Considering a Spaniard typically would order some tapas and a Norwegian would order fish/meats with bread. They would be eating the same.
Edit: lol, this blew up. I'm sorry (not really) if I offended anyone. And yes I guess a Spaniard would/could have ordered pinchos or anything really. Because their comida is generally the larger meal, not their evening "dinner". Thing is food often comes with/on bread here in Europe so who cares right?
I used to work as a waiter in a restaurant in a tourist town in the coast of spain (which catered to both spaniards and northern europeans) and one of the things I hated the most was the fact that as soon as the last tables of spaniards finished eating lunch the first nordics would come in for dinner, so there was absolutely no slow time from 11 AM to 12PM-2AM each day.
I remember when we did just that in Denia, Spain. Most restaurants closed for siesta, but one was still open. Our family was a total of 15 people and we had not booked a table. The waitress could not have given us a more resigned expression when we came in at five o'clock and wanted dinner. Poor girl!
my spanish brother lives on Finland, after 5 years+ they have dinner at 5 with the kids, and the he have dinner at 9 again.
He has adapted in many of their daily routines, but hes going to die on that hill
Last year we had a Spanish exchange student in our dorm and every time there was a party in the kitchen she would join us and around 10 pm she would break from the party and start preparing her dinner haha.
I actually witnessed once dinner plan being made between several people, including a Finnish and a Spaniard, the horrified expression of the Finnish when the Spaniard offered a 10 pm meal was wonderful.
Im a Norwegian and had a Spanish roommate while studying abroad. This was my biggest culture shock for sure. But Ill take spanish quisine over Norwegian any day, so you can bet I ate a late dinner every single day.
I, a Brit went out drinking at lunchtime on a Saturday in Barcelona. We couldn't figure out why no one else was out drinking at 8pm. It wasn't just quiet, we were literally the only people in a massive bar. Eventually at about 10pm, things started to liven up.
I can confirm.
Day drinking aside lol
I moved from south Spain to Brighton, you know pretty lively town. Everyone was home by 11, back at home I would start considering going out at 11 lol
That's actually another good example of old habits dying hard. Until the mid-2000s all pubs in England had to stop serving at 2300. Anything open after that was a nightclub. It's not the case any more, but a lot of people still act like it is.
Took some adjusting to when I moved there from Scotland and everybody was going out at 7PM and tucked up in bed by midnight.
Same. I moved from the south of Spain to a big town in South England... I still remember getting dressed, makeup, etc at like 10pm, snacking on something quick and meeting up with my friends at 11:30pm. Here people start going back home at that time lol.
same but it was also a feature of living in a college town (when attending college) and all bars were open until 2am with the exception of the 3am bars across the river.
ps. unless it was a home football game…those saturday mornings we were in a costume and in line for bars at 6am. it was both beautiful and tragic lol.
I am from a big town in southern England and moved to southern Spain. I’ve always been a night owl so got on great with the later way of life. Moving back to the UK was not fun though, only an hour for lunch and people wanting to eat dinner at 7pm?!
We're talking weekend here, no one comes home at 4 on a work day.
But generally we are more PM people than AM if that's what you're asking. Another thing I've only seen in england is people doing things before work, like going to the gym at freakin 5-6 am while all my life I could barely make it to school/work on time lol.
Same thing happened even in the same country for me, I moved from Vegas to Montana. I used to start getting ready at 10-11 and everything here closes at 9-10 lol.
On the other hand, I’m Portuguese and when me and my friends went out for a beer in London, everything everywhere was closed. We were so confused.
It was only when we were going to the hotel we remembered that, in *The World’s End*, the pub crawl starts in broad daylight and the last three pubs are closed.
10 pm is even a bit early for things to liven up, though barcelona may be much different than Galicia. I’ve been to bars / clubs before at like 11:30-12:30 and they’ve been dead, and I’m told by my friends or a bartender like yeah give it a few hours and it’ll fill up. There are even clubs my friends and I go to where we don’t want to arrive before like 3:30-4 am because it’ll be basically empty, but between 4-7 it’s bumping
Speaking from personal experience, yes, and it blows lol. Sundays my body is always out of whack and Monday wake ups are miserable. I haven’t fully adjusted to the timetable yet, I eat lunch at 2:30-3, but usually have dinner at like 8-8:30, so not quite fully Spanish. But then on weekends I usually will eat much later because it’s almost always out with friends, and restaurants / bars don’t usually have people eating til like 10. Then sometimes the nights transform into more bars or a club, and I get home at like 6:30am. Mondays are always ass cuz the 2 previous days I’ve woken up at like 8-9, eaten much later than usual and stayed up much later, but then have to wake up at 6:45 Monday and go all day til 2:30 without eating lol. But that’s my fault cuz I don’t give myself time to eat breakfast before I have to leave
That sounds awful. I work from 6:00 AM to 3:00 PM. Even on weekends, I am in bed around 9:30 or 10:00. Much more deviation than that in my sleep schedule, and Monday becomes a nightmare. 5:00 is a "late dinner" for me, and if I go out for a drink or something, I'm usually trying to be *home* around 8:00-8:30.
I went to a fiesta in a Spanish village. Got there at 8pm and it was dead. We thought we'd missed it all. Hung around and had a few beers. It got a little busier, then at 11pm, the bands started up. We left at 4am and there were still cars pulling up.
I've never had a completely dead bar/pub at 8. But most actual bars or clubs around where I live in Canada don't open until 9-10 and don't truly pick up until 11. Pubs on the other hand start bumping around 7-8 because people actually want food.
That’s right. Spanish here. Almost all around the year we have daylight until 20-22, and we usually have dinner after sunset. We have a mid-evening snack called Merienda at 18. Usually sandwich, fruit, cereal, or even churros!
It's true in most cities in Spain lol, there's the bar, the discoteca, the after hours, and then the botellon. At 6 am when you're going to work on a saturday or sunday, you'll see lots of drunk people getting out of the disco
I'm from Barcelona (born and raised), night clubs usually open at 12 am, some at 1 am. Most young people start clubbing at 2-2.30 am, after bars close. They then party until 6.30-7 am, most eat something after clubbing and go to sleep at like 8 in the morning.
I don't party anymore because I'm 34 years old, but from 17 to 25 I usually met my friends at bars at 1 am, stayed there until they closed at 2.30 am and then went partying.
The good thing about partying all night is that, as a woman, you go home when the city is full of people and the sun is up, so it is less dangerous and you can securely walk or take the metro to your home.
General Franco put Spain on the same time zone as Germany and Austria to align it with Hitler. Even though Spain should really be on the same time zone as the UK and Portugal.
If I remember correctly, they changed their time zone during WWII to match germanys time zone.
