International Chit-Chat

There are so many conflicts in the world, conflicts which are often caused by something as simple as misunderstanding or disrespect of beliefs. The purpose of this thread is to chat, as members of our respective countries and cultures. To share our beliefs, to explain our traditions, to break down the walls of prejudices.

I will start.

I'm John. I am Canadian, well French-Canadian. Around here in Montreal we have many ethnic races, and some say that because of this, Quebec has the prettiest women on the planet. I personally have European-french, mediterranean, irish and native blood. I'm personally agnostic, but most quebecois around here are catholic. As an agnostic I spend my free time reading about science and formulating scientific ideas. We quebecois did invented the poutine, but we had a good reason for it: it's good. Legend has it that poutine was invented by combining the three most appreciated ingredients ever.

Many conspiracy theorists, such as Serge Monast, are quebecois. So was famous actor William Shatner, and great astronomer Hubert Reeves.


What about you?

reply to post by swanne


I live 5 minutes to the border of Quebec...you DON"T have the prettiest women on the planet,I give that title to Russian girls and Swedish girls and Japanese girls.

to break down the walls of prejudices.

Tell the rest of Quebec that...I have been treated like crap many times for not knowing French or speaking it if I know it.
You guys are kind of well....prejudice.

I do love poutine though and learned the best burger recipe from a greasy spoon place in Gatineau,Quebec.

I have Native,Irish and French blood which means I can drink,fight and am a great lover.




About me??
I have a gypsy mind....I can go anywhere and start over many times and always be ok.

reply to post by swanne


I like this idea! I'm an American, I grew up in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia. My great (great-great?) grandmother was Native American (Cherokee) but just don't know much else about our family history, much of it has been lost as the older generations pass.
Most folks around there are Baptist Christians, but I'm not. Some days I'm atheist, others agnostic... religion is something I just haven't found yet. In my home town, people live in what are called "hollers". It's a poor coal mining region, but the coal's about dried up. Now they're shifting toward lumber, and many beautiful areas are being cut away as a result. People in this community strongly value family, more than anything else. A lot of them are "poorer than dirt" but happy as a "pig in #" just because they have each other and food on the table. They're also pretty fond of sayings like that, or "sayin's" I should say... as we tend to drop the last letter of many words. People roam the mountains hunting ginseng (hard to find in many areas now) and dry land fish, and many other things. When you're that poor, you supplement what you can from the land.

Not sure what else to say, except now I'm feeling homesick!

Im finnish and i live in Finland and finnish girls are the most beautiful girls in the World ( just because you started it.. grins )
We are very straight forward people and what we say we do. Business insider made a intresting graphic how countries negotiate and finnish seems to be like from different planet.


We are people who like to keep their personal space.. you can quite easily see similarities in finnish behaviour and japanese behaviour. We are not small talk people but we are learning it more in every generation.
What we are proud of is our beautiful nature, 10 000 years history of inhabiting this country, our SISU ( not giving up on anything ) our rally and formula drivers and NHL players and many other things.
What i like is hiking, skiing, reading among other things
I love our national epic " Kalevala" and mythology of it which also inspired Tolkien in Lord of the Rings ( as a young scholar he travelled in Finland ) and middle earth is influenced by the Kalevala as is elvish language.

Finnish beliefs are a mixture of christianity and paganism.. and old beliefs are still strong

Yes im blond and blue eyed female.. go figure

Olá people, my name's Martin and I'm portuguese. I was born and live in Lisbon, right in middle of it.
There is alot to say about my country, we have been around the Iberian Peninsula since the Romans, we got our land back from the Moors, we started the Age of Discovery, held a grand part of the globe in colonies, we didn't manage our enormous profit from the colonies and spent it all on monuments, we're still waiting for our King Sebastian who mysteriously disappeared in the battle of Alcacer-Quibir (probably taken by UFOs), we belonged to the spaniards, got our country back, late industrial revolution, first republic in 1910, and we were ruled by a dictator from 1933 to 1975, since then we've been the rear end of Europe, we might not have the prettiest girls (there are some really beautiful girls out there), but we have by far the ugliest deep in the rural villages in the North and South, we're great shoe makers and wine makers, we have the perfect conditions to have a growing and top economy ( but that's off topic), Lisbon is a beautiful city, no skyscrappers, not very tall apartments, long avenues, a really old downtown with a real great feeling to it it's like you were back in 20th century, a pretty simple city showing the simple ways of the Portuguese, there's also alot of african portuguese people from our old colonies, and also many chinese and indian people, gypsies and ukrainians, yea and we're a welcoming people, things are cheap too!

