Greetings

Namaste

Namaste or "Namaskar" is gesture commonly used as a courtesy greeting in India. Namaste is a formal and also casual greeting. Namaste is indicated by the folded palms placed before the chest and slight bowing down of the head then uttering the word Namaste. It literally translates to "I salute the god within you and may our minds meet". Namaste has also spiritual meaning as it is the same gesture used while praying god.

This traditional greeting is no longer used in formal business situation in urban cities. Hand shake is a commonly used between men and men. But women generally do not shake hand and avoid contact. Men should greet women with slight nod or shake hand only if women extend hand.

Bindya

Ahoj, Čau & Dobrý den

In Czech Republic we don´t have got any special greeting rituals. We usually don´t kiss each other on the cheeks. Young people sometimes start to do it and maybe in few years it will be a part of our culture but not now

When we are greeting each other in polite way, for example a person who I don´t know very well or I have got a really polite relationship with her I say: "Dobrý den". The exact translation of this is Good day. It changing for other daytimes – "Dobrý večer" is Good evening and "Dobré ráno" is Good morning.

When we are greeting each other in casual way, between the friends or something we are using expressions which are similar as hello – "ahoj", "čau", or "nazdar".

Alena

Kisses in cheeks in Spain

Spaniards use formal and informal greetings. Among people that know each other, we say "Buenos días" (Good morning), "Buenas tardes" (Good afternoon) and "Buenas noches" (Good night). More casual greetings are "Hola" (Hello), "Adiós" (Bye) and "Hasta luego" (Goodbye).

In formal contexts (first meeting, business, a wedding, people long time no see, etc), men handshake other men, and women kiss two times in cheeks everybody (one left, one right). Sometimes the kiss is not complete, and people only touch cheek with cheek.

Men also can give kisses in cheeks to other men, but it is rare, more common in the South of Spain, and only in specific contexts like very good friends.

Emilio

From Hand Waves to Bows

South Korea has an extremely age–centric society. When people meet, the first thing they do is confess their ages and determine who should be respected, that is, who are entitled to receive hand waves or bows. The rule of thumb here is: Bow to older people, and wave to those who are the same age as you. Unless the two of you are extremely close, e.g. best friends forever or family, you must avoid hand waves with older people. You can go either way with younger people, though hand waves are considered more appropriate.

On special occasions like Chuseok (kind of a Korean Thanksgiving Day) or Seolal(lunar New Year’s Day), it is customary for younger generations to offer Jeol(bowing down on both your knees, with your hands on the floor) to older relatives, though it is gradually becoming outdated nowadays.     

Ms. L

World cuisine, yummy!

The king of all Korean dishes: rice

Some of you might be familiar with Korean cuisine, mainly Kimchi (a spicy and stinky pickle), Japchae (sweet potato noodles stir fried in sesame oil), and Bulgogi (beef marinated in sweet soy sauce). Aside from whether you like it or not, what most people do not realize about Korean dishes is that all of them are usually accompaniments to go with Japonica rice, a type of short grain rice, which is the main staple of both Japan and South Korea (not really sure about North Korea). Boiled white Japonica rice (some of you may call it “sticky rice”) is the most important thing in any Korean diet.

As long as I know, Koreans’ love for white Japonica rice dates back to centuries ago, when people had to pound rice by hand. As you probably know, the texture and smell of rice bran can be unpleasant, and only the rich could eat whole–pounded rice, i.e. white rice. So most ordinary people yearned to eat white rice. Nowadays, thanks to the advent of an electric rice mill, all of us can have it. There are some who prefer bread or pasta for meals and our rice consumption rate is decreasing, but still, the majority of Koreans have rice three times a day, ingesting 2/3 cup (uncooked) each time. There is even a famous and beloved proverb about rice which goes, “Koreans’ vigor solely comes from boiled rice.”

