Europe | Flagging Headquarters

GLOBAL GROUND ZERO

View Comments 19 July 2010

By The Hunger

If you ever wanted to hook up with a Spaniard, World Cup Sunday was paying better odds than a defective poker machine. Patriotism and partying, synonymous with Spanish football fans, hit a new national zenith in the wake of the country becoming the newly crowned world champions of football. I gate crashed the Spanish World Cup festivities the day before the big match. (As luck would have it, I happened to be returning to Spain anyway!)

To be in a foreign country and witness a page being written in their history book is special. Elections, sporting events, carnivals, festivals, revolutions, coup d’états are also events that bare watermarks of history (as are wars, terrorist attacks and assassinations albeit with a darker twist). The feeling of that day is etched into the Spanish national psyche forever. Just listen how the English talk about their 1966 victory; it’s as though they all live in a mental time machine.

There aren’t many days like this in life – everyone is naturally euphoric and people are more open to chatting with strangers. When I was in Sydney for the 2000 Olympics, small talk had never been so interesting. That combined with cervezas and sangria produced a powerful social cocktail of opportunity.

Imagine what it was like when man first landed on the moon on July 20^th, 1969. It would have been one crazy night, even if you weren’t American or in the US. I remember hooking up with an American girl in Australia the night President Obama was inaugurated. Sharing this experience with someone with a home team advantage added another dimension to the evening; like how some would prefer to spend St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland drinking with a bunch of Irish.

Not everyone was fortunate enough to be able to be in Berlin in 1989 or to enjoy 1969 Woodstock. Future historic events don’t stick to a timetable. No one can predict when or where the next global ground zero will be, not even Google.

Increase your chances by checking festivals and global sporting event schedules or important anniversaries of past events. However, each one of these situations is prototypical – that’s what makes them so unique. Fans attended game 6 of the 1977 World Series of baseball with typical finals excitement, but nothing could prepare them for Reggie Jackson’s triple homerun magic.

Global events give a sense of history to our own timeline. As the years pass and the memory fades, the global events that you remember most were the ones that were extra special.

Flags of the World, European flags, Spanish flag

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Malta

THE MALTESE TEASE

View Comments 12 July 2010

By Atlas Al

Malta. Biggest tease on Earth.

I returned home after visiting The Hunger who’s doing a working holiday in Malta. We caught up, discussed future plans for the site, drank (a lot), and naturally, I scoped out the local scene for any talent. We met a cool Canadian guy named Andrew at a beachside hookah bar who told us he’s been living in Malta for 6 months and still hasn’t hooked up with a local yet. So what are my chances if I’m on vacation for 9 days?

I wanted to recount my story of getting the Maltese flag; instead I’ll explain why they’re one of the most difficult to hook up with:

First, we’ll start with legs. Paceville (pronounced Pashaville) is Malta’s nightlife nerve center and reminded me of spring break in Mexico. Bars, clubs, strip clubs, and kebab houses thrive here. Your heart can’t help but change beats to the overpowering speakers as you walk past different clubs observing the miniskirts within. I’ve never seen so many nice pairs in my entire life. I’m all for flaunting it if you got it. The downside is that you don’t know if you’re checking out a barely legal 16 or 17 year old that looks like she’s 22.

Whether local or tourist, most available women on the island are between 17 and 20 years old. Locals usually have long term boyfriends by 18, and because the majority of the population is very catholic, they get married and have kids at a young age.

On the tourist front, many come to learn or brush up on their language skills because Malta is a hub for language schools. High schoolers and university students prefer to come during their summer holidays to take an affordable language course, usually to learn English.

I started to believe there were no women left in their 20’s. I received a tip from a couple of guys (both 19) working at the Diesel store in Valletta. According to them, Club 22 on the 22^nd floor of the tallest building in Malta had older women. The music, view, and women were all good. But unlike the free entrance, you had to pay to get to know some of those older women.

Andrew said the best place to meet mid-20’s Maltese women is to have a BBQ on the beach. Apparently, that’s what they do because the Paceville scene is too young for them. Unless you’re around 20 years old, your best shot at hooking up with a local is to seek out the divorced or widowed. But where did they hang out, where did they drink? I still don’t know the answer to this question.

Knowing what I know now, I’m going to hook up my future 17-year-old son big time and send him to Malta on a summer study abroad course. Vicariously living through him will be the closest shot I’ll have at getting the Maltese flag.