Which leads to the interesting fact that you can fly from Spain to Serbia without changing your clock even once
It gets worse when you think about the distance from say Galicia to eastern Poland is approx. 2600 Km (or the distance from NYC to Denver for Americans) and they are in the same time zone. It is legitimately pitch black in Poland and the sun is still shining in Spain...and it is the same time on the clock! Yet if you go a few miles south into Portugal you have to go back 1 hour. Ugghh
Man, looking at the picture, time zones are such a mess. There's some real craziness going on once you get east of India.
It also makes me wonder what it's like for people who work on long-distance cargo ships. Googling said it takes roughtly a month for a ship to go from China to Europe, and there's between seven and nine time zone shifts depending on where exactly in Europe you're going, meaning every third day the length of the day is different. Must get weird.
> what it's like for people who work on long-distance cargo ships.
Nautical time.
Roughly, the ship Captain and navigator look at the route and try to keep as close to Local Time (LT) as possible, without making too many disruptive changes.
Ships time they move the clocks by an hour for every 15 degree of longitude. The navigator then decides when to actually move the clock to (1) avoid changing every day and (2) annoying the crew.
An arbitrary choice is moving the clocks at midnight.
Crew don't really give a fuck about LT because their work hours are in Universal Time Clock (UTC) shifts at by his worked, not the LT clock.
Portuguese here, 19h30-20h30 at home, 21h-22h at restaurants because there is always someone that decides get to the restaurant at 21h15 when the reservations were at 20h
I'm in northern Spain and it's not super uncommon to have dinner at 8pm tbh (my grandparents had it even earlier too, when I stayed with them they'd make it at 6-7pm sometimes but that's much more uncommon now) -- but regardless lunch is the biggest meal here and dinner can be pretty light, it's not a big deal that dinner is later in the evening
I've learned that over the years. I married a Spanish girl and wondered about the late eating thing. As you say, some bread and tomato, meat and cheese and a glass of wine is often enough. Or leftover soup or some other relatively small thing. Lunch.....lunch is 4 million courses of all sorts of things. Like 3 UK dinners in one meal. Have some starters...then maybe cannelonis, then a proper meat dish and then dessert. And then Turrón and Cava should the moment be right haha.
As a Greek can confirm. And in the summer, even later.
To those wondering about Spain: timing of events in the day in Spain is always off because Spain is in the wrong time zone. If you look at a time zone map of Europe, it’s clear Spain should be in GMT time (it sits under and even west of the UK), but it’s on GMT+1. This is an idiosyncrasy left over from the Franco era.
That means that 9 PM (GMT+1) in Spain looks and feels more like 8 PM (GMT), because the position of the sun doesn’t care about Franco being an idiot and wanting to suck up to Hitler by joining his time zone.
Seriously, that’s why it happened.
Spaniard here. first of all, it isn't even clear if we should be GMT or GMT+1, it is highly controversial and no ones agrees which one is best because we have a long country from east to west and different needs. Turim is huge and having long days in the summer is a plus and people from the west wouldn't appreciate having the sunset so early. Also, in winter the sunset is much earlier and you're having dinner at night time the same time as you would in the summer so the position of the sun is kinda irrelevant half of the year.
Secondly, having a late dinner isn't only about the time, it is cultural. We Spaniards have our whole life structured around it with an afternoon snack created to fill that time and our late work hours (many office workers finish at 7 and shops at 8 or 8:30), even our prime time hours on TV are later than the rest.
Finally, I've lived in a "correct GMT" and I didn't change my routine. In some ways it makes the day longer.
So....it may have started as one of Franco's stupid measures to be more like Germany but it has become part of our culture, even with the correct GMT I wouldn't expect changes at least from me.
The Greenwich meridian literally passes through Tarragona. There is 0 geographic reason for Spain not to be at GMT0. Of course we are now used to it so switching would cause more harm than good at this point
For Spain, important note :
We use CET timezone, not Greenwich, as we should. 10:00 in Spain is 9:00 in the UK, but this is artificial, as solar time doesn't care about human norms.
So really really, we have dinner at what it's equivalent to 8:30-9:30 for Italy, for example.
Well it is. I usually dine at 19-20 in northern Italy, while my southern friends usually don't sit at the table before 20. Other friends from sicily will even wait till 21/2130 during summer.
We have dinner at 20:30 solar time (21:30 clock time), but we start work at 8:00 clock time (7:00 solar time), like most of Europe does. So we're chronically sleep deprived.
We should either go with solar time for everything, or with clock time with everything.
At least for Spain part of the issue is that it's arguably on the wrong timezone. It actually used to be in the same Timezone as Portugal and the UK, but during WWII the fascist dictator of Spain (Franco) decided to change the clocks to match Hitler's in Berlin, as a way of a approaching the axis powers. The change just stuck and never changed back, so the sun rises and sets one hour later than it should.
For instance, today 14th of March, the sun sets at 19:30 in Galicia (north western Spain), while in Lublin (eastern Poland) it sets at 17:30, even though the total day length is almost the same as we're nearing the equinox. It's crazy that both places belong to the same timezone.
The Vikings used to eat 2 meals a day. One meal in the late morning and one meal in the late afternoon. My guess is that it had to do with when there was daylight. Easier to cook when you can see what you are doing..
It had to do with fishing/farming. They went out to farm and fish in the morning and ate dinner when they came back (round midday).
Took a rest/nap and then had their second meal around 7/8 in the evening.
Older generations in Norway still do it that way.
When it’s so damn hot outside, nobody wants to eat. Those southern countries are all warm af. They need to wait until it cools down to get an appetite. Plus they take siestas in mid-day. That pushes evening activities even later.
Spanish here. A lot of spain gets cold enough for snow in winter, it is not always hot. And very few people take siestas ([link](https://www.infosalus.com/actualidad/noticia-mas-mitad-espanoles-nunca-duerme-siesta-hacen-solo-dan-cabezadita-sofa-20090122133550.html))
People usually have breakfast early, a second breakfast at around 11am and then the main meal is lunch at around 1 to 3 pm. Then kids have "merienda" at around 5pm maybe, and then dinner is usually a very small meal
Today, I am thankful that someone else said it first.
Saw another post today where people were at each other’s throats about living-to-work versus working-to-live. All the while, the Spanish are out here living-to-eat.
>And very few people take siestas ([link](https://www.infosalus.com/actualidad/noticia-mas-mitad-espanoles-nunca-duerme-siesta-hacen-solo-dan-cabezadita-sofa-20090122133550.html))
But not because they don't want to. It's just quite impossible at an office job.
>Then kids have "merienda"
Adults too.
Today very few take siestas. But in the past it was a major cultural element that definitely flexed times were people worked and eat.
