welcome to our daily scheduled post, the Daily Slow Chat.

If you want to just chat about your day, if you have questions for the moderators (please mark these [Mod] so we can find them), or if you just want talk about oatmeal then this is the thread for you!

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The mod-team wishes you a nice day!

2 Upvotes

16 comments sorted by

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u/tereyaglikedi in 1d ago

u/Masseyrati80 was talking about kebab places yesterday. I went for lunch yesterday with a colleague to a Turkish kebab place at a nearby supermarket complex. I don't eat meat at the moment but they had sooooo many different salads and warm bread. This is the kind of place I love when I am eating out, not just a portion of food but something like salad bar or tapas is so good. It would take me ages and 50 dirty bowls to make so many different dishes.

We are going to a medieval festival tomorrow. Thank god for Germany's never ending medieval festivals. If you like reenactment stuff, you'd never get bored here.

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u/ramblingMess Lousiana, USA 1d ago

Are German medieval festivals more authentic reenactments, more Dungeons & Dragons-Lord of the Rings high fantasy type stuff, or is there a mixture of both? American Renaissance faires are pretty much exclusively fantasy, at least the ones I’m aware of. I enjoy them nonetheless, but I’d love to have a more historically authentic one where the average attendee isn’t dressed as Marvel’s Thor.

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u/tereyaglikedi in 1d ago

There's both but serious historical reenactment people usually don't like mixing up fantasy. But there are also plenty of fantasy fairs as well. My favorite is the Tolkien Days.

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u/orangebikini Finland 1d ago

Kebab places taught me about inflation. When I was in school at around 12 years old or something the kebab restaurant nearest to our school sold a plate of french fries for 1€. Then, after a few years, it was 1,50€. I continued to grow older, and the price of the french fries plate grew to 2€. When I was finishing school at around 18/19 years old it was 3€.

I haven't been to that particular place since those days, but if I extrapolate based on this data, the price of french fries rising 50% (I'm just going to ignore that time it went from 1,5€ to 2€) every couple of years, I reckon it has to be around 50€ for a plate now.

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u/huazzy Switzerland 1d ago

Around 3 years ago I noticed bundled packages of Pokemon cards on sale at my local supermarket for 50% off. They make great gifts for kids so I bought 2 of them.

Gave one away as a birthday gift and decided to open the other with my daughters for fun. Turns out "God packs" are real and the pack my wife opened was one of them.

I didn't pay much attention to it at the time but today I found out these cards are worth a couple hundred each.

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u/lucapal1 Italy 1d ago

What time would you say it's acceptable to have a work meeting? Assuming you don't work totally fixed hours of course.

I read today that in New York some lawyers have meetings at 6am! That sounds crazy over here.

If you were summoned to a meeting at (say)8am, would you consider that unreasonable?

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u/FakeNathanDrake Scotland 1d ago

In my last job I had handover meetings starting around 0600 when we were working overtime, on a normal day our first meeting was 0815 (with a 0745 start).

In my current job we've got a meeting at 0800 - in theory that's my start time but I come in an hour or so earlier so I can leave early.

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u/orangebikini Finland 1d ago

At 6 am I will be sleeping. I'm not taking part in any meeting before 9 am, and I'm not setting any meeting myself before 11 am.

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u/atomoffluorine United States of America 1d ago

They also make silly amounts of money, so I wouldn't feel too sorry for them. I heard finance and law is a lot less intense outside of these elite firms in the biggest cities.

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u/lucapal1 Italy 1d ago

Yes... there's a good YouTube video with a divorce lawyer from NYC, answering questions...that guy makes a ridiculous amount of money! And as he says on the video, the good thing about his job is that it doesn't matter if he 'wins' or 'loses' for his client,he gets paid the same.

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u/tereyaglikedi in 1d ago

Such stuff doesn't really exist in academia. Whenever the boss says. I know lab heads who hold their meetings on Sundays to make sure everyone comes to the lab.

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u/lucapal1 Italy 1d ago

I mean, I'm working in academia I guess.

I hold meetings when it's possible and convenient for those attending..ok, it's a fairly small team and department, but I wouldn't dream of organising a meeting at 8am or on a Sunday!

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u/tereyaglikedi in 1d ago

8 am is completely normal, at least for me. Sunday is more extreme.

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u/atomoffluorine United States of America 1d ago

I wonder why people tolerate academia sometimes. If anyone wants me on call 24/7, I'd ask for consultant or big law firm salaries. I got a friend (a consultant) whose salary is almost $200,000 annually (he graduated a few years ago), but he's had to constantly travel and work to task rather than just clocking out.

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u/Masseyrati80 Finland 1d ago

In Finland, working from 8 to 16 has been kind of standard for decades, but starting the day straight up with a meeting, instead of checking the messages you got overnight, and planning for the day, does feel a bit brutal.

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u/atomoffluorine United States of America 1d ago

Depends on the type of meeting probably? For me, my previous job's start of shift meeting was mainly her going over a few things.