CULTURE SHOCKS EPISODE 2 *when i moved to latvia*
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- čas přidán 12. 09. 2024
- Heya lovely people! I hope you enjoy episode two of my Culture Shocks vids, don't forget to click the like button and sub if you want :)
Thank you for watching!
#latvia #uk #cultureshocks #culture #shocks #food #animals
While there definitely are stray cats, most of the cats you see wondering around in country side are house cats with owners but spend majority of their time outside. Think of them like teens during rebellious phase, coming home only when they are hungry or can't find anywhere to sleep. Latvians aren't really big on " Keeping you cat locked indoors" sort of mentality
Hello from Estonia! I think, Latvia have salted butter, like Estonia but mostly is without salt. Try black bread and butter, this is right way to eat butter without salt.
Butter with salt tastes like salt, butter without salt tastes like butter.
I love Latvija, the architecture, the culture, the proud they take when it comes to the nation.
Melna be like, 'Labrīt... toxoplasmosis!' But honestly Latvians themselves are like cats. They glare at you often, they keep to themselves, they love fish, and they drive as if a cat were driving. Slow and then REALLY FAST.
Normal butter has a nice cream flavor when it is fresh. When you eat it on bread, you can put a slice of sausage or cheese on top to get a savory taste. Sour butter is worse. I refuse to call it cultured. When I accidentally bought sour butter, I had to clarify it to remove the lactic acid and cook porridge with it. Since refrigeration was invented, fresh cream butter became possible and it doesn't need additives.
Cats confined to a house can be even sadder. Sometimes they are not allowed to leave a small apartment ever. They rip out the cat's genitals to make him content with this life. Cats found near houses might be able to return home when they want to, or sleep in a shed until the owner returns.
Rimi used to carry butter with Himalayan salt. It had a black label. Don't know if it's still available. I buy the Irish one. It's very yellow.
Many cats aren't stray cats. They have home and owners allow them to go outside during day, but in the evening they come home.
Great video and a good eye on the casual drinking. Remember the struggle of trying to find non salted butter when I first came to England.
The drinking, I'd say it's actually a common thing. It's almost guaranteed someone's gonna have a drink if they haven't got anything planned the next day, like work.
But it is a sensitive topic. Russians and communism abruptly indroduced this concept of alcoholism to Latvians which many people stuggled with after WW2. This is why I think some families might play it safe and over react to a drink during the weekday rather than allow it to happen and give it the smallest chance for it to develop into something more serious.
Thank you very much :D and thank you for commenting! That's really interesting to learn and makes a lot of sense for my particular in-laws! I have lots to discover about Latvia's history.
There is something very sincere about you which is not too often found around much on CZcams . Pleasure to watch
Yeah. It's interesting about alcohol. When I visited Italy I was a little shocked too how much they drink wine. But here, in Latvia it really is more like weekend and holiday thing. But probably with younger generations it should be easier to get acceptance of such activities.
Līgo is celebrating Summer Solstice
Salted butter is only home-maid.Industrial butter comes with no salt.
You can make you own butter and put salt in it, it's not soo hard, you can ask some grandmothers in town they will know how to make it or ask to your husband i think he will know how.
Līgo and Jāņi is not about drinking, its mostly about barbecuing meat, eating special Līgo home made cheese, going to sauna, collecting weeds and making crowns out of them also singing, dancing traditional Līgo songs around the bonfire and the drinking part is just about natural beer or kvass.
Only the modern day kids drink whatever on those days
BTW Līga is a womans name and Jānis is mans name and they have name days on those dates
Hi, thanks for commenting, I do know of these things but I am yet to experience all of them as I’ve only lived in Latvia for one year and although I know Līgo and Jāņi isn’t all about drinking, from an outsiders perspective (me) it does seem to be the most prominent thing! 😄
@@mean_and_talll Today it is like that, people tend to party like its New Year or something, but originally its not meant to be like that
Hi! It is interesting to hear your thoughts about Latvia. I lived in Scotland years ago and there was lots of things I thought were strange. I have a one tradition I follow every year, I make strawberry cottage cheese cake, and I didn’t want to brake that tradition, but I couldn’t make it because there is no not salted cottage cheese in UK.
Hiya! Thank you and yeah it’s all very different in the uk, we don’t have the same/ as many dairy products as in Latvia! I had to learn to like more dairy things 😄
There is "Cesvaines" butter with Himalayan salt
In the country side there are people who get pissed every day, so 1 glass of wine is nothing, but for Latvians they dont know how to stop after 1 glass, so they prefer drinking only on the weekends
For salted butter, go to a farmers market.
I go over to my cousin's house nextdoor 2-3 times a week, and there's always a beer or wine.
Maybe something country side-ish that you drink copious amounts atfestivities and nothing otherwise?
And I'm pretty sure most of the cats aren't strays, as unless you live in the city, the cats come and go home as they please.
There is margarin and butter in Latvia, the first one is salty and oily but the second one is 100% natural butter from milk fat.
But there is also natural butter with salt in Latvia, ive tried it once and didnt like it, because there were solid bits of salt in it
It was called ''Butter with sea salt'' and I saw it for the first time in my life just recently
Mm the one with chunks of salt in it sounds like proper salted butter you can buy in England, it’s my favourite 😆 I would like to try the one here to see if it’s different!
