American Reacts to Fascinating Maps of Europe 

To be brutally honest with you, mixing coffee with olive oil and calling it "Italian coffe" is probably one of the most American things I ever heard of 😅

No one in Europe will spoil perfectly good coffee or olive oil by mixing the two. That's an American or should I say Starbucks thing.

I'm not Italian, I'm from Spain, but I'm offended on their behalf regarding the "Italian coffee" with olive oil... WTF starbucks? Is this revenge because they didn't let you open stores there until recently? 🤣

I'm from Spain, we love olive oil here but we would never put that in the coffee. That sounds kinda gross lol

About the quality of the roads. I live in the capital of Bulgaria, and I love the street I live on. It was last renovated by the Romans and is absolutely perfect for NASA to test their moon rovers here. They just have to wait for the summer because now the holes are full of water and another company is testing their boats here right now.

15:20 wtf?! Coffee with olive oil? and they call it an "italian coffee"?! What's wrong with starbucks?!

Olive oil in coffee presented as an Italian speciality is simply yet another marketing trick Americans failed to recognise and jumped on the bait 😂 PS: btw if you want to know more about what kind of "olive oil" you can buy intheUS, you can check the video from Johnny Harris

The countries that are on the side of olive oil are also the big olive oil producers in Europe.

olive oil vs butter is simple stuff - you can grow olives, you use olive oil, you can't grow olives, you usually use butter or lard, because you local cuisine works mostly with local sources of fat. There are huge differences in what people eat in different european coutnries. And yes, in Europe we still mostly eat our local cuisine. I guess there are some more cosmopolitan countries culinary wise, like Britain or Netherlands, but when you're a Greek, you generally eat Greek food, when you're Polish, you eat Polish cuisine 90% of the time, so you use traditional ingredients. In much of Europe people also eat homecooked meals all the time, even young single people often cook for themselves, so that's the reason.

the Po Valley in Italy has high level of air pollution because there you have concentration of factories, intensive agriculture and half of the national population. Also, in winter is cold, so you need a lot of heating. All of this is combined with the landscape.The Valley is sorrounded by montains that prevent the fresh air from the sea to enter, so the pollution is trapped there.

Dinner is a weird one because in Poland at least it is often translated as supper, where from my understanding it should be the biggest meal of the day which is usually eaten in the afternoon or late afternoon at the latest so working class eats dinner usually somewhere between 2 or 4 PM. Older, retired people tend to eat even earlier. We have never really had lunch and it just started being a thing fairly recently but it's not what we would call "obiad". Dinner is much better word for it.

The UK roads are really safe, as my wife has stopped driving😁

this mountainious terrain of Europe is IMO one of the reasons why we got so many small countries there in history. esp on the south - it means that nearly every valley was able to defend itself for long time sorrounded by mountain ranges from all sides :)

In Norway dinner is usually the first thing you do after getting home from work. Back when I was in school i was the first to get home and I usually started to make dinner so it was mostly ready when my parents got home. My dad got off work around 3:15pm (he started very yearly) and my mom around 4:30pm.

Spain uses CET [Central Europe Time] which is shared by many countries including Poland or Hungary, being Spain the most western one [Portugal is already shifted one hour less]. So, according to Sun position, we are not that that far from other countries in our behaviour. In June-July, day is still pretty bright at 22:00...

From what I understand, the air quality is much better now then in the early 2000s. I live in the Czech republic and frequently visit the Polish border and wouldn´t say there´s anything wrong with the air per say. Comparing that to what my father, who lived in the Industrial aglomeration around Ostrava on the Polish border (coal mining and burning), used to say, we are much better off nowadays.

Olive oil in coffee, um, basically a laxative

The European microstates or European ministates are a set of very small sovereign states in Europe. In modern contexts the term is typically used to refer to the six smallest states in Europe by area: Andorra, Liechtenstein, Malta, Monaco, San Marino, and Vatican City (the Holy See). Balkans and Baltics are not on there. Americans don't know enough about those parts.. it is mostly off of movies etc i would imagine, not actual experiences.

