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.
Don’t know what to answer.
Normal and healthy mammals relationships start with courtship display https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtship_display.
It is the normal behavior in humans as well. Not doing it would be pretty unusual, and probably worrying.
The difference is that in Italy, girls used to require a long, complex and time consuming courtship. One night stands were not even a thing, they were unthinkable, some fantasy from Hollywood movies.
North European girls not only had much lower expectations from men, required much less effort, but many of them even proactively started the process themselves, flirting and clearly communicating their intentions. This made the process particularly straightforward, but it also didn’t allow local men to improve their communication skills. Therefore average Italians looked extremely good with women: charming, listeners, caring… Despite the language barriers
I don’t know if it is still valid tough, I have been married for a long time