Asklemmy

43818 readers

862 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

574

What's a skill that's taken for granted where you live, but is often missing in people moving there from abroad? (kyu.de)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

497 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I was thinking about that when I was dropping my 6 year old off at some hobbies earlier - it's pretty much expected to have learned how to ride a bicycle before starting school, and it massively expands the area you can go to by yourself. When she went to school by bicycle she can easily make a detour via a shop to spend some pocket money before coming home, while by foot that'd be rather time consuming.

Quite a lot of friends from outside of Europe either can't ride a bicycle, or were learning it as adult after moving here, though.

edit: the high number of replies mentioning "swimming" made me realize that I had that filed as a basic skill pretty much everybody has - probably due to swimming lessons being a mandatory part of school education here.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 101 points 1 year ago (34 children)

We learned swimming in primary school in Germany, no opting out.

But having lived in several African countries and now in China, it's surprising how many people not only can't swim, but are deathly afraid of water.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (11 children)

One of my friends is 33 and she and her older sister can't swim. They grew up on a rural farm far away from any body of water. "Where would we have learned or practiced?" Over the years, I have learned that a lot of people in the US cannot swim, especially when they were poor as kids, even in major cities near water.

load more comments (10 replies)

load more comments (32 replies)