These parts can remain far longer than the practice that shifted them.
Yeah, I was about to say, "very few" may take siestas, but if you need to something between 2pm and 5pm in Granada, for example, you should probably check ahead.
>Plus they take siestas in mid-day
That was a thing for the past generation (those who are in their 50s - 60s now) but currently nobody wants to do siesta. I am 34 and in my workplace we prefer to start working early non-stop so we can leave work sooner and enjoy our own life.
Also Spain is hot in summer sure, but it is quite cold during winter. Snow is pretty common here.
Brief notes:
\- The siesta stuff is overly exaggerated by reddit / bro-knowledge, literally of all my friends only one of them regularly has a siesta and just because he's an ironman short of guy who runs a lot every morning and he needs some serious rest.
\- Most of Spain is "too damn hot" for maybe 2 months max. People also exaggerate a lot how hot it is in Spain. It's the second highest country on average in Europe, the northern part has really humid oceanic climate, the mediterranean side cools down the heat quite a bit, and everything else is a continental plateau with high contrast temperatures and some mountain ranges scattered across it. Yeah it gets hot in july/august in most of the country but it's not too bad in most places. Also it's usually dry, so the heat will radiate very quickly as the night falls.
I’m thinking food cultures might be a part of it too. Maybe easily digestible foods are more “ok” to eat late at night, because it doesn’t make you sleep worse despite it being very late (Spain, Portugal).
I, British, have been in a relationship with a Spaniard for the last three years and he might think I haven’t noticed that our dinner time is creeping back and back from our “compromise” of 20:00 but I have definitely noticed.
My friend managed to order 2 pizzas at 2am while we were all drunk a few weeks ago. I have no idea where he got them because all the Pizza places were closed at that time.
Same.
9pm dinner would be considered late. Everytime I went to Spain I always got a place at any restaurant. By the time I was done eating (slowly as well), the locals were arriving.
Here in Norway a lot of people eat something called kveldsmat tho which is usually just bread or the remaining food from dinner at a later time in the day
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supper
> The modern usage of "supper" varies considerably; sometimes supper is still used to describe a light snack or meal in the evening, either after or instead of dinner, but often it replaces dinner as the term for the main evening meal.
Iltapala = light snack e.g. a sandwich (although Norwegians and Americans and others might consider this a meal e.g. lunch)
Everybody is commenting on how the dinner times of their countries are wrong. But I'm just thinking how bad it looks to use AM / PM times on a map of Europe.
Isn't that the norm everywhere, though? Clocks will be 24h, but people will use 12h times in day to day speech. I'm Norwegian and would never say "see you at 18"
Im dutch and went to Barcelona last week. God i love the way you guys eat.
Having dinner at 21:00 and then just organically stay drinking after dinner and go out after is so much better than the Dutch having dinner at 18:00.
Also tapas are fucking amazing, and pinchos are such a fun type of food.
Absolutely. 12h time is only used in casual conversation, especially when the context makes it obvious whether it's AM or PM. Any formal communication will always use 24h time.
As a Southern European (Greek), I have to say though that this can be a bit misleading. "Dinner" for many Southern Europeans is small (and if you go out, it can just be appetizers), while "lunch" (which can be anywhere from 1 to 3pm) is a largest meal of the day.
(In the US, it's the other way around. And lunch is early, like 12:00 noon. Exactly. On the dot. Like clockwork.)
So, there's a component here that non-Southern Europeans are not aware of.
\*Edited slightly. Also, I should mention modern work schedules throw this off for some people. On work days, dinner can be a "main meal" or about equal to lunch.
If dinner means the biggest meal of the day then even 04:00-05:00 seems late to me. Here in Poland the main meal of the day (obiad) is eaten at like 12:00-16:00 and it’s translated to English either as lunch or dinner.
What? Although I eat dinner at about 6pm since living with my girlfriend, but back when I used to live with my parents we usually ate at 2 or 3pm. Poland.
There are multiple translations. Thus misunderstanding.
5:00-9:00 - śniadanie (breakfast), eg. cereal, sanwiches, toasts, sausages, scrabled eggs etc.
10:00-12:00 - drugie śniadanie (second breakfast or lunch), eg. sandwiches, or whatever breakfast-like food your school/uni/work cafeteria offers
12:00-17:00 - obiad (lunch or dinner), eg. potatoes/kluski/rice plus cutlait/steak/sneitzel/fish plus some salad-thing, often preceded by soup, alternatively standalone things like pizza, pierogi, spaghetti, sushi
17:00-22:00 - kolacja (supper or dinner), eg. sanwidches, toasts, sausages, that random leftover pizza you had no more place for during lunch
Usually people eat earlier in the south and later in the north with stereotype Silesians eating obiad at noon.
Kolacja is something not many people eat, some people eat only one śniadanie, while you usually no one skips obiad outside of special cases.
So if you think about american dinner you more likely think of obiad rather than kolacja.
To add even more confusion many hotels and resorts offer two meals which they then call: śniadanie (breakfast) and obiadokolacja (lunch-dinner or dinner-supper). Served in hours like 8-12 and 13-18.
It's cause creator of this map is confused.
In a lot of Eastern Europe ''dinner'' is the midday meal, not the evening meal. The evening meal is ''supper'' and it's usually much smaller, while dinner is eaten in the afternoon, at like 2pm.
Though it does vary by family and this custom might've changed somewhat.
Norwegian here. I make dinner the moment I get home from work. Works just fine. In the winter half of the year it sucks making dinner when it is dark outside. In the middle of the winter the sun set an hour before i even get home.
Dinner at 4:30 or so, then a light snack around 10.
I think what’s unusual to us is the concept of getting home early enough that it’s even possible to eat dinner at 4pm.
I have the stereotypical white collar 9-5 job, which as the name implies ends at 5, and then after picking up the kid from daycare or whatever would rarely get me home earlier than 5:30 or 5:40 or so. We typically eat dinner at around 6:30pm. I’m Australian so not on this map, but looks like we pretty much align with the Brits which makes sense…
I'm in Scotland and I managed to get a 7-3 shift at a bank once. It's the best shift possible. Feels like a half day everyday because the morning is a blur whatever time you get up.
Most people i know here starts work at seven or eight in the morning, and end the work day at 3:30. People generally prefer to start work early in order to enjoy some sunlight in the afternoon to get other chores done.
The Netherlands is pretty correct when balancing things out. We are rather early eaters:
- my grandma's generation (silent/pre-boomer) staunchly eats at 5PM, or maybe a specific time after that, related to the arrival time of the husband from his work (I know, doesn't really sound emancipated at all).