Some famous portuguese people?
Luís de Camões - Writer
Fernando Pessoa - Writer
Egas Moniz - Doctor (Noble Prize)
António Damásio - Doctor / Neurologist
António Salazar - the Dictator
Joaquim de Almeida - Hollywood actor

I am French Irish and Native American. I am in New England USA the smallest State. We have many historical sights and are known as the ocean State. There is quite a diverse mix of cultures and races here.

reply to post by dollukka


I'm swooning over you.... :p

Those graphs were pretty neat though, I enjoyed them. I can see a lot of truth in them.

I'm American who has traveled a bit. I consider myself a bit of a hobo actually. It's been quite a while since I've actually lived in the States and I'm sure America has changed a lot, at least, from what I've been reading here on ATS. Anyway, I think America is still a wonderful country and has a stable and functioning political scene that serves the interest of ALL Americans, not just the rich, as many are beginning to feel these days. I see the world as it is, beautiful, and yet sometimes too confusing to understand the "whys" of what is happening to mankind. For me, I live among the rice paddies , weird how they put sand over good farmland and build over priced houses that will only last for about 20 years to live in, nothing really can grow on this stuff but weeds. If it wasn't for cheap imports, this place would be totally too expensive to live in. Americans complain about the gallon of gasoline, but here, it is around $7 a gallon, give or take a few pennies.

I live in Idaho.
That pretty much speaks for its' self......

Excellent idea!

Hello there;

Strangely enough (though I've seen at least four members with those lineages here), I'm also French Canadian, Irish, French, Greek, Italian, Jew, and Native American (Iroquois, if I remember right).

Nope, I wouldn't say that Canada and Quebec have the prettiest girls, but I believe firmly that UK (Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and Britain) and most people with strong UK lineages are amongst the most beautiful people in the world, even the most simple-looking ones. Most UK and UK-related people have charms, gallantry, yet are also incredibly loose and worry-free.

I love the Old World, and one of my missions is to visit the Old World and see all those beautiful villages, cathedrals, shops, cafes, etc.

From an outsider view of the US and the world, I cannot understand why the US is attacked daily by the big news, whereas loads of other countries are a thousand times way worse than the US in their politics (Syrian villages being cut off from food provision by their governments, while the latter is feasting; North Korea implementing concentration camps; a Buddhist village in India forcing children as young as 10 to lift heavy rocks, without any food nor education).

I have no idea if I have a religion, and what it would be, but I tend to be irritated by those who enjoy destroying religion, even though history clearly show that a 100% atheist country (Stalin's Russia and Mao Zedong's China) caused in totality 100 millions deaths, whereas christianity caused, maximum, 100 000 deaths.

I do think though that the Vatican isn't anymore with benevolent religious intents, having allied itself with groups connected to Satanism and hermetism; but I do not allow Christians to be banished because of Vatican's actions, for Christians themselves do not support the Vatican.

My main despair and fight is seeing new beliefs systems, such as Hermetism and Satanism, growing in popularity; beliefs systems that promotes hate of one another, right to kill someone for no other reason than you didn't like him, return to primitive thoughts, abandon of technology, and abandon of morality.

And finally, because of that, I am a writer, and my stories are all about hope, utopian future, love for one another, and second chances, including that humans can change, if given the right tools and push,
As a result, I am a huge fan of J.R.R. Tolkien and Doctor Who.

Oh, and the book that woke me up from my ignorance was Michael Crichton's State of Fear.

And P.S.: Montreal was also the birth place of songwriter Leonard Cohen (Everybody Knows, Halleluja, Take this Waltz, Dance Me to the End of Love, Suzanne, etc). Also, 300 and most X-Men movies were filmed in Montreal.

reply to post by dollukka

I love our national epic " Kalevala" and mythology of it which also inspired Tolkien in Lord of the Rings ( as a young scholar he travelled in Finland ) and middle earth is influenced by the Kalevala as is elvish language.

