In the area of the South I grew up in (The Appalachian mountains of south-west Virginia) people would often have bagpipes played at their funerals, in men wearing traditional Scottish attire.

That seems a bit rough.

Has anyone tried sauerkraut? I'm tempted to try some, being German, but it doesn't look very appetizing to me. In fact, most German- nay- most European food does not look good to me. Except Italian, I LOVE Italian food.

It's a pretty common dish here. I love the stuff. It's delicious.
Cheap/poor quality sauerkraut tends to be a bit tasteless, though. Don't know if it's because it was frozen or something else.

My French teachers warned me of Paris in advance, so I guess I'm quite immune already but they do highly recommend Toulouse, calling it best city in France.

Oh heck yeah. We buy it in a big jar here in the US at the grocery store and put cut up chunks of cooked polish sausage in it and bake it or just heat on the stove for a while...I think.
I don't know what all she does to it, but it's pretty tasty...it's got a lot of vinegar and spices in it and that's a lot of the flavor. I really like it.

Somewhat unrelated but I'm strangely reminded of http://topics.wisegeek.com/topics/pot-liquor.htm#.
Folks from the Southern US knows what this is all about. I love southern food; some call it "soul food". My momma used to make all kinds of southern food. Collard or turnip greens and ham hocks or oxtail, http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/hushpuppies-recipe/index.html, fried okra, pinto beans, butter beans, black eyed peas...fried chicken (or course)...or catfish.
Have mercy! Your taste buds'll slap ye silly.

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTOfY4YQ37IJk09_m_YUwPQNYejq5ak8rVsi225mTPcMJu_rCRO

Tasmania? What's that?

I'm sure there aren't specialized chains everywhere, so to any non-Americans:
Where do you usually go to buy your games?

Oh I know; by German I meant my grandparents were German immigrants, I was born in Missouri I know all too well of southern food.

Only on my Reuben sandwiches, can't eat it any other way. And since my grandparents are German, they make it for every dinner and I am expected to eat it plain.

Gamestop. Or Game.

Nah, I don't usually buy them on specialized shops, even if they are available over here... when I do, it's mostly in FNAC or Worten (no idea if these are international). Nowadays though, I almost never buy them in portuguese shops. Amazon is great... edit: and so is Steam!

Example to why I do this: I bought Skyrim, new, for 32€ on release through Amazon. In national shops, it was priced bettween 50-60€...

EB games, Steam and on very rare occasions Best Buy.

Bol. Dynabyte and Game Mania are my usual sources.

how did the rest of the world view the cold war?
and communism?
and america?

Amazon, usually.


The cultural bleakness was kind of interesting. I remember all the public information stuff about what to do in the event of a nuclear war accidentally the entire planet, which I think mainly involved hiding under the kitchen table and listening to Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

I think both of the main protagonists (or rather antagonists) were judged with a certain amount of discomfort.

Large numbers of northerners (mostly Scots and Irish) went to the Southern USA to seek a better life.


Awesome Island home to excons, a psychotic indestructible death rat and an extinct marsupial wolf. I read a fair bit about the Thylacine in one of my books. I wonder if the Skeever in Skyrim was based on the Tasmanian Devil?

When I played EU3 I made Vietnam's colonisation of Tasmania a priority.

I was stricken by intense pain behind the eyes and temproary blindness, but I blame this on my sunblock running and ending up in my eyes. I was certainly awestruck by the Place de la Defense.

It is tradition in the Northern part of the US to have sauerkraut and pork on New Years Eve for good luck. In the southern part of the US, it is sauerkraut and black eyed peas.



It is called Kapusta.

I am Polish (though a few generations removed from the Motherland) and it is a big deal for my family to eat that on holidays. I quite like Polish food, even the dishes that involve an acquired taste. But Kapusta is one of the last holdouts for me, I still don't really like it.

My family is very big on kraut, but my aunt makes it herself. (She married into a slavic family.) On Christmas we have dishes called halushka and bobaki - I can never remember which is which but one is the homemade kraut with a bread type dumpling.... SOOOO good! They also use it in peirogies fried in butter. On New Years we have kielbasa and kraut. Needless to say, by Februrary, I'm ok to not have it for a little while. But fair warning that kraut, especially the stuff bought in the store, has a higher vinegar flavor and seems to be much stronger in flavor overall. Not that it's bad, just a little more of an aquired taste. My mother, who isn't such a fan, mixes some sugar into hers to take some of the bite out of it. Um.. the point I'm trying to make is that my family and I really love it because we grew up on it, but it's one of those things that either you love or hate. lol The only way to know is to try it.


Oh you're killing me!! I haven't been able to have the good ol' fried, buttered stuff in a while... but I believe fried okra is quite possibly the most awesome thing in the world. And some really good slow cooked greens (I like mine really cooked down) with some ham hocks and onions - heaven!!



And I'll try to find the show I saw about Southern accents... though I honestly don't remember what channel it was on or anything.

I've lived in Tasmania for 5 years and I haven't seen a single wild Tasmanian devil. My dad went to work one day and found one running wild in one of the buildings though.

What's EU3 it sounds cool.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Universalis_III

I only discovered it a few months ago thanks to another forumite. I'm a long time fan of the Total War series so if you like them you (might) like EU3. It's more focused on economics, politics and dynastic intrigue than battles; all of which resolve on the campaign map. The ability to play as anything from the most insignificant speck of a nation like the Duchy of Corfu or Republic of Aachen to monolithic states like Ming China or the Spanish Empire and the ability to start and end the game at any time from 1399 to 1820 gives it rather endless re-playability.

I would also love to play something like that, but isn't it really, really complex? Like, countless variables that you need to manage and micro-manage? I've been a fan of Total War too... Is this one only at an European scale?

Recently I read about other games like Victoria II, that also seem awesome.

I would love to answer how the Cold War was viewed from here, since for half of it we were going through a dictatorship, but unfortunately I wasn't alive a the time Should have been interesting...

Amazon or HMV. We used to have a gamestation where I live, but I think they changed it to a Game.

Europa Universalis III is global, the most well-known and many of the most obscure nations and peoples are playable. Swahili tribes of Africa, the Zapotecs of Central America etc... it's unlikely you won't find the country you want to play as. And with some really easy tweaking you can make emergent factions that don't normally appear unless through in-game meddling (such as an Independent Welsh or, say, Armenian kingdom) available to play which opens up even more options.

And yes, it is extremely complex and has a pretty broad learning curve. I started with Total War and enjoy EU3 even more but I rarely ever fought out battles anyways in TW, managing affairs of state was always more interesting to me. If the battles are your main focus then you may not enjoy EU3 as much.

Changed my mind.

Well I loved battles, but when playing campaign, I usually auto-solved them, since what I wanted was to "manage the Empire". I am watching a Let's Play of EUIII right now to get an idea of how it works, and then decide wether I should start playing it or not Maybe I should practice with TW a bit.... The faction diversity is certainly enticing!

And sorry for the off-topic guys...