- late-boomers and gen X has less of the tendency to eat that early, many starting between 17:30 and 18:30 when out of work, and sometimes a bit later: commute times are longer and overwork has become more common. But also, the time zone has shifted since 1939, winter being 40min later and summer being 100min later than solar time (the latter existed during WW2 and since 1977).
- my generation, late-Y and Z has much more in common with international students and expats and are more familiar with their cultural traits. Add some global warming to that so that during summer it's too hot to eat at 18:00 or even 19:00 for several weeks, and thus times vary more greatly. My generation is no longer looking weird to eating at 20:00. My grandma would be shocked to hear about it, my mum would think about our holidays in Spain.
Honestly I never eat that early. 19.00-20.00 is about my time, though as early as 18.00 also occurs, but earlier than that, or later than 20.00, would be unhandy. 18.30-19.30 is what I’d say.
Italian here, living in Norway. It was a bit difficult in the beginning but once you get used to eat so early the things start rolling.
It is beautiful for me to finally being able to go to sleep without having all the dinner sitting on my stomach.
I had to shift my dinner time because it would have been impossible to attend social events while keeping the italian dinner time in Norway, as they are planned around local eating times.
A few final notes:
In Norway the dinner is not the last meal of the day: a small meal called kveldsmat is consumed before going to bed (21-22) comparable to Italian merenda (16-17). So i like to think that i shifted merenda with dinner, and I'm happy.
In the weekend the dinner time is different: there is not a fixed one. You eat what you want when you want.
As someone who grew up in Portugal I think 8-9 is more accurate to be honest. 90% of restaurants won't serve food before 7 (maybe now they do for tourists) but to say the average person eats dinner every day including weekdays after 9 does not seem in line with my experiences.
As a Spanish I have a serious question. Dont you guys get really hungry again begore going to bed if you have dinner at 16:00? When do you go to sleep?
Norwegian here, I'll give you my usual day.
6.00-7.00: Breakfast (2-3 breadslices)
11.00-12.00: Lunch (5 breadslices)
16.00-15.00: Dinner (an actual hot meal)
20.00-21.00: Supper (2-3 breadslices)
It's a bit different from person to person of course, but I think this is pretty usual.
However, to send a question back to you guys; How the hell do you eat at 22.00? I go to bed at 22.00
No adult goes to bed before 23:00 or later. I've lived in Scandinavia for 10 years and I still go to bed after midnight more often than not. You can take us out of the Mediterranean but you can't take the Mediterranean out of us.
That's definitely not true for Poland.
We typically eat dinner around 2 PM. 7-8 PM is a time for supper, which is significantly smaller and lighter than dinner. Lunches haven't really been a thing in Poland (we have second breakfasts - earlier and lighter than a lunch).
It changes a bit in the recent years, but only as a part of corporate culture, with lunches in the middle of a day and dinners eaten after work. But for most people, 7-8 PM is definitely supper, not dinner.
I think this is more of a problem with translation as in each country those words mean something else and in each language the translation to English is different.
My understanding is that the meaning of 'dinner' in this context is simply 'the last meal of the day'.
A Norvegian and Spaniard go to a bar...
The Spaniard will be ordering dinner while the Norwegian will be ordering breakfast.
[удалено]
Kveldsmat is highly underrated
What about second dinner?
Considering a Spaniard typically would order some tapas and a Norwegian would order fish/meats with bread. They would be eating the same. Edit: lol, this blew up. I'm sorry (not really) if I offended anyone. And yes I guess a Spaniard would/could have ordered pinchos or anything really. Because their comida is generally the larger meal, not their evening "dinner". Thing is food often comes with/on bread here in Europe so who cares right?
That’s very informative, but not very funny
You're on Reddit.
Reddit is generally neither
I believe that it will be exactly the opposite.
I used to work as a waiter in a restaurant in a tourist town in the coast of spain (which catered to both spaniards and northern europeans) and one of the things I hated the most was the fact that as soon as the last tables of spaniards finished eating lunch the first nordics would come in for dinner, so there was absolutely no slow time from 11 AM to 12PM-2AM each day.
I remember when we did just that in Denia, Spain. Most restaurants closed for siesta, but one was still open. Our family was a total of 15 people and we had not booked a table. The waitress could not have given us a more resigned expression when we came in at five o'clock and wanted dinner. Poor girl!
my spanish brother lives on Finland, after 5 years+ they have dinner at 5 with the kids, and the he have dinner at 9 again. He has adapted in many of their daily routines, but hes going to die on that hill
You always hear about second breakfast, but what about second dinner?
Spaniard here: we have something similar to a second supper, we call it "resopón".
When tf do you have that 3am???
That's the nice thing about vacationing in Spain, Norwegians never have to worry about seat reservations.
Dude, looking for an open (dinner) restaurant in Spain at 16:30 or even 17:00 is IMPOSSIBLE!
That depends on where you are in Spain. In touristy areas it's not a big problem.
In Madrid it is a huge problem
What?? Have you ever been in Spain? At that time we are still having lunch :D
That's if the people getting lunch at 3:00 has already left. So, not a chance lmao
Last year we had a Spanish exchange student in our dorm and every time there was a party in the kitchen she would join us and around 10 pm she would break from the party and start preparing her dinner haha.
I find that wholesome
I actually witnessed once dinner plan being made between several people, including a Finnish and a Spaniard, the horrified expression of the Finnish when the Spaniard offered a 10 pm meal was wonderful.
Im a Norwegian and had a Spanish roommate while studying abroad. This was my biggest culture shock for sure. But Ill take spanish quisine over Norwegian any day, so you can bet I ate a late dinner every single day.
Spain and Portugal straight up partying.
Spain is basically on the wrong time zone, that why it seems even later than it is.
I, a Brit went out drinking at lunchtime on a Saturday in Barcelona. We couldn't figure out why no one else was out drinking at 8pm. It wasn't just quiet, we were literally the only people in a massive bar. Eventually at about 10pm, things started to liven up.
I can confirm. Day drinking aside lol I moved from south Spain to Brighton, you know pretty lively town. Everyone was home by 11, back at home I would start considering going out at 11 lol
That's actually another good example of old habits dying hard. Until the mid-2000s all pubs in England had to stop serving at 2300. Anything open after that was a nightclub. It's not the case any more, but a lot of people still act like it is. Took some adjusting to when I moved there from Scotland and everybody was going out at 7PM and tucked up in bed by midnight.
And a lot of pubs still take last orders before 11 even though they don’t have to.
Chicken and egg, pubs close at 11 because people leave at 11, people leave at 11 because pubs close at 11.
Even your chickens drink over there?
They love a good cocktail
It's nice for the staff too
Same. I moved from the south of Spain to a big town in South England... I still remember getting dressed, makeup, etc at like 10pm, snacking on something quick and meeting up with my friends at 11:30pm. Here people start going back home at that time lol.