You know, as someone whose job is making maps for a living and knows the ins and outs of these sort of data, I can tell you that maps, more often than not, lie through their teeth. Depending on how careless the map maker was when handling/dividing said data or how intentional it was to mislead anyone who reads the maps, you can be told 20 different stories with the same data when pinned to a map. The maps are interesting, yes, but almost none of them give you an accurate view on whatever subject they're showing you, so it's good to look at them with a good dosage of salt in the mix, and I can even give you an example using the road fatality map. The data is shown in what appears to be a NUTS 2 division map of Europe, but the nature of the data dictates it shouldn't even be used at a NUTS 3 level. However, they proceed to tell you the areas where fatalities are lowest in a localized frame. Why? If there's a hotspot of accidents (a particular stretch of a highway, a known intersection where big accidents happen often, etc) inside that NUTS 2 division, everything is thrown into disarray and that whole region becomes a hotspot. It also omits road density, completely disregards traffic and ignores how old, on average, the vehicles are per country, amongst other 10-15 variables, where bigger fines can also be one of them. I'll also say that sometimes it's not even the fault of whoever is making the maps, but the source of the data themselves who only provides said data at a NUTS 2 level, perhaps. I'm not going to deep dive into it anymore than that because I'm saying this to simply give you an idea on how a map can lie to you, and once you start looking at maps with this POV in mind, you'll start noticing what I said above. They are interesting, but they're very far from showing/telling you the full story.

Much of the Netherlands coastline that you pointed out on the map was under water relatively recently. The Netherlands reclaimed a large amount of land from the sea.

Poland has high level of air pollution because its electricity and also local heating (homes) comes from burning coal. (That's, more generally, the reason of higher air pollution in Eastern Europe.) UPDATE: Re the American feelings about European countries: I still remember very well how, after the 2013 Boston marathon bombing, internet fora in the US got filled with discussion about whether the US should bomb Prague in retaliation. Our ambassador actually had to make an official statement basically saying that the Czech Republic and Chechnya are 2 different countries, quite apart from each other... So yes, I'd take that map with more like a bucket of salt, rather than a pinch.

The best state in the US on the road fatalities map would be orange (Rhode Island - 5.7 deaths per 100,000 people), not yellow. Most states would be red or dark red. A map of the US done using the same values would essentially look like Turkey (without the yellow bit).

13:55 The Netherlands is not just flat, it's below sea level.

Air pollution has also to do with geography, if you look at Italy with Milan and Turin, two main industrial cities. they are right in front of the Alps, the air remains mostly trapped in the region.

Not so fun fact: two Arma III developers were arrested under suspicions of espionage when they were in an island Greece and took some pictures of military sites as inspiration for the game's map, I think also based on the island. They spent a few months in prison but were eventually released.

You have some good knowledge of the European geography. Impressive 👍

fun fact on dinner time : we french dine at the same time as english. even though we're on the same kind of longitude, our french clocks have an 1 hour advance as most of Europe is on the same timezone (CET / CEST which are GMT+1 / GMT+2), while the UK is obviously on GMT / GMT+1. about butter vs olive oil, it's pretty simple really. butter comes from cows, they need lots of grass. the southern part of europe tends to get pretty dry with not that much grass, or in mountains where you would want goats or sheep mostly. meanwhile, the northern part is too cold for olive trees. So... butter in the north, olive oil in the south / along the mediteranee. PS : I'm french, half normand (where D-Day happened, with its famous "bocage" - lots of small fields in hilly terrain where you'd find lots of cows / horses / sheep happily mowing grasses), half "black foot" (europeans that lived in algeria). So, with my normand grand parents, we eat mostly butter dishes, while with my "black feet" grand parents, we eat mostly olive oil / tomato dishes.

2:07 The predominance of westerly winds causes all dust from Ruhr area to move east and fall in Poland. 7:58 In Poland, Germany, France and Spain there is the same official time zone, but people eat dinner at the same time because solar time differs in France by an hour from solar time, and in Spain by even two hours.

Spain late dinners have 2 reasons. The first one is obviously the heat, just like Italy, Greece or Portugal, the second one is the same reason we have UTC +1 but late sunsets... Franco wanted to have the same timezone as Germany.

I’m from Spain and it is mindblowing for me how some people in Europe have dinner at 4-5pm…i’m having lunch at 4pm!!

Funny thing about roads in the Netherlands and Belgium is that as you cross the border from the Netherlands to Belgium you can notice that the quality of the road infrastructure changes. In Belgium, if there are side/central barriers, they are usually rusty. Their roads are also bumpy. When my dad came and visited me, he loved Dutch roads.