Flags of the World, European flags, Maltese flag

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Malta, Spain

TOPLESS TRADITIONS

View Comments 08 June 2010

By The Hunger

Having arrived in Malta a couple of days ago, I was greeted by the furnace-like heat this quaint little island is famous for. Naturally, the bevy of Maltese women sunning themselves like flamingos on vacation lured me to the beach.

After spending the last couple of months in Spain, I was reminded that the definition of beachwear varies from country to country and city to city. In Malta, topless sunbathing is uncommon, whereas in Spain there’s more skin on show than a Ross Meyers film. And this birthright isn’t only reserved for the beautiful or the rich. All walks of life – citizens with different shapes, sizes, ages and incomes – can make this choice if they want.

Cultural attitudes towards topless sunbathing differ considerably around the world. In my opinion, Europe has always been the most liberal, especially the sun-starved northern Europeans.

Australia a little less so; while there’s a visual smorgasbord of breasts on display at Bondi Beach, generally it’s a higher percentage of tourists.

The USA? Forget about it, unless it’s a nudist beach. Asia, no, and the Middle East, never!

Beachwear culture is knotted with religion and history. Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana and Ipanema beaches are famous for its nearly naked women sporting a tanga, (thongs) and it’s even skinnier sister called the fio dental (dental floss). A fio dental might be the same as nudity for some folk while for others this 2cm piece of cloth is just sexy.

You can’t miss the sexiness in the air or in the dancing, yet at the same time you can still feel a conservative undercurrent running through Catholic South America. Malta, Spain, and tens of other countries are Catholic as well, and all embrace their topless traditions differently.

Should nationalities with a more liberal attitude towards nudity and sex adopt the beachwear traditions of other more conservative countries?

Residents of Barcelona think so. They’ve begun a campaign to stop people wearing bikinis and board shorts away from the beach. A spokesmen for the city said, “It’s not something which is banned, but it’s an attitude we don’t like”. They don’t mind if you’re nearly naked on the beach, but you need to adopt street wear etiquette once the sand ends. In other words, what happens on the beach stays on the beach.

Even within the topless realm, there are variations of toplessness that some enjoy and others object to. Facedown topless, or face up topless? It takes a different kind of confidence to walk down the beach topless or swim topless. I remember I was at the beach in Spain talking to an English friend (who was topless) and she couldn’t believe that some girls swam bare-breasted. It comes down to your confidence and comfort level, just like you won’t see me wearing Speedos any time soon.

The beach should be a place where sand and sun supersedes standard clothing etiquette. Since we spend 99% of public interaction in clothes, that other 1% is going to be pretty exciting.

Everyone is always looking at everyone else at the beach anyway. Whether topless or not, bikini, burquini, or Speedos, there’s more primal psychology happening at the beach than on Freud’s couch. Ironically in some countries, the more you wear the more naked you feel.

Flags of the World, European flags, Maltese flag, Spanish flag

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Germany, Norway

EUROVISION IS BLIND

View Comments 04 June 2010

By Atlas Al

Congratulations to German pop singer, Lena, who at the age of 19 has won the 2010 Eurovision singing contest in Norway with her song “Satellite.”

However, I lost some respect for the largest singing contest in the world. To call something Eurovision, shouldn’t it be European? Countries from Morocco to Jordan are eligible to participate in the contest; Israel won the contest in 1978, 1979, and 1998, and Turkey in 2003 – are they European flags?

Northern African and Middle Eastern (Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon) countries are definitely not European, and Turkey and the Caucasus region are questionable.

While it’s more than possible to hook up with foreigners in your own country (one of my friends has 10 flags and has never left his country), travel is such a huge component of flagging.

What once started as a simple guide for backpackers in SE Asia, Lonely Planet is now the leader in travel guide books. On their website, they have a Destinations page with info and tips on every country in the world. We use LP’s country grading scale as a guide to separate countries into their appropriate continental/regional sections. If you’ve already checked out our European flags section under the Flags of the World page and saw many questionable European countries, it’s for this reason.

Watch American Idol, Australian Idol, Britain’s Got Talent, or any similar show and you’ll mostly see people from that country competing. Likewise, if I watch a “Eurovision” contest, I expect to see Europeans battling it out.

I think it’s false advertising to call a singing contest Eurovision if neighboring non-European countries are able to compete. Let’s avoid any future scandal and just call the damn thing Worldvision.

