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.

  • @BottleOfAlkahest
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    101 year ago

    The death valley Germans comes to mind. The theory from the guy who found their bodies was that they thought area 51 would have patrols/guards like US bases in Germany. They didn’t realize that area 51 has a largely unguarded area as part of its “official territory” because death valley does the guarding for them.

    Great long form write-up from the guy who found them: Here

    • @kmkz_ninja
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      1 year ago

      I’m somewhat upset at you for having spent literally 8 hours on that wonderful blog. Thank you and also fuck you for that link. People give warnings for movietrope links, I might recommend the same.