Zofia in Poland it is Sophia in English. This name has always been popular in Poland. Zofia - female name of Greek origin. It comes from the word σοφία (sophia) meaning "wisdom". I've driven through the Netherlands dozens of times and I haven't noticed that they have "super quality" roads. The mountains in the Netherlands have a "killer" height of 400 m above sea level or 1,200 feet. Belgium 694 above sea level or about 2,100 feet

The smoke thing really shows how wildfires wherever it happens is everyone’s problems.

dinner time is usually set when everyone in the family gets home, when we come home from work and school. In northern Europe (Sweden) it's common to stop work at 4 pm or 5 pm and then get home to the rest of the family and eat dinner around 5-6 pm. It's like the family comes together from wehre they have been all day, and eat dinner together. That's probably the same for different countries in the rest of Europe as well, only that they end work or scholl at different times.

I am Australian but did an awesome road trip in Norway. The bridges and tunnels are amazing. There was one tunnel that did a series of corkscrew turns (felt like 15-20) to take you from the plateau down to the fjord at sea level. Another one even had a roundabout inside the mountain. There was a crazy road called the Trollstigen which had many hairpin bends to get you up or down the mountain.

Re: pollution in northern Italy - it's mostly due to the fact that the Po Valley hosts the most industrial cities of the country, like Turin, Milan, Genoa, but also Brescia, Verona, Mestre, etc. and the area, being a triangular shaped valley, its literally closed by two high mountain ranges, the Alps and the Appennines which block major continental winds, which makes it very difficult for pollution to "dissolve" in the atmosphere.

"What explains Poland for the big time pollution?..." Coal: Carbon intensity of the power sector in the EU - 2022 - CO2 grams per KWh: Poland *634* Cyprus *589* Malta *495* Estonia *464* Czechia *415* Bulgaria *399* Germany *385* Italy *371* Netherlands *354* Ireland *345* Greece *343* Romania *264* Croatia *246* Slovenia *237* Portugal *234* Hungary *222* Spain *217* Lithuania *194* Latvia *181* Denmark *180* Luxembourg *168* Belgium *165* Austria *157* Slovakia *140* Finland *130* France *84* Sweden *45* …. UK *249*

Yep, road fatality map was basicly showing how mountainous countries are, most people don't realize it as both Portugal and Turkey knowing for amazing beaches while in reality they both are quite mountainous.

My two best driving experiences were (surprisingly) in Italy, which otherwise has terrible roads and unruly drivers. :D The first was driving down Monte Grappa after sunset. You get panoramic views of lit-up Veneto, looking like Coruscant, most of the way down, and it's over a mile of elevation. Absolutely stunning! The second was the Spluga mountain pass when crossing into Switzerland. For long distances though, nothing beats the German Autobahn.

14:19 Olive oil vs Butter usage in Europe: The 1963 French comedy film "La Cuisine au Beurre," starring the two comedy legends Fernandel and Bourvil, is centered on that divide. Fernandel plays a southern cook from Marseille who comes back from the war after being held prisoner for several years, only to discover that his wife (thinking he was dead), remarried with a successful Normand cook played by Bourvil. Their restaurant, once famous for its Provence olive oil cuisine, is now cooking with butter!

You can have dinner at 11:30pm here in Spain, tho usually restaurant kitchens close between ~11-122pm. Commonly, at any spanish home, it's between 8-10pm. Keep in mind that we have sunlight until 9pm in summer, and it feels really really weird to have dinner while it's very sunny outside. 11pm feels late, and out of courtesy to the restaurant workers you wouldn't order anything past 11:30pm in a restaurant except if you are really hungry. After 11-12pm it's PARTY TIME.

I guess one of the factors in the air pollution in northern Italy is the combination of several major industrial cities with the plains of the Po acting like a funnel between the Alps and the Appenines. Basically, there's nowhere for the exhausts to go....

Spanish here, we do have dinner everyday at 21:30-22:30. Actually you will not find any restaurant open before 20h

I saw a video once saying that the UK's lower rates of accidents might be linked to them driving on the Left. Most people are right handed and with manual cars being way more common than automatics in Europe, having the gear shift on the right results on your dominant hand being off the wheel more often. As opposed to the UK, where the gear shift is operated with your non dominant hand and you always have the dominant hand on the wheel

The difference I find between roads in the Netherlands and outside of the Netherlands is that all roads are of good quality. Not only the highways and main roads, but also random countryside roads where few people live. They are just all in good shape. So much so that there is no word for potholes in the Dutch language.