Flags of the World, Norwegian flag, German flag

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Cyprus, Greece, Turkey

CYPRUS BLOODY CYPRUS

View Comments 25 May 2010

By Atlas Al

It looks as if there’ll be no end to the Cyprus crisis. Dervis Eroglu, the prime minister of the occupied Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, won the recent presidential election. And why should I care about all this? Because he’s a nationalist who’d prefer not to reunite with the rest of Cyprus, and he represents an illegitimate state.

During the last two centuries, bad blood has been spilled between Greece and Turkey: four major wars, ethnic cleansing pogroms in Istanbul, skirmishes between Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots, and a failed coup d’état in Nicosia backed by Greece’s military junta in 1974.

The British gave independence to Cyprus in 1960. Perhaps they thought that by making Cyprus an independent state rather than being controlled by Greece or Turkey it’d smooth over the centuries old conflict. Cyprus’s independence made matters worse between Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots and escalated into a full-blown Turkish invasion of the island in 1974.

The root of the Cyprus crisis stems from ethnic Greek and Turkish communities not viewing themselves as Cypriots. With this kind of deep cultural divide, they should’ve remained a British colony, been wholly controlled by Greece or Turkey, or accept the split as it is now.

I hate it when people refer to themselves as Greek-Cypriot, Turkish-Cypriot, African-American, Chinese-American, Japanese-Brazilian, an English Jew, Catholic or Protestant Irish. This “us versus them” mentality creates social friction and is unhealthy for society (consider the past conflict in Ireland, for example). Never in my life have I said I’m French-American – I’m just American.

From a flagging perspective, it’d be much easier to assess the flag status of a person who came from Northern Cyprus if Turkey just claimed it as one of their provinces. Instead, they play political games and are the only country in the world to recognize TRNC sovereignty.

From 1960 to 1974, the entire island was under the sovereign rule of the Republic of Cyprus. Northern Cypriots (no matter if they were Turkish or of another background) are essentially squatters on the Republic of Cyprus’s land.

Northern Cyprus’s limbo state of affairs doesn’t mean they don’t have a flag. They must be something. They’re probably not Greek because most Greeks and Greek-Cypriots live in the southern half of the island. The only people who can say they’re Turkish (i.e., from Turkey, aka, Turkish flag) are the immigrants who came to Northern Cyprus since Turkey’s invasion. Everybody else (mostly of Turkish heritage) isn’t Turkish because they come from the island of Cyprus and not Turkey, hence they’re Cypriot.

If you shagged someone from the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, you got the Cypriot flag.

The only lasting peace will be in the form of a standstill unless Turkey renounces her support for the TRNC. When that day comes, reunification talks will resume.

Flags of the World, European flags, Cypriot flag, Greek flag, Turkish flag

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Spain

YACHTIES GONE WILD

View Comments 23 May 2010

By The Hunger

Cue dramatic movie preview voice, “In a world where you get to live and work on multimillion dollar yachts, travel to the crème de la creamiest of world locations, cruising the Med in summer, the Caribbean in winter, and get paid well for it. Welcome to the super yacht industry.”

Living in Palma de Mallorca, one of the world’s super yacht Mecca’s, has given me insight into how the world’s richest 0.00001 percent and their crews live. Could this be the flagging utopia one imagines?

What draws people together from such diverse longitudes on land to pursue the same latitudes on water? Their love of adventure, their love of sailing and their love of the water – these people are called “yachties.”

Super yachts voyage to all four corners of the globe; however, the majority of yachting crews come from the same 5-10 nations. With such a highly concentrated anglophile population in the industry, it’s the usual suspects of world nationalities that make up these mobile anglophile enclaves.

It’s part colonial history and part geographical positioning of these countries that primarily makes the super yacht industry to be made up of Antipodeans, and it’s colonial mother. All countries share the same adventurous blood type. Nationalities most likely to bump into in a yachtie port:

United Kingdom
Australia
South Africa
New Zealand
United States

Significant numbers and nationalities are harder to define for the second group. Also, second group numbers would rise and fall depending on which port you’re in. Honourable mentions include:

France
Spain
Canada
Netherlands
Philippines

It’s interesting to note that while most super yachts are registered in one of the many tax havens of the world (The Cayman Islands, Antigua, The Bahamas, Malta, Isle of Man, Jersey, Canary Isles, and the UAE to name a few), these exclusive nations make up a tiny percentage of the crews in the industry.

