ATR is also CULTURE!

One of my favourite hobbies/subjects are History and Geography. As ATR is currently a 14 nations team, I thought we could make a fun and informative kind of topic about our homelands, to talk about some curiosities that other of our fellow members may not know I start with my country, Brazil:

What you already know:

- Brazil is the largest portuguese speaking country in the world, with almost 200 million ppl, almost 20 Portugals, the source of the language;
- Soccer is our preferred sport, and we have 5 World Cups at it and the considered Athlete of the last Century, Pelé;
- Brasília ir our capital.

What you probably didn't know:

- We already had 3 capital cities: Salvador, Rio de Janeiro and Brasília;
- Brasília was founded in 1960 in the middle of nowhere and today has 2,6 million ppl, our 4th most populated city;
- Brasil will host 2014 Soccer World Cup and 2016 Olympics in Rio.

What I bet you didn't know:

- Brasília is designed in the format of 2 giant Wings and has 1 big artificial lake to reduce the sensation of the dry climate of central Brazil;
- Some cities like Rio de Janeiro have "violence boosts" with a homicide % compared to a Civil War;
- The statue Christ the redeemer in Rio is considered one of the New 7 Wonders of the World.

What's considered impossible for you to know:

- At the same time, it is possible to be snowing in the south, making desertic conditions in the northeast and a monsoon/rainy type of climate in the north/amazonic region - with a combined difference of about 55 degrees (-10 Celsius in the south and 40 or more degrees in northeast);

- In the past, some regions of the country were disputed between Portugal, Spain, France, The Netherlands and even England;

- Brazil played an important role in World War II, have sent 25.334 of The Brazilian Expeditionary Force, in 1944, to fight in Europe against 9 german and 3 italian divisions in italian ground and left after the War's end without a single defeat.

No sense comments :

- In Brazil, we say that the cat has "7 lives", not 9 like in the rest of the world XDD
- In October, in the state of Santa Catarina (Saint Catherine) where I live, we have several traditional european-like "fests": Oktoberfest, Schützenfest, Kegelfest, Fenarreco, among many others german, austrian, italian, ucranian, portuguese, etc. "fests" - our Oktoberfest is the 2nd bigger in the world, obviously only after Munich's xD
- Until a short time ago, it was tought in the USA, for their children, that the capital of Brazil was Buenos Aires xDDDD - no wonder why they didn't find mass destruction weapons in Iraq

Brasília:


Christ the Redeemer:


Oktoberfest!:


gga!

very nice Alex

i'll try to make something, probably with Guillaume's help



in France we also say tha cats have 7 lives.
maybe you didn't know it Alex, but American people are probably those who know the less geography in rich countries.
Ask randomly easy questions in an american street, you will never believe some answers you hear.

In Spain we also say a cat has 7 lives :B

Very nice Alex, i enjoyed reading it

Poacher is going to kill me for this - but i thought i was only Tasmanians that said about the 7 lives of cats - because they couldnt count to 9 on their fingers

Portugal will have a topic also, don't know when! xD

Cat has only 7 lifes in Portugal also! xDD But i'm sure we can count up to 9!

HEY!

OK Clearly they have 9 lives cause we take better care of them

whaaaaaaat a nice topic... I'll try to write something tomorrow... because we always have a lots of things to speak about our beautiful country, and I studied archaeology at University, so, that's a nice subject !!!

Very nice topic

Here's the same for France :

What you already know:

- France has 65 millions ppl and more than 159 millions ppl who speaks french in the world.
- Soccer is our preferred sport, just after we have Tennis, and Horses.
- We have every years the "Tour de France", the most prestigious cycling event in the world.
- Paris is our capital.

What you probably didn't know:

- France is the most visited country with 76,8 millions of tourists, 15 millions for Paris.
- Paris, also called Lutecia BC has 2,2 millions ppl, 12 millions with suburbs.
- France will host 2016 Soccer European Cup
- France has a lots of Arts Events (Festival de Cannes, Festival de Deauville, International Fair of Art,...)
- France has one of the most bigger museum in the World, Le Louvre (art, paint, archaeology)

What I bet you didn't know:

- Chatelet les Halles (Paris) is the biggest underground Station in the world (train and travellers), with 750.000 people per day.
- The highest building in France is the Eiffel Tower (324m).
- France is the first Wine producer in the World (5 903 101 tons) and France is famous too for their Champagne.