At each meal, Koreans eat boiled Japonica rice, which is so high in starch thus very sticky. It literally sticks to your teeth (I’m not a big fan of this, so I’ve changed to Basmati, Indian long grain rice). There are even shorter variation of it, called “Chapssal (meaning “super sticky rice”), which is usually used to make different types of rice cake. I can’t say this for everyone, but most of the time, we prepare four or five (or much more if it is a special occasion) accompaniments to rice including a kind of soup (in which we do not use roux), eat just a little bit of them with much rice, thus not consuming them all. We store the leftover accompaniments in the fridge, and eat them later at the subsequent meal.

Left: Basmati, Right: Japonica. You can clearly tell the difference.

So basically a Korean diet consists of too much white rice, plus a tiny amount of other nutritious ingredients, which accounts for the high rate of Type 2 diabetes among Koreans. It is obvious that we lack protein (little meat or seafood, and no dairy) and fresh leafy green vegetables (most vegetable accompaniments are cooked and seasoned with sesame oil), but no one is brave enough to admit it in public, since Koreans take a great pride in Korean cuisine and think it is so wholesome. Perhaps it’s time to let go of excessive white Japonica rice, but that seems to be a long way off now.

Ms.L

Masala Dosa is the most beloved snack across India. Originated from the south of India it is one of the very few dish easily recognizable and available across Indian. While in north of India it is a popular snack but in south India it not only a snack but a popular breakfast.

Masala Dosa is paper like thin, delicate crepe made of rice and lentils, cooked on a very hot griddle and stuffed with the spiced mashed potatoes and onion, and served with spicy tangy garlic or coriander chutney and hot sambar (Lentil and vegetable stew).

Masala Dosa was voted one of the top 10 dishes must have according to a list compiled by the Huffington Post of American 2012 and 50 most delicious foods complied by CNN in 2011. I think it surely deserves that because it is not only a delicious food it also allows to have fun with it too.

Family Dosa

Topi (hat) Dosa

There are lot of variety to humble Masala Dosa like Mysore Masal Dosa, Rava (Semolina) Masala Dosa, Butter /Chessy Masala Dosa, Paper Masala Dosa, Open Butter Masala Dosa, Paper Masala Dosa. With globalization there are international variety too like Chinese Schezwan Dosa,  Chinese Noodle Dosa. There is also Pizza Dosa with cheese and pizza topping. There are so many variety of humble Dosa that there are restaurants who solely dedicated to serve 100 varieties of Dosa.

Bindya


Dumplings, dumplings everywhere

I can said that the traditional czech cuisine is really unhealthy. Which doesn´t mean it is less tasty than other cuisines. It is a little influenced by cuisines of surrounding countries. Czech cuisine typicaly means two dishes (for lunch I mean) – soup and the main dish. But our country is developing so these days it´s not rare to have also some dessert.

One of typical things in czech cuisine are dumplings. They are served usually with the meat and they are part of a few typical czech dishes. We have got sirloin ("svíčková" – it´s name for both, the sauce and the meat - it´s a czech name for this dish. The meet which is used is usually beef or venison) with dumplings, whipped cream and cranberries. They are also part of another czech traditional meal – Roast pork with dumplings and sauerkraut. This is often considered as most typical and famous czech dish. Another typical czech dish are "bramboráky". Those are fried pancakes made of grated raw potatoes. You can eat it for a main course and in smaller variant also like a side dish. We have got sweet dishes too – for e.g. Fruit dumplings (dumplings again) filled mostly with plums, apricots or strawberries.

Oh and I almost forget our most typical alcoholic drink! Beer! Czech beers are popular all over the Europe I think.

Alena


Mediterranean diet

Spain cuisine is known for including legumes, vegetables, fish, meat, eggs and the popular olive oil. This kind of gastronomy has been named "Mediterranean diet", and it is also present in some regions of Mediterranean Sea, as Italy or Greece.

A typical lunch in Spain includes two dishes (one main and bigger dish and a second one) and a dessert. The main dish use to be a stew ("Potaje" in Spanish), some stew examples are: lentils, beans, rice, chickpeas and other.

Personally I like lentils, beans and rice dishes very much. A famous rice soup is "Puchero", which is made of carrots, chickpeas, potatoes, celery, and 1/2 chicken.

While you heat up the celery, carrots, chickpeas in a pot...