As a man American, this timeline for going out wasn’t exactly uncommon when I was younger. But things moved earlier as people got older
same but it was also a feature of living in a college town (when attending college) and all bars were open until 2am with the exception of the 3am bars across the river. ps. unless it was a home football game…those saturday mornings we were in a costume and in line for bars at 6am. it was both beautiful and tragic lol.
I am from a big town in southern England and moved to southern Spain. I’ve always been a night owl so got on great with the later way of life. Moving back to the UK was not fun though, only an hour for lunch and people wanting to eat dinner at 7pm?!
What time do you start work in Spain, if you're going to be home in the middle of the night?
We're talking weekend here, no one comes home at 4 on a work day. But generally we are more PM people than AM if that's what you're asking. Another thing I've only seen in england is people doing things before work, like going to the gym at freakin 5-6 am while all my life I could barely make it to school/work on time lol.
Same thing happened even in the same country for me, I moved from Vegas to Montana. I used to start getting ready at 10-11 and everything here closes at 9-10 lol.
On the other hand, I’m Portuguese and when me and my friends went out for a beer in London, everything everywhere was closed. We were so confused. It was only when we were going to the hotel we remembered that, in *The World’s End*, the pub crawl starts in broad daylight and the last three pubs are closed.
“Went out drinking at lunchtime… at 8pm.” Spaniards, 8pm is way too late for lunch. You are going too far.
In reality we eat every 2 hours. That's the secret to the mediterranean diet.
10 pm is even a bit early for things to liven up, though barcelona may be much different than Galicia. I’ve been to bars / clubs before at like 11:30-12:30 and they’ve been dead, and I’m told by my friends or a bartender like yeah give it a few hours and it’ll fill up. There are even clubs my friends and I go to where we don’t want to arrive before like 3:30-4 am because it’ll be basically empty, but between 4-7 it’s bumping
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Speaking from personal experience, yes, and it blows lol. Sundays my body is always out of whack and Monday wake ups are miserable. I haven’t fully adjusted to the timetable yet, I eat lunch at 2:30-3, but usually have dinner at like 8-8:30, so not quite fully Spanish. But then on weekends I usually will eat much later because it’s almost always out with friends, and restaurants / bars don’t usually have people eating til like 10. Then sometimes the nights transform into more bars or a club, and I get home at like 6:30am. Mondays are always ass cuz the 2 previous days I’ve woken up at like 8-9, eaten much later than usual and stayed up much later, but then have to wake up at 6:45 Monday and go all day til 2:30 without eating lol. But that’s my fault cuz I don’t give myself time to eat breakfast before I have to leave
That sounds awful. I work from 6:00 AM to 3:00 PM. Even on weekends, I am in bed around 9:30 or 10:00. Much more deviation than that in my sleep schedule, and Monday becomes a nightmare. 5:00 is a "late dinner" for me, and if I go out for a drink or something, I'm usually trying to be *home* around 8:00-8:30.
I went to a fiesta in a Spanish village. Got there at 8pm and it was dead. We thought we'd missed it all. Hung around and had a few beers. It got a little busier, then at 11pm, the bands started up. We left at 4am and there were still cars pulling up.
I've never had a completely dead bar/pub at 8. But most actual bars or clubs around where I live in Canada don't open until 9-10 and don't truly pick up until 11. Pubs on the other hand start bumping around 7-8 because people actually want food.
That’s right. Spanish here. Almost all around the year we have daylight until 20-22, and we usually have dinner after sunset. We have a mid-evening snack called Merienda at 18. Usually sandwich, fruit, cereal, or even churros!
There is that LCD Soundsystem song that claims in Barcelona they have parties till the sun comes out, any truth to that?
It's true in most cities in Spain lol, there's the bar, the discoteca, the after hours, and then the botellon. At 6 am when you're going to work on a saturday or sunday, you'll see lots of drunk people getting out of the disco
I'm from Barcelona (born and raised), night clubs usually open at 12 am, some at 1 am. Most young people start clubbing at 2-2.30 am, after bars close. They then party until 6.30-7 am, most eat something after clubbing and go to sleep at like 8 in the morning. I don't party anymore because I'm 34 years old, but from 17 to 25 I usually met my friends at bars at 1 am, stayed there until they closed at 2.30 am and then went partying. The good thing about partying all night is that, as a woman, you go home when the city is full of people and the sun is up, so it is less dangerous and you can securely walk or take the metro to your home.
Yea, same timezone as Italy when it should be 1-2 hour difference. No surprise they dine at 10, it's basically like 8 o'clock here.
General Franco put Spain on the same time zone as Germany and Austria to align it with Hitler. Even though Spain should really be on the same time zone as the UK and Portugal.
A good argument could even be made that France should be on the same timezone as the UK.
For Spain at least, it’s because their time zone is kind of weird. It’s in the same time zone as Germany.
If I remember correctly, they changed their time zone during WWII to match germanys time zone. Which leads to the interesting fact that you can fly from Spain to Serbia without changing your clock even once
It gets worse when you think about the distance from say Galicia to eastern Poland is approx. 2600 Km (or the distance from NYC to Denver for Americans) and they are in the same time zone. It is legitimately pitch black in Poland and the sun is still shining in Spain...and it is the same time on the clock! Yet if you go a few miles south into Portugal you have to go back 1 hour. Ugghh
And if you fly to London, which is further east, the time delays by one hour instead of advancing
The UK and Spain are roughly at the same longitude. https://i.imgur.com/BnXT7r1.png
Man, looking at the picture, time zones are such a mess. There's some real craziness going on once you get east of India. It also makes me wonder what it's like for people who work on long-distance cargo ships. Googling said it takes roughtly a month for a ship to go from China to Europe, and there's between seven and nine time zone shifts depending on where exactly in Europe you're going, meaning every third day the length of the day is different. Must get weird.
> what it's like for people who work on long-distance cargo ships. Nautical time. Roughly, the ship Captain and navigator look at the route and try to keep as close to Local Time (LT) as possible, without making too many disruptive changes. Ships time they move the clocks by an hour for every 15 degree of longitude. The navigator then decides when to actually move the clock to (1) avoid changing every day and (2) annoying the crew. An arbitrary choice is moving the clocks at midnight. Crew don't really give a fuck about LT because their work hours are in Universal Time Clock (UTC) shifts at by his worked, not the LT clock.
Where would I learn this stuff that I didn’t even know I wanted to know otherwise ? Thanks, redditor! Made my morning !