Yachties are an interesting bunch. Most live by a “work hard, play hard” attitude that produces a sizeable amount of debauchery. And let’s face it: when you’re seeing life through the eyes of a billionaire, why wouldn’t you? The shagging potential in the yachting scene is high, and with so much time spent at sea, I’d be carpe-diem-ing the fuck out of it too when I got back on land.

Imagine living and working with the same people 24/7 – if you’re lucky you might get some hot crewmembers to help starve off boredom and seasickness. There are lots of hot stewardesses out there riding the high seas. If there weren’t any on my yacht when I got back on land, I’d want to compress my life by pressing the rewind button too.

Because of the disturbingly high number of antipodeans and ubiquitous yachtie hangouts the world over, the flagging potential is lower than one would think, unless you employ one of two strategies. 1) Mostly hang out with other foreigners (i.e. non-natives of the country you’re in), or 2) Mostly hang out with the locals.

But if meeting people from exotic countries doesn’t interest you, I’m sure you’d have an antipodean buffet of fun from port to port and more stories than Odysseus after living in this water world.

For some, seeing the world on turquoise waterways is a dream. For others, it might feel like a floating Alcatraz. Yachties will tell you “everything is better on water,” and from what I’ve seen, they have a pretty good time on land as well!

Flags of the World, European flags, Spanish flag

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Netherlands

THE FLAGGING SEX LIFE OF DJ ROELOVE

View Comments 20 May 2010

By Atlas Al

Resident DJ at Supperclub in Amsterdam, DJ Roelove, has been spinning records professionally since 1998. His passion for electronic and house music has brought him to many countries, and I caught up with him at Buddha Bar in Oslo to talk about life on the road as a traveling DJ, and of course hooking up abroad.

He may have told Flagging HQ how many total shags he has (between 50-60), but that is irrelevant; we want to know how many flags he has. Watch to find out…

DJ Roelove can be found on his Myspace page here.

Flags of the World, European flags, Dutch flag

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Spain

INTERNATIONAL SEXTING

View Comments 29 April 2010

By The Hunger

I doubt Woody Harrelson and Woody Allen speak the same way. So why would they write, text, or email the same? In the English language, everyone has the same 26 letters to work with. But word choice and how you punctuate those words make up your instinctive alphabet.

How many times have you re-read and re-re-read an email or text a girl has sent you, or one you sent to her, especially one you really like? If you’re reading the invisible ink between the lines, I bet she’s doing the same thing trying to interpret what you meant by the double question mark, or the smiley face, or the word kiss as opposed to the letter x or xxx. Someone’s understanding of the same text can be as mystifying and misinterpreted as Stone Age wall carvings.

Are you a dot dot dotter… are you a double question mark man?? Are you a LOLer? Think back to past relationships, you’ll realise everyone’s texting and sexting styles leave a trail of invisible text. Some you love, some you hate.

Personally, I can’t stand girls that litter whole messages with BTDT, FYI, XLNT or some other number plate language. Some is okay, overkill makes me think: if I were to appear on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, she wouldn’t be my “phone a friend”.

Cultural punctuation is a language unto itself. I met a smoking Spanish senorita last week and it’s very easy to confuse genuine interest with cultural text etiquette. In Latin countries like Spain where even men kiss, it can be difficult to work out if their kisses are decided or default.

The first message she sent ended with muchos besitos (lots of kisses), the second message had no kisses, the third went back to muchos besitos. Naturally, I matched the kisses she was sending me. This virtual kissing tennis match that had started as a Wimbledon qualifier in text-land usually never evolves past politeness. I’ve met Spanish girls in the before and if they send you “real kisses” in a text, it’s fantastic and there’s nothing polite about it!

Everyone loves receiving emails, wall posts, and texts. These electronic gifts remind us that someone, somewhere cares. Our brains are set to interpret the inaudible tones; with text, we’re trying to translate the invisible ink.

Flags of the World, European flags, Spanish flag

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GLOBAL GROUND ZERO

THE MALTESE TEASE

TOPLESS TRADITIONS

EUROVISION IS BLIND

CYPRUS BLOODY CYPRUS

YACHTIES GONE WILD

THE FLAGGING SEX LIFE OF DJ ROELOVE

INTERNATIONAL SEXTING

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