I just got back from a 3 week Europe trip. It was my first time there and I loved it, wish I could have stayed longer. I was just wondering a few things that I didn't find out about while there that maybe someone here knows. Can foreigners play the local lottery? I walked by little stores with signs in their windows like here in the U.S. that seemed to advertise a national lottery. Could a foreigner play it legally? Another thing that puzzled us was on the train rides through the country sides of germany, france and england we would see regular houses in regular towns but we would also see these little plots of land that looked like gardens with either small crops or flowers growing with a building that looked like a shed or tiny rustic house. There would be clusters of these in the countryside. We didn't know if they were just areas to garden and grow a little bit of food and the buildings were sheds with tools or if they were actually tiny homes that people lived in. Anyone out there know? Let's see, what else....are those big heart cookies at Oktoberfest made for eating? I didn't see one person eating them and when I tried to eat a small one it was very hard and tasteless. I thought at any moment a german would point at me and laugh because I was trying to eat a decorative piece of cardboard, which is what the cookie tasted like.
Posted by
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
2779 posts
Dan, those big heart shaped cookies are made out of a very cheap kind of gingerbread. They're not really made for eating, they're really just made as some kind of souvenier. The gardens you're talking about are called Schrebergarten and are not tiny houses where people live. As a matter of fact there are strict laws as to what can be installed in those houses... They were invented in the early 19th century so that the poorest of the poor can grow their own fruit and veggies for a healthy diet. With the industrial revolution in the mid 19th century people more and more had to move into tiny apartments in large cities to be close to where their work was. Then those Schrebergardens acted as only contact point of nature and clean air on Sundays. Today still they're mostly used by people who live in apartments in cities but who also want to have an own garden.Lottery: You have to have legal recidency in the German State that you want to play the lottery in.
Posted by
OP
Sacramento, Ca, USA
27 posts
Thanks for the reply Andreas! That explained it all.
Posted by
Scotland
505 posts
Greetings
I think the plots are what we'd call allotments here in the UK. Most people have a little shed or building on part of their allotment to store tools, seeds etc.
They're very popular in Scottish cities, both for people who have no garden at all and for people who don't have enough space in their gardens for veggies. But, there's never enough space and the waiting list here in Edinburgh is so long that people wait years to get a allotment spot.
Kate
Posted by
Niagara Wine Country, Canada
808 posts
I'm not sure about this so really I guess I'm asking a question...
Couldn't you probably buy a lottery ticket without ID but would have to present ID with residency to claim the prize?
If so, couldn't you just pass it off to a family member who lives there and have them claim it as theirs? (Giving them a cut, of course!)
Just curious about that. Some crew members I've flown with buy lotto tickets (across the pond) regularly and I'm not sure if they ever won anything or how they intended to claim any awards, if any...but I do recall them buying tickets...
Were they just throwing money away? That's why I'm wondering if they had a plan in place?
Posted by
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
2779 posts
I was reading the Swiss and German lottery laws. The point is that they only transfer your win to your local banking account. Direct debit, direct credit have made cheques redundant in Europe decades ago so that the only way you can ever claim your price is by getting it transfered to your local banking account. You can only open a bank account if you're legal resident. Can you use your friends' or realtives' local accounts? Yes, of course. But then legally the money is theirs so if they refuse to pay out the money to you you've got no legal backing...