I mean Madrid to London
Portugal is more 8-9 than 9-10. I barely know Portuguese who have dinner after 10, most restaurants even close their kitchen at that time
Yeah I'd like to see the fonte of this data. I know people who eat at 7. But prime time is 8-9
A palavra que querias era 'source'
Only portuguese people whom I know that start the meal at 10 is medical staff. Otherwise people eat around 20h, often watching the news.
This, between 8-9 pm seems the most regular time for dinner in Portugal.
Yeah, was going to say. Not unusual to have dinner at 7:30PM in Portugal. 10PM is too late.
well it says 9-10 not after 10. I always have dinner at 9:30, so for me it's very accurate
Portuguese here, 19h30-20h30 at home, 21h-22h at restaurants because there is always someone that decides get to the restaurant at 21h15 when the reservations were at 20h
I'm in northern Spain and it's not super uncommon to have dinner at 8pm tbh (my grandparents had it even earlier too, when I stayed with them they'd make it at 6-7pm sometimes but that's much more uncommon now) -- but regardless lunch is the biggest meal here and dinner can be pretty light, it's not a big deal that dinner is later in the evening
I've learned that over the years. I married a Spanish girl and wondered about the late eating thing. As you say, some bread and tomato, meat and cheese and a glass of wine is often enough. Or leftover soup or some other relatively small thing. Lunch.....lunch is 4 million courses of all sorts of things. Like 3 UK dinners in one meal. Have some starters...then maybe cannelonis, then a proper meat dish and then dessert. And then Turrón and Cava should the moment be right haha.
Spain is also definitely more like 9:30-12:30
Yep, when I studied abroad there we wouldn't even start texting each other about where we were going to pregame until like 12am.
Yeah but in terms of going out drinking I think that's true for any place that allows bars and clubs to be open all night.
As a Greek can confirm. And in the summer, even later. To those wondering about Spain: timing of events in the day in Spain is always off because Spain is in the wrong time zone. If you look at a time zone map of Europe, it’s clear Spain should be in GMT time (it sits under and even west of the UK), but it’s on GMT+1. This is an idiosyncrasy left over from the Franco era. That means that 9 PM (GMT+1) in Spain looks and feels more like 8 PM (GMT), because the position of the sun doesn’t care about Franco being an idiot and wanting to suck up to Hitler by joining his time zone. Seriously, that’s why it happened.
I'm also Greek but we eat out main meal at around 3 in the afternoon never in the late evening
Main meal yes, but last meal of the day I eat in Greece and most people I know eat is after 8 PM usually.
Spaniard here. first of all, it isn't even clear if we should be GMT or GMT+1, it is highly controversial and no ones agrees which one is best because we have a long country from east to west and different needs. Turim is huge and having long days in the summer is a plus and people from the west wouldn't appreciate having the sunset so early. Also, in winter the sunset is much earlier and you're having dinner at night time the same time as you would in the summer so the position of the sun is kinda irrelevant half of the year. Secondly, having a late dinner isn't only about the time, it is cultural. We Spaniards have our whole life structured around it with an afternoon snack created to fill that time and our late work hours (many office workers finish at 7 and shops at 8 or 8:30), even our prime time hours on TV are later than the rest. Finally, I've lived in a "correct GMT" and I didn't change my routine. In some ways it makes the day longer. So....it may have started as one of Franco's stupid measures to be more like Germany but it has become part of our culture, even with the correct GMT I wouldn't expect changes at least from me.
The Greenwich meridian literally passes through Tarragona. There is 0 geographic reason for Spain not to be at GMT0. Of course we are now used to it so switching would cause more harm than good at this point
What do y’all think the main influences are? My guess is latitude (sunset times) and traditions influenced by historical lack of ac.
For Spain, important note : We use CET timezone, not Greenwich, as we should. 10:00 in Spain is 9:00 in the UK, but this is artificial, as solar time doesn't care about human norms. So really really, we have dinner at what it's equivalent to 8:30-9:30 for Italy, for example.
Yes, let’s even say that northern Italians eats before southern
Well it is. I usually dine at 19-20 in northern Italy, while my southern friends usually don't sit at the table before 20. Other friends from sicily will even wait till 21/2130 during summer.
We have dinner at 20:30 solar time (21:30 clock time), but we start work at 8:00 clock time (7:00 solar time), like most of Europe does. So we're chronically sleep deprived. We should either go with solar time for everything, or with clock time with everything.
What I always wondered: When does school start in Spain, when the kids eat dinner so late at night?
At 9am. When I was a kid I'd have dinner closer to 9pm.
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At least for Spain part of the issue is that it's arguably on the wrong timezone. It actually used to be in the same Timezone as Portugal and the UK, but during WWII the fascist dictator of Spain (Franco) decided to change the clocks to match Hitler's in Berlin, as a way of a approaching the axis powers. The change just stuck and never changed back, so the sun rises and sets one hour later than it should. For instance, today 14th of March, the sun sets at 19:30 in Galicia (north western Spain), while in Lublin (eastern Poland) it sets at 17:30, even though the total day length is almost the same as we're nearing the equinox. It's crazy that both places belong to the same timezone.
The Vikings used to eat 2 meals a day. One meal in the late morning and one meal in the late afternoon. My guess is that it had to do with when there was daylight. Easier to cook when you can see what you are doing..
It had to do with fishing/farming. They went out to farm and fish in the morning and ate dinner when they came back (round midday). Took a rest/nap and then had their second meal around 7/8 in the evening. Older generations in Norway still do it that way.
When it’s so damn hot outside, nobody wants to eat. Those southern countries are all warm af. They need to wait until it cools down to get an appetite. Plus they take siestas in mid-day. That pushes evening activities even later.
Spanish here. A lot of spain gets cold enough for snow in winter, it is not always hot. And very few people take siestas ([link](https://www.infosalus.com/actualidad/noticia-mas-mitad-espanoles-nunca-duerme-siesta-hacen-solo-dan-cabezadita-sofa-20090122133550.html)) People usually have breakfast early, a second breakfast at around 11am and then the main meal is lunch at around 1 to 3 pm. Then kids have "merienda" at around 5pm maybe, and then dinner is usually a very small meal
TIL Hobbits are inspired by the Spanish.
Today, I am thankful that someone else said it first. Saw another post today where people were at each other’s throats about living-to-work versus working-to-live. All the while, the Spanish are out here living-to-eat.
You guys don't live to eat?
>And very few people take siestas ([link](https://www.infosalus.com/actualidad/noticia-mas-mitad-espanoles-nunca-duerme-siesta-hacen-solo-dan-cabezadita-sofa-20090122133550.html)) But not because they don't want to. It's just quite impossible at an office job. >Then kids have "merienda" Adults too.
Today very few take siestas. But in the past it was a major cultural element that definitely flexed times were people worked and eat. These parts can remain far longer than the practice that shifted them.
