3D Printing Forum

nallath wrote: ↑October 12th, 2017, 1:25 pm (I mean, the distance from amsterdam to berlin is already more than the length of the Netherlands...)

Heh, everything is relative, mate.
BTW, are there any other activities out there in Berlin, in late November? I will be there then.

So did you have to brush up on your German language skills?

Lot's of different languages in Europe, I was wondering if people tend to default to english or learn many?

Ja, natürlich!
German is the most spoken language on the continent, as I read it somewhere. Some practice never hurts, you know.

Most western Europe countries teach kids more than one language in school. But yeah, there's too many to learn them all. If you're in a major european tourist area, German is almost as useful as English

Dutch is similar enough to German that you can get most of the generic context / meaning of a conversation without actually knowing the language. Everyone gets 4 languages in the Netherlands (Dutch, English, German & french). But as it's a Tech event, most stuff was in English.

The level of English is quite good in the Netherlands. It's a worse in Germany (although i do notice an increase there). It's really bad in France.

My brief visit to Amsterdam was quite interesting. Had an overnight layover before flying home. Since I only know two languages (English and bad English), I thought I might have a problem finding the hostel that a friend had booked. Biggest issue were the dictionary sized street names. But I was able to get directions from the train station without problem.

Of course the 3 college students that roomed with me were Polish (I think), that had almost zero English. The look on their faces when I walked in was priceless (we're sleeping with this fat old geezer?). Universal sign language seemed to work though. Pointing at me and then the top bunk, the person on the lower bunk went wide eyed, shook her head, and moved to the top. Being a bigger guy sometimes helps.

What I heard from my colleagues is that it's hard to learn Dutch, as most Dutch people will switch to English at the moment they hear the slightest accent.

Dutch and Deutsch are the same word that got pronounced differently over the time. No wonder they are so similar. If you would listen to old English (from "History of English" fantastic podcast), you will see how much it is similar to German, too.
From my experience in Europe, the bigger the country, the less people of it are inclined to know other <English> language. I had really hard time in Madrid and generally struggled in Italy. In German coutryside even the youngsters barely speak English, let alone the older generation. We will politely not mention France .
On the other hand, in the Netherlands and Benilux as whole, Switzerland, English is like their second language. There were no problems in Austria. Younger generation in most of the places of Easter Europe has very good English and sometimes German as well.

Hearing Dutch parents talk at their misbehaving children is just priceless (when you're German). Gotta love that language

My parents would often speak French around the holidays. My grand parents spoke more French than english. However, being of French/Canadian ancestry, their "French" is an older dialect, not the Paris-type you learn in school. I remember taking French in middle school and still not being able to completely translate what they were saying. (Especially the cuss words my Pepere would use!) My grand parents would also drop in and out of French into english for a word they couldn't translate ("hot dogs", etc) then right back into French they would go!

First word I learned from them in french was "cadeau" (Gift)....popular Christmas time topic

It's the same word in Dutch. We nicked quite a few words from the French.

In the German lesson where they said "geschenk", they immediately noticed not to use the English word "gift" as it has absolutely different meaning in German. Languages are funny stuff. The more you know, the funnier they are.

What's projects are you guys printing/working on?

I'm still doing multi-day prints for my BB-8 build. I'm impressed how well the stock CR-10 is doing these.

The FT-5 is just one complication after another.

Since I know we have a number of Swedish users here: Is there something like Repair Cafe in Stockholm?

reibuehl wrote: ↑October 21st, 2017, 1:15 pm Is there something like Repair Cafe in Stockholm?

Never heard of it...sounds interesting though
The closest I found seems to be in Gothenburg and they seem to have a few select occasions in Stockholm:
http://www.stockholmsfria.se/kalendarium/131233

Maybe @Meduza knows if something similar exists in Stockholm?