Oh! That's where he took it from... Is there a good and faithful PDF version of the Kalevala? I love mythology, and though we hear of the German and Celtic ones, it's the first time I heard of the Finnish ones.

P.S.: Loved your picture of how different countries deals with meetings and contracts!



reply to post by DrumsRfun

Tell the rest of Quebec that...I have been treated like crap many times for not knowing French or speaking it if I know it.
You guys are kind of well....prejudice.

Hmm. Well, I don't where you live exactly, but it's not like that in Montreal and in its surroundings. In Montreal, nobody cares if you speak French or not, for Montreal and Quebec have lots of foreign communities and towns (Chinatown, Italiantown, Jewtown).
So, no prejudices there... Even ex-Prime Minister Marois, who wanted to enforce French language over English lost 20-50 to Prime Minister Couillard who said he would abandon that stupid treaty. It may be different in old-school villages, where most citizens there are in their 60s and they're afraid of change, like I've seen in two villages, but they're in minorities.
That's why in school, we also learn English; because people know that in order to evolve and keep up with the rest of the world, you must learn the international language (English).

nugget1
I live in Idaho.
That pretty much speaks for its' self......

Not to me...

reply to post by swanne


I like this thread Idea,as it gives me a place to put everything out there instead of constantly trying to explain it.
I'll refrain from posting my name, but I reside in Northern Nova Scotia Canada, and have lived here for 4 years. Previously lived in Ontario Canada where I was raised in the heart of cottage country (Muskoka). My beliefs are somewhat all over the place,as I tend to pick and choose tidbits from various religions and belief systems,as they resonate with me, and even those are subject to change as I learn and grow older.I could most times, be classified as agnostic, if one needed to place a label. I am not racist, nor anti gay. I have a tendency towards supporting the underprivileged,sometimes to the point where my views are radical. Most times it is quite hard to explain myself as I have come to realize that I truly do view the world differently from most people I know, and that leads me to be quite misunderstood and outright shunned.I do for the most part avoid political discussion, as imho all politicians are lying crooks, and all of our talking about it does nothing with no intent of action to back up any change.I had no interest in Ontario politics despite living there for almost 40 years,and have shown far more interest in Nova Scotia in the short time I have been here.To me this feels more like home than anywhere, and I suppose salt water just runs in my blood.I put very low value on "things" versus experiences in life, and try to see the positive even in the most negative of circumstances.
As for your home Swanne, I have only traveled through.I cannot speak of having any bad experiences, with the exception that driving through Montreal in rush hour traffic is a white knuckle experience akin to a roller coaster ride through hell. Tis a very pretty city though.

a reply to: AccessDenied

They say that Home is where the heart is. I can't agree enough with that idiom.

Seems we're alot of canadians on ATS.

Cool idea !

I'm Marc, French-Canadian living on the Montreal South shore. Les Quebecoises are the most beautiful women in the world, after Brazil.

My family, on my father's side, is from Nova Scotia and I am a Maritime lover. Actually, I love all of Canada, literally from one Coast to the other.

The most beautiful scenery that I've seen with my own eyes is, without a doubt, Cabot's Trail, in N.S.

I've been here and there in a lot of places in the States and Mexico. Never been to Europe

This thread highlights what I love about ATS: the diversity. People from all continents, where we can discuss without killing each other lol..

S&F for a great idea !

a reply to: dollukka

You also have the best music in the world IMHO. One day I WILL move to Finland just for the music.

a reply to: SonoftheSun

Oh agreed...Cabot trail is my favorite in all of the province. It's true the maritimes hold a special place for many.

originally posted by: SonoftheSun
Cool idea !

I'm Marc, French-Canadian living on the Montreal South shore. Les Quebecoises are the most beautiful women in the world, after Brazil.

I knew it!

But then I must point out that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

My family, on my father's side, is from Nova Scotia and I am a Maritime lover. Actually, I love all of Canada, literally from one Coast to the other.

You're lucky, I didn't travel much.

Anyone else? Don't be shy, people of the World.

Well,my name is Skyla and I'm 16.
I come from a poor/backwards place in Tennessee,and because I'm autistic I don't really fit in.
and I don't know what else to say tbh.,lol