... you are preparing the 1/2 chicken and other meat. Later you add all into the pot.

When the "Puchero" soup has boiled 2 or 3 hours (depends on the pot), you can add the rice in a separated pot, and heat up until it is soft. Finally, when rice is ready to be eaten, sometimes you add little pieces of ham and cut a boiled egg.

The second dish in a Spanish lunch can be some fish or meat: the fish use to be fried and meat breaded, but other styles are also popular. Finally, for a dessert you can eat some fruit (apple, banana, pear, orange, melon, watermelon) or a yogurt.

Emilio

Traditional names

How much a name can give about oneself is astounding. With name one can identify persons religion, caste, ancestor history, language he/she speaks and place from where the person belongs.

While the surname gives out most information about individual, it is very common in India not to have a surname at all. Second name would simply be fathers/husband name or could be name of a place, family house name or type of profession. It can even be name of a vegetable but that is very rare and only in very small community.

In Indian sense there are strict rules for the kind of name particular religion uses, like John Christian name or Ram an Hindu name, Ahmed a Muslim name. Common first name where I come, that is south of India, would be Kumar, Rahul, Satish, Rajesh, Vinod, for female Anitha, Nisha, Sunitha, Lakshmi, Smitha. Common surname, if they have, would be like Iyer, Pillai would mean he speaks Tamil for those who hail from Karnataka, Murthy, Desai, Gowda, Pinto, Lobo and Singh, Varma, Kapoor are from north of India.

Hindu names characteristically has religious or symbolic meaning. Like for example my name Bindya translates to "a colored point on the fore head", another example Lakshmi is the name of Indian goddess of wealth.

More over most have more than one name apart from the official  name. I have three other name. The other name eventually not used and become obsolete.

Coming ages Bollywood has heavy influence on the naming a child. There is always a never ending quest to find  more and more unique name among million names!

Find more details:

• Indian Names wiki
• Interesting Surnames

Bindya

In Spain, people names are changing. Male names as Antonio, José, Francisco or Manuel have been replaced by David, Alejandro, Daniel, Pablo in the last years. In the case of girls, names as Antonia, Carmen, Josefa or Dolores are not so heard today, while Laura, Marta, Sara or Ana are growing popular. The eternal girl name María keeps in the firsts places in ranking.

Every Spaniard use to have one name (sometimes composed by two words) and two surnames (first one father' surname, second one mother' surname). The typical surnames include García, Rodríguez, Gutierrez or Ramírez. So, two examples of Spanish names can be Antonio García Rodríguez (male) and María Gutiérrez Ramírez (female).

A curious detail of compound names is the following: José María is a common name for boys, while María José is common for girls. In this case, both words José and María, are from Christian traditions, as many other Spanish names.

You can find more info about Spanish names and statistics in:

• National Institute of Statistics of Spain
• The more popular names in Spain in the last decades

Emilio

In Czech Republic we are lucky are guess because world trends don´t really affect how parents name their children here. The most favourite names are matching with Czech traditional names.

Last year the most given names was for boys: Jakub, Jan, Matyáš, Adam, Tomáš, David, Lukáš, Ondřej, Filip and Vojtěch. That was the top ten. A few of other favourite names are still over the last ten years – Jiří, Daniel, Martin and Petr for example. For girls it was: Eliška, Tereza, Adéla, Anna, Natálie, Karolína, Nela, Barbora, Lucie and Kristýna. A few of other traditional names are: Veronika, Kateřina, Petra, Marie and Jana.

We have also lots of fascinating "old-fashioned" traditional names. Those aren´t common to use these days. In fact if someone today meet someone named like: Háta, Odolen, Chrudoš, Drahomíra, Boleslav or Ludmila I bet he will raise a corner of his mouth.

Alena

Welcome!

Hello visitor, welcome to our blog!

In this blog we will talk about the culture and traditions of our countries. There are plenty of interesting differences on arts, cinema, climate, cuisine, daily life, flora and fauna, holidays, language, literature, music, religion, sports and more. We will try to explore all these topics.

We encourage you to add comments to posts and detail how things are different or similar in your country.

Enjoy!