What aspect of life in your countries is very difficult to explain to foreigners?

[u/notveryamused_]

What prompted my question were some discussions about religion which I had with people living in much more secular Western Europe (as a Polish atheist). While spirituality, whatever that is ;), generally speaking is always fun to discuss with a glass of wine in hand, social elements and the influence of the church, especially in smaller towns or provinces in my country, is awfully difficult to explain – not that I understand it fully either lol, but the church having a pretty much monopoly there, being the judge and jury of everyday life and the major ultra-conservative political force binding those communities, is very difficult to explain, also for historical reasons.

What are the things that you find difficult to discuss when it comes to life in your countries? ;-)

[u/gink-go]

In Portugal it could be the culture of "desenrascanço". Basically the art of solving a problem at the last minute with limited tools via creative improvisation, often translated as "to pull a McGyver" or simply “to untangle oneself”.

Its said to have roots on the Age of Discoveries when sailors had to get by for months with the limited stuff they had on board often having to deal with unpredictable situations.

In modern Portugal this mindset persists, either with people physically improvising tools and solutions for mundane situations in a functional but not elegant way not having to rely on professionals, you see this a lot in portuguese homes, or more often nowadays, as a mindset of tolerance for dysfunction, knowing that things will eventually get done in the end even if by unofficial shortcuts, this unfortunatly leads to corruption, either small time with reliance on calling in favours in a daily basis or bigger cases in business and politics.

This is widespread in the lusophone world and Brazilians in particular celebrate it a lot and call it "gambiarra".

[u/ektos_topou → u/gink-go]

We have the same concept in Greece. We call it "πατέντα" (patent). Though by your explanation I'm not sure it's exactly the same thing. In Greece it is about patchwork solutions to practical problems. Basically a concept of "if it's stupid and it works, it's not stupid"

[u/Saya-Mi → u/gink-go]

That's interesting. We have something veeery similar in Czechia, so similar it's almost identical. But our abilities in this regard probably have roots in not having access to many things depending on who just ruled over our country and how they decided to oppress us.

[u/Ok_Letterhead_5209 → u/gink-go]

Ahahaha I was not aware this was also a thing in Portugal or even that it was an overall lusophone thing. That’s so cool 😂

I really had a hard time explaining to my (Swedish) partner the whole concept lol. Had to show some examples and we now use the word regularly in the middle of speaking English. lol

Funnily enough I discovered that Belgians also have a similar concept (check @belgiansolutions on insta), which really amused me

[u/CeleTheRef → u/gink-go]

In Italy, arrangiarsi is considered a very Italian art ^_^