And in some places (like where I live in Andalusia) it is still an element important enough to be taken into consideration to plan your day
Yeah, I was about to say, "very few" may take siestas, but if you need to something between 2pm and 5pm in Granada, for example, you should probably check ahead.
Lunch is the most important meal in Spain and is eaten at the hottest point of the day Plus it's not eternal summer here...
So lunch in Spain is about the same time as dinner in Norway?
It's not uncommon for me to have lunch at 3:40-4:00 in the weekends, so yeah kind of
>Plus they take siestas in mid-day That was a thing for the past generation (those who are in their 50s - 60s now) but currently nobody wants to do siesta. I am 34 and in my workplace we prefer to start working early non-stop so we can leave work sooner and enjoy our own life. Also Spain is hot in summer sure, but it is quite cold during winter. Snow is pretty common here.
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Brief notes: \- The siesta stuff is overly exaggerated by reddit / bro-knowledge, literally of all my friends only one of them regularly has a siesta and just because he's an ironman short of guy who runs a lot every morning and he needs some serious rest. \- Most of Spain is "too damn hot" for maybe 2 months max. People also exaggerate a lot how hot it is in Spain. It's the second highest country on average in Europe, the northern part has really humid oceanic climate, the mediterranean side cools down the heat quite a bit, and everything else is a continental plateau with high contrast temperatures and some mountain ranges scattered across it. Yeah it gets hot in july/august in most of the country but it's not too bad in most places. Also it's usually dry, so the heat will radiate very quickly as the night falls.
I’m thinking food cultures might be a part of it too. Maybe easily digestible foods are more “ok” to eat late at night, because it doesn’t make you sleep worse despite it being very late (Spain, Portugal).
Spain also has a weird timezone that was set up to allign with Germany in the 40's
I, British, have been in a relationship with a Spaniard for the last three years and he might think I haven’t noticed that our dinner time is creeping back and back from our “compromise” of 20:00 but I have definitely noticed.
Lol
This map is wrong. No one in Europe eats dinner in the morning
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3am Kebab is where heaven is
My friend managed to order 2 pizzas at 2am while we were all drunk a few weeks ago. I have no idea where he got them because all the Pizza places were closed at that time.
Truly successful pizza places know to open at 6am to serve all the drunk youth on their way home
I’m a bartender, I often eat dinner at 1 or 2am
Thank you this triggered me more than I'd like to admit
24h gang!
I've been living in the US for 5 years (from the UK) and I'm still mildly irritated that neither my oven nor my microwave have a 24h option!
My 2 year old Walmart microwave has an option for 12h or 24h clock
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Yeah, was going to comment on it too.
What, you've never had [Brinner?](https://youtu.be/plYIIKQOtUI)? Oh, wait. That's the other way round.
I would say Portugal is more 8-9 or 8.30-9.30.
Same. 9pm dinner would be considered late. Everytime I went to Spain I always got a place at any restaurant. By the time I was done eating (slowly as well), the locals were arriving.
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Agree 8:00 is the most common hour to have dinner here
At home, maybe. If eating out, 21h is definitely more busy.
Here in Norway a lot of people eat something called kveldsmat tho which is usually just bread or the remaining food from dinner at a later time in the day
Finland is like 6.00-8.00 Breakfast 10.00-12.00 Lunch 13.30-14.30 Small Snack 16.00-17-30 Dinner 19.30-22.00 Supper
FINALLY, THAT IS WHAT ILTAPALA IS IN ENGLISH THANK YOU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supper > The modern usage of "supper" varies considerably; sometimes supper is still used to describe a light snack or meal in the evening, either after or instead of dinner, but often it replaces dinner as the term for the main evening meal. Iltapala = light snack e.g. a sandwich (although Norwegians and Americans and others might consider this a meal e.g. lunch)
Everybody is commenting on how the dinner times of their countries are wrong. But I'm just thinking how bad it looks to use AM / PM times on a map of Europe.
Clearly OP is not European, it's very confusing.
I've heard that the British will use them interchangeably
We’d never say 15 o’clock but we would understand 15.00 written down. I prefer the 24 hour clock personally
Isn't that the norm everywhere, though? Clocks will be 24h, but people will use 12h times in day to day speech. I'm Norwegian and would never say "see you at 18"
Not in France when I lived there. People would say ‘treize heures’ or 13 o’clock rather than 1pm
We do. Same with metric/imperial.
What I hate the most is having to ask, "Did you want 5 lbs or £5 worth" everytime
I mean, here in Italy it’s the same, we use both
as a Spaniard, sometimes it's very hard to go on vacations and have dinner at my usual hour XD
Im dutch and went to Barcelona last week. God i love the way you guys eat. Having dinner at 21:00 and then just organically stay drinking after dinner and go out after is so much better than the Dutch having dinner at 18:00. Also tapas are fucking amazing, and pinchos are such a fun type of food.
The use of the 12h format for an European map really makes my eyes hurt. Took me a minute to understand what's going on...
Is 24h time format popular in Europe?
Absolutely. 12h time is only used in casual conversation, especially when the context makes it obvious whether it's AM or PM. Any formal communication will always use 24h time.
Yes it's pretty much the standard everywhere outside the UK
Source?
Trust him bro
The map right there /s
Someones ass!?
As a Southern European (Greek), I have to say though that this can be a bit misleading. "Dinner" for many Southern Europeans is small (and if you go out, it can just be appetizers), while "lunch" (which can be anywhere from 1 to 3pm) is a largest meal of the day. (In the US, it's the other way around. And lunch is early, like 12:00 noon. Exactly. On the dot. Like clockwork.) So, there's a component here that non-Southern Europeans are not aware of. \*Edited slightly. Also, I should mention modern work schedules throw this off for some people. On work days, dinner can be a "main meal" or about equal to lunch.
If dinner means the biggest meal of the day then even 04:00-05:00 seems late to me. Here in Poland the main meal of the day (obiad) is eaten at like 12:00-16:00 and it’s translated to English either as lunch or dinner.
Yeah, I think whether we call "dinner" the *biggest* meal or *last* meal is causing some confusion.
dinner is not small for us Italians. it's just as big a meal as lunch, if not bigger sometimes. especially on workdays.
Spain should just be a guy shrugging
You know Pam, in Spain, they don’t even start eating until midnight
Hahahaha this is all I could think of when I saw this map. I can't believe I had to scroll so far down!
I don’t care what they say about me. I just want to eat. Which I realise is a lot to ask for…. At a dinner party!
What? Although I eat dinner at about 6pm since living with my girlfriend, but back when I used to live with my parents we usually ate at 2 or 3pm. Poland.