What's considered impossible for you to know :

- Paris had the first Statue of Liberty, made by Bartholdi, you can see this little Statue near the Pont de Grenelle (Swan Island)
- Paris is extremely rich. If Paris was a country, it'll be on the 17th Economy World Rank.
- 558 french restaurants has 1 or more Stars on the Michelin guide, best guide for gastronomic cuisine.
- The inventor of photgraphy is french, and his name : Nicéphore Niépce.
- France had a very big period of Monarchy, and our kings built a lots of Castles. One of the biggest is the Versailles Castle and their gardens. We can also speak about the Chenonceaux Castle, or Chambord Castle.

No sense comments Very Happy :

You may be know that the french stereotype is the guy with a peace of bread under the arm with a hat called a "beret"... but this is just a stereotype.
BUT, some french guys created the World Championship of the Beret Launch


Pictures :

Tour Eiffel :

Pyramid of the Louvre Museum :

Statue of Liberty :

Versailles Castle :

Chenonceaux Castle :

Chambord Castle :

Johnny Onion (french stereotype) :

Very nice Gayom!! Yesterday I watched Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, I think he shows a very charming Paris in the film

Another interesting thing to know about Brazil:

- If you travel by car, the distance between our southernmost capital, Porto Alegre, to the northernmost one, Boa Vista is 5348km, almost the same of New York to London (straight line - 5576km) (the distance from Lisbon to Moscow, for an european example, is about 4000km).

(and no, i don't know the north region of my country, nor the central-west region - the most dsitant city i know here is Fortaleza 3800 by car - i went by plane lol )

well France is smaller than Brazil... and the transport used a lot is train !

that's why french guys are using a lot the train. We have the TGV, Fast train who can cruise more than 300km/hour.



and don't forget this is Loop company, French National Railways, called SNCF in french !

that's very cool Gui, in Brazil our train system is near to zero, which is a big shame trains are much safer than cars/buses and ofc as we can see, much faster

we use cars very much and in second airplanes, that's why 100% of ours airports are crowded and in current process (slow) of enlargement

"France is famous too for their Champagne"

Well they got defensive a few years ago and no one else can sell champagne

GO GO GO guys from the other countries !!!!!!!!!!!! It'll be a good way to learn some things from where we are living !

mjl09 wrote:

"France is famous too for their Champagne"

Well they got defensive a few years ago and no one else can sell champagne

i think that's a good thing actually, more things should be protected like this.

britain has some protected foods too.

other people can make them, but they can't call it the same because it has to be made in the region it's named after... after all that's why it's called champagne in the first place.

does oz have anything like this? i know the 'ugg boot' was stolen from the aussies, by an american company, but does oz have any things that are similar to champagne, or a cornish pasty (a pie type food made in cornwall, uk)?

i think most of countries have it, especially with drinks... for an example you are not allowed to use the name "caipirinha" outside Brazil without being authorized, same case of champagne or mexican tequila they are "trademarks" officially registered somewhere i don't know

Alex wrote:

i think most of countries have it, especially with drinks... for an example you are not allowed to use the name "caipirinha" outside Brazil without being authorized, same case of champagne or mexican tequila they are "trademarks" officially registered somewhere i don't know

true, but i've never heard of that. everyone's heard of champagne

MJ

That's not true !

P0ach can count to eleven on his fingers !

R E A L L Y ????????????????

mav_walrus wrote:

MJ

That's not true !

P0ach can count to eleven on his fingers !

Well i were just trying to be kind and not mentioning the deformities as such (since many have them surgically rectified anyway)

Sorry p0acher

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

Poacher?! You really have 11 fingers!? THAT'S AWESOME!!!!!! ( not kidding )

Ventil, you shouldn't listen to those people who are just jealous of Tasmanians.

Yeah we wont say anything about the two heads (Hint look for the scar on the shoulder)

guys guys guys...

instead of having a long conversations... may be some guys should feed the same thing with their country no ?

this topic was a nice idea, so take some minutes to read a little concerning your country

and, I have the same problem, I have 11 fingers, but the 11th is not attached to my hand

ok... Guillaume : out