@@mean_and_talll Then you can google them and see how they look
there are 2 types of butter with salt, first one is "Cesvaines Sviests ar Himalaju sāli"
And the second one is "Baltais sviests ar jūras sāli"
First one is with salt from Himalaya mountains so the package has mountains on it and the second one is with sea salt so the package has a ship on it
2) I agree, in Latvia we don't have normally this "casual drinking culture", we are taught that alchoholism problems starts with a little drop, and, while there are alchoholics who can drink many days in row, most people won't do that. Most people may drink on celebrations socially or young people would do an weekends... I personally don't drink alchohol ever for many years, since a few times while I was young in 90-s, but I have seen that London's pubs are full daily.
Yes, Cats were my main culture shock, when I was living in UK, in London for 2 years - there were No Cats on the streets! In Latvia we have cats in every town and every street, in London there are almost zero cats, or very, very rare to what I was ever used to... Later some people tried to explain to me that there are Foxes in London, and that's probably the reason there are no cats, but still very shocking to me; and, yes, often I could see those foxes walking around, especially in the summer evenings.
love these videos. More Latvian vids plz
It’s so strange how people view things completely opposite just because they’ve lived in different countries. When I first moved to England, I noticed that there are no stray cats here at all. And it felt very strange and sad to me. I feel like they’re not let out, they don’t have freedom to wander around. Or they just being caught and caged. I don’t know, but it felt very strange to me at first. And about the butter… I guess when eating it with rye bread, we don’t need much salt in the butter. I never knew people like that until I moved here. 😀
hahaha people take so many things for granted when they live in one place and then move somewhere else and then everything you are used to is not necessarily universally applicable to other cultures (like expecting salted butter).
Relating to drinking, my opinion is that younger generation does not drink as much. And as my understanding goes it is related to that in soviet times many was drinking to mentally handle impact of government system. After soviet union breakdown even more was drinking as chaos was while all got sorted out. So younger generation might not have good feeling for it by experience from older generation where are quite a lot who got alcoholism. But drinking in normal amounts might be coming back slowly.
Additionally - in Midsummer day (originally it was celebrated nights before but Christianity has moved away to easier convert people to its believes) had some intoxication used for long time. Partly as it was a big celebration and included "looking for a flower of fern" (sleeping with someone) as it was naturally best time to get pregnant so later child have easier to survive on first months. More can check in movie "Baltic Tribes" - quite an accurate movie about last pagans in Europe which was in this area.
There are a lot of interesting facts about country even it is so small.
You have nice videos.
younger generation definitely drinks but i guess they dont do it so openly and yes only in weekends or holidays ,in the summer i can drink almost one month straight (i have vacation then) but you will never see me somewhere since when the younger generation drinks they dont do it in public places and usually only around midnight from like 23:00 till 4:00
It's very interesting to watch your videos!
There is salted butter in latvia you just have to make effort to find it
Latvia-more cats less rats
UK-more foxes less cats :D
Salted butter why? It's not natural.
how about you doing gardening videos? i would like to see how British people garden. maybe different techniques are using. different seasons and weather for sure. i never had a garden while being in UK for a year, though. i missed it a lot. my green friend to care for. to eat veggies i know how are grown and feeded.
and these days home grown stuff is making popularity again. because of inflation and disrupted world wide supply lines. and lets be honest, working on land with your hands stirs up some ancient feelings. some like it. some not.
do you?
That’s a good idea, thank you for the suggestion! I must admit my family back in England aren’t big into gardening so I’ve learnt most of my skill here in Latvia, but I’d love to do a video on it!
@@mean_and_talll i would live to see how you are learning.
I watched two "shock" videos, and they were not anout funny strange Latvians, but about British imperial vanity.
About stray cats - has the author been somewhere else (besides Latvia) outside Great Britain?
Yikes, I guess you’re right, I am ignorant for only experiencing British culture (because that’s my home country) in answer to your question - yes I have visited other counties in Europe and Latvia seems to have a lot of stray cats in my opinion, compared to the other counties I have visited. I however have only Lived in the uk and Latvia, so maybe that’s the reason why.
We are funny whith alcoholic drinks 😅
Stray cats - city councils make effort not to cage every single cat just for the pure reason of having natural way of combating rats and mice in cities. So unlike of uk, we rarely can notice any rats/mice wandering around in cities.
I can see how that would work, occasionally makes me sad to see little kittens with no home though! 😢
@@mean_and_talll I think it is just our way of thinking about domesticated animals. Cats born out of households are wild, just as wild as any other wild animal and don't necessarily need a home. You don't miss what you have never had.
There are really a lot of stary cats in Latvia. Cat shelters are also overcrowded💔 It is handled differently in different places. Riga municipality refunds the money for the sterilization of stray cats caught in Riga. In Liepāja, by order of the municipality, all cats on the street are killed, even chipped house cats with collars. There are several associations in Latvia that catch cats, cure and sterilize them for the money donated, and find them homes. But now the government wants to pass a law that associations or volunteers will no longer be allowed to foster animals, only registered shelters will be allowed to do that.
Savvaļā dzīvojošu kaķu ir ļoti maz. Angliete nav sapratusi, ka mūsu kaķi, kam visiem ir mājas un saimnieki,vdzīvo brīvībā, pa āru.
@@ainarszelcs3365 Tu apraksti mazpilsētas un laukus. Taču Rīgā, Majoros, Garkalnē un citur ir desmitiem tūkstošu bezmāju kaķu.
casual drinking is stigmatized here because it's associated with the Russians
and it is common to see in Russian neighbourhoods which usually are poorer, dirtier, and have more crime and violence