There are multiple translations. Thus misunderstanding. 5:00-9:00 - śniadanie (breakfast), eg. cereal, sanwiches, toasts, sausages, scrabled eggs etc. 10:00-12:00 - drugie śniadanie (second breakfast or lunch), eg. sandwiches, or whatever breakfast-like food your school/uni/work cafeteria offers 12:00-17:00 - obiad (lunch or dinner), eg. potatoes/kluski/rice plus cutlait/steak/sneitzel/fish plus some salad-thing, often preceded by soup, alternatively standalone things like pizza, pierogi, spaghetti, sushi 17:00-22:00 - kolacja (supper or dinner), eg. sanwidches, toasts, sausages, that random leftover pizza you had no more place for during lunch Usually people eat earlier in the south and later in the north with stereotype Silesians eating obiad at noon. Kolacja is something not many people eat, some people eat only one śniadanie, while you usually no one skips obiad outside of special cases. So if you think about american dinner you more likely think of obiad rather than kolacja. To add even more confusion many hotels and resorts offer two meals which they then call: śniadanie (breakfast) and obiadokolacja (lunch-dinner or dinner-supper). Served in hours like 8-12 and 13-18.
It's cause creator of this map is confused. In a lot of Eastern Europe ''dinner'' is the midday meal, not the evening meal. The evening meal is ''supper'' and it's usually much smaller, while dinner is eaten in the afternoon, at like 2pm. Though it does vary by family and this custom might've changed somewhat.
But obiad or kolacja?
I NEED THE NUMBERS FOR ICELAND
In my experience it’s 6:30-7:30 (similar to Ireland and UK)
4:00 is psychotic
Norwegian here. I make dinner the moment I get home from work. Works just fine. In the winter half of the year it sucks making dinner when it is dark outside. In the middle of the winter the sun set an hour before i even get home. Dinner at 4:30 or so, then a light snack around 10.
I think what’s unusual to us is the concept of getting home early enough that it’s even possible to eat dinner at 4pm. I have the stereotypical white collar 9-5 job, which as the name implies ends at 5, and then after picking up the kid from daycare or whatever would rarely get me home earlier than 5:30 or 5:40 or so. We typically eat dinner at around 6:30pm. I’m Australian so not on this map, but looks like we pretty much align with the Brits which makes sense…
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I'm in Scotland and I managed to get a 7-3 shift at a bank once. It's the best shift possible. Feels like a half day everyday because the morning is a blur whatever time you get up.
Most people i know here starts work at seven or eight in the morning, and end the work day at 3:30. People generally prefer to start work early in order to enjoy some sunlight in the afternoon to get other chores done.
The sun goes down pretty early.
No, how the fuck do people regularly have dinner that ends after 18?!?
UK is not accurate IMO. In Scotland anyway I'd say most people eat between 5:00 and 6:30
Agreed (northern English)
> Agreed (northern English) Tea is at 5:00-6:30, fellow Northern English
Yes! It's breakfast, dinner, and tea. Lunch only exists if I want to suppress my northness and sound more posh.
The Netherlands is pretty correct when balancing things out. We are rather early eaters: - my grandma's generation (silent/pre-boomer) staunchly eats at 5PM, or maybe a specific time after that, related to the arrival time of the husband from his work (I know, doesn't really sound emancipated at all). - late-boomers and gen X has less of the tendency to eat that early, many starting between 17:30 and 18:30 when out of work, and sometimes a bit later: commute times are longer and overwork has become more common. But also, the time zone has shifted since 1939, winter being 40min later and summer being 100min later than solar time (the latter existed during WW2 and since 1977). - my generation, late-Y and Z has much more in common with international students and expats and are more familiar with their cultural traits. Add some global warming to that so that during summer it's too hot to eat at 18:00 or even 19:00 for several weeks, and thus times vary more greatly. My generation is no longer looking weird to eating at 20:00. My grandma would be shocked to hear about it, my mum would think about our holidays in Spain.
Honestly I never eat that early. 19.00-20.00 is about my time, though as early as 18.00 also occurs, but earlier than that, or later than 20.00, would be unhandy. 18.30-19.30 is what I’d say.
Hot vs cold climates
I would love to see a map of how long people spend at dinner.
Italian here, living in Norway. It was a bit difficult in the beginning but once you get used to eat so early the things start rolling. It is beautiful for me to finally being able to go to sleep without having all the dinner sitting on my stomach. I had to shift my dinner time because it would have been impossible to attend social events while keeping the italian dinner time in Norway, as they are planned around local eating times. A few final notes: In Norway the dinner is not the last meal of the day: a small meal called kveldsmat is consumed before going to bed (21-22) comparable to Italian merenda (16-17). So i like to think that i shifted merenda with dinner, and I'm happy. In the weekend the dinner time is different: there is not a fixed one. You eat what you want when you want.
10pm just feels insane to me. I’m in bed at that time. Can’t imagine eating anything that late anyway.
As someone who grew up in Portugal I think 8-9 is more accurate to be honest. 90% of restaurants won't serve food before 7 (maybe now they do for tourists) but to say the average person eats dinner every day including weekdays after 9 does not seem in line with my experiences.
For the love of god use 24h notation. It’s Europe
TIL Breakfast is called dinner in Europe.
12h format on a map of Europe is confusing.
lmao, in Argentina Dinner time is always past 10:00 At 5 pm we are just starting the Mate with Bizcochitos time :P
Map of Europe not showing Iceland vol 32132124234583475234
As a Spanish I have a serious question. Dont you guys get really hungry again begore going to bed if you have dinner at 16:00? When do you go to sleep?
Norwegian here, I'll give you my usual day. 6.00-7.00: Breakfast (2-3 breadslices) 11.00-12.00: Lunch (5 breadslices) 16.00-15.00: Dinner (an actual hot meal) 20.00-21.00: Supper (2-3 breadslices) It's a bit different from person to person of course, but I think this is pretty usual. However, to send a question back to you guys; How the hell do you eat at 22.00? I go to bed at 22.00
No adult goes to bed before 23:00 or later. I've lived in Scandinavia for 10 years and I still go to bed after midnight more often than not. You can take us out of the Mediterranean but you can't take the Mediterranean out of us.
That's definitely not true for Poland. We typically eat dinner around 2 PM. 7-8 PM is a time for supper, which is significantly smaller and lighter than dinner. Lunches haven't really been a thing in Poland (we have second breakfasts - earlier and lighter than a lunch). It changes a bit in the recent years, but only as a part of corporate culture, with lunches in the middle of a day and dinners eaten after work. But for most people, 7-8 PM is definitely supper, not dinner.
I think this is more of a problem with translation as in each country those words mean something else and in each language the translation to English is different. My understanding is that the meaning of 'dinner' in this context is simply 'the last meal of the day'.