Whenever I travel somewhere, as a souvenir, I buy the local design of playing cards. Even within the colour-regions there are many variations. I might be biased because I’m dutch, but the Dutch Cut is one of my favourites, because of the architecture on the aces!
In Italy every region has their own design! (Even within the ones shown in this map.)
In Spain every single playing card company has its own design (even if they are all swords, sticks, coins and cups), probably more than one. I don't think I've ever seen the same design twice, every house I go to has different cards.
Yeah that happens a lot in the rest of the world too. In Italy there are two main manufacturers and they each have their own slight variations upon every regional design. Here in NL I don’t even see the classic (carta mundi brand) dutch style anymore. It’s mostly American cards here now.
This surprised me when I was younger. Heart, diamond, spade, and club seemed so foreign to me. For the record, in Spain we call them copas (cups), oros (coins (literally golds)), bastos (clubs), and espadas (swords).
Also, the pictures used in the map are not the most commonly used ones here. this (top row) is what most cards use
I don't think so. The other variants of the Spanish-inspired cards are clearly staves. Besides, basto is very, very close to bastón, the word for a staff like a walking stick. Gherkins are called pepinillos
Funny enough, in Portuguese, the names for the sets are dirty direct translations of the Spanish versions, but applied to the French icons. It didn’t make much sense to me calling a losange “golds”, or a heart “cups”, a leaf “swords”, and a clover leaf “sticks”.
Somehow this is the first time I've realized the symbols don't match their names at all. Not really sure what's dirty about them but it's actually pretty handy to have all suits be called the same names in French and Spanish suits since both are widely used around here in Southern Brazil.
Not the previous poster but I think the "dirty translation" is because in Portugal some things weren't translated at all (we use the actual word "copas" even though it's not a Portuguese word) and others are translated differently (were the Spanish use "bastos" - clubs - we use "paus" - sticks).
The French symbols are either pure black or pure red, they're symmetrical, and they're fairly abstract. The "diamond" is just a rhombus. The Spade and Club are fairly abstract shapes that don't look like anything in particular.
In the image, all the other versions are multicolored, and still seem to represent real-world objects. But, I'm curious if there are "modern" decks where say the coin (oro) is just a circle, or the club is just a long thin rectangle, or something.
Not sure if it is the same as Mexico, but the “oros bastos” set doesn’t have cards 8,9,10 but jump from 7 to sota (fancy lad or something like that), caballo (horse) and Rey (king).
Work canteens are usually subsidized. There's no way you get this much food for that price and not have it be total garbage. Even with the scale on which a large caterer operates.
I heard about this, and I was excited to pick up a different style when I went to Germany. I got there, and all of the cards used the standard, international suits. No one knew what I was talking about.
The German suite is most common in east Germany. west Germans use the french deck, or if they're playing German card games they use the tournament German deck (which is just the french deck with different colours)
Not just any colours but the ones of the German deck: Diamonds are orange because bells are orange, and spades are green because leaves are green. Also spades and leaves look almost identical anyway. Hearts are the same, and acorns become clubs.
And just to be pedantic: It's not the "tournament deck", it's specifically the tournament deck for Skat, adopted when the East and German leagues reunified to avoid confusion. You'll be hard-pressed to get your hands on a 6 or below in those colours because Skat uses 32 cards.
Geographical east, not political East though, Bavaria very heavily uses the German deck. You don’t play Bavarian Schafkopf with a french deck. That’s just weird. I personally also find it weird to play mau mau or Schnautz (Schwimmen) with a French Deck. Doesn’t mean though, that we don’t use the French deck. You don’t play poker or rummy or cribbage for example with German cards. That’s equally as weird.
Huh? The German deck is also known as bavarian cards and they are very common in most of the German South. I'm from swabia and here you use different cards for different games.
Can you even play Schafskopf with the French deck??
The standard cards are everywhere, but the German variant is still used, at least in bavaria. Just talk with some grandpas in the village restaurants and they will gleefully get their cards out.
Man.. that looks like a lovely lunch. We don't get that kind of thing in America while at work, that I've seen. Hell, we don't really even have cafeterias anymore.
I left there years ago, but thanks. And yes, Microsoft produces some very shitty products that are worse than all their competitors, yet they retain the lion's share of the market.
When I worked at Bosch a about 4 years ago in the US, they had a really solid healthy lunch option like this for $5. Sadly, I think they did away with it during COVID. It definitely exists at some larger companies though.
Huh. That explains why in Portugal hearts is called "copas". Also in Portugal diamonds are called "gold". The design is the French one, but the names stayed the original ones.
All these designs have the same origin in tarot cards, they just evolved slightly differently.
I was a bit surprised by the wine in Sweden. I sometimes feel like an outcast with my wine on AWs and other outings. It seems that most people around me prefer beer.
Maybe it's a matter of selection bias since I tend to be around the same group of people.
The diagram is the amount of pure alcohol. Beer typilally contains 3.5 % - 5 % alcohol and wine 12 %, thus the consumption of beer in litres is larger than wine.
However, I was also surprised how much wine (with or without alcohol) is consumed in Sweden considering its price.
No, the calculation is like 0.5 litre beer with 5 vol.% alcohol contain 25 ml pure (100 %) alcohol and these 25 ml go into the statistics as alcohol from the consumption of beer.
Yes, beer with up to 3.5 % you can buy in a supermarket. Beer above 3.5 % is called strong beer (starköl) which you can only buy at Systembolaget, the governmental alcohol store. Considering a large part of the beer is light beer (lättöl) or folks beer (folköl) below 3.5 %, the amount of beer to cover the 36 % pure alcohol is even higher.
I would have thought that 10 years ago, but wine has become a lot more popular since then. I know it's partly my age and the age of people I mingle with but I've noticed it for younger people too when I'm out and about, common to see groups of ~20 year olds with those 1l or 3l tetra pak wines during weekends.
I have no idea, but it looks like they would be much easier to paint with brushes. Or maybe it's to simplify printing with a press; simple shapes, one color each. Just wondering aloud.
Suit evolution is quite an interesting topic. The first known card decks were usually made of several hundreds of cards and were not standardized, some didn't even have suits. Symbols, images and shapes varied greatly as they were usually hand painted. This European suits are offshoots of Islamic suits. Most likely, each of these suit styles was an attempt to standardize some game or production at different historical points in time and through the interpretation by entirely different artists. The common theory for French abstraction is that they are much simpler symbols which are faster and easier to reproduce in large quantities. Particularly easy to engrave on the first woodwork prints for mass production.
I think memes are cool and this one is accurate lol. I’m just hoping this won’t become some right wing community like 2westerneurope4u. Some memes were funny but all the racism and other right wing bullshit made it pretty much unbearable.
I mean, up until the '50s we didn't even speak the same language... every region had their own language (Italians called them "dialect", but they're in fact different langauges). Then television came and unified the language (standard Italian is just the dialect of Tuscany).
Italy is a very young country. Sure, the Ancient Romans unified the whole Europe, but Italy has only became a nation in 1861. Pretty young country if you ask me.
There are some dishes with it where its eaten cold, but it makes the cabbage usually more purple beyond it being mistaken for something else also due to the texture. Many Döner stores put it in the Döner dishes cold as well, tastes great.
XD thats some use of it in the Premium Dining here as well, but i think it tastes too good to just eat it in small quantities for the color, its healthy and tastes great when done right.
YUROP
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