Regarding dinner (actually supper), I'll bet the earlier/North, later/South phenomenon has something to do with the body's circadian rhythm and light. Although culture and temperature plays a big part. In Spain where we've spent quite a lot of time (I'm a Brit), midday siesta, later working and much later supper/evening stroll in the more comfortable evening temperatures is a thing.

That blemish in Northern Italy is the Po Valley (Pianura Padana), an enormous uninterrupted plain almost completely surrounded by mountains, which unfortunately also has one of the most dense, trafficked and industrialised areas of Italy (and Europe) and because of its geography captures the pollution and just holds it there

IW: "I tend to have dinner pretty late, at about 7:30" Me, a Spaniard:

Italians and Spaniards are first cousins. Argentina and all of Latin America are our brothers.

Belgium has some bad roads, mostly because they used a lot of concrete to create the road surface. I used to regularly drive to Antwerp to go to the cinema and as soon as you crossed the Dutch/Belgian border you instantly knew you were in Belgium based on the instant decrease in ride quality. I know that they started to do replacement of the concrete with regular asphalt in some of the places, but that just meant that you'd hit a nice patch of road only to be slapped in the kidneys again when the concrete would start again.

Hi, First about the diner time: the further south you go the hotter it becomes. That’s pretty obvious I think. It’s also more difficult to appreciate a hot meal while the average temperature is pretty high. I think that’s at least one of the reasons Then about the roads: I’m a Belgian so obviously I’m not entirely objective but it’s my understanding that in the Netherlands, the total coverage of roads in the country is not as wide as it is in Belgium. Don’t misunderstand me you can go wherever you want in both countries but you’ll have a better chance to go from point A to point B in straight line in Belgium. But then again the other side of the coin is that it’s way more expensive to maintain such a network of roads. In addition if you consider that Belgium is a crossroad in Europe, I’m sure you can get the big picture. Thanks for all your videos by the way I really appreciate them. Th.

Make this a series for me as a Bulgarian this video was extremely interesting to me!

8:00 this one is always confusing me and it's difficult to change habits. For me dinner was main dish of the day, eaten when you come back from work/school, so in my country usually 3-5pm. But then I learned that you guys call evening meal a dinner, which would match the time 7-8pm on map.

In the UK the driving test is very strict. Only 17-year-olds pass it first time (then they usually have a prang). Also cars more than three years old have to pass a roadworthy test every year. This used to be under the supervision of the Ministry of Transport (MoT). This Ministry has now been absorbed into the Department of the Environment, but the test is still referred to as 'the MoT', as in 'has your car been MoT'd yet?'. The car, to pass the 'MoT' test, which has to be carried out by a Department of Environment-accredited garage, has to pass on brakes, steering, tyres (they have to have at least a minimum amount of tread), lights, including indicator lights, windscreen wipers including the wiper-wells having water and liquid detergent/washing-up liquid in them, the horn working correctly. They may have included some more things in recent years - other commenters can correct me if I have left anything out. You need to submit your up-to-date MoT certificate in order to pay your annual road tax. You need to have paid your road tax in order to insure your vehicle. Driving an uninsured vehicle is a very serious offence and can result in a prison sentence.

My favourite roads are in France especially the Jura Mountain Range where I can go all out with my CBR 1000 RR, living only 2 hours away is a blast, the Hérault département where I live is mostly flat so theres not many weavy road to have fun on, and being on the coast of the Mediterranean sea, we have splendid views around here just not many mountains

1:40 I think the most likely option it's the condiction of the pavement, but also in UK driving tests are more strict.

I drove in norway, denmark, netherlands, germany, austria, check republic, slovenia, croatia, italy, portugal and greece and i definetly enjoyed the norwegian roads the most. endless twisted mountain roads in perfect condition, not much traffic and epic scenery

I drove through all of Europe (including Ukraine), US and Canada. Highways in Ukraine built recently are pretty good, but local roads, especially in the East get bad. Overall Ukraine does have good transportation infrastructure with trains affordable and available anywhere. I agree, Netherlands and Switzerland have some of the best roads I've driven anywhere. Also, roads in Poland are very good.

For the late dinners in Spain - big part of that is because of the timezone. Spain is in the same timezone as Slovakia or Poland. Those countries have one to two hour difference of a sunset and a sunrise (depends where exactly in those countries are you located).

Any real Italian that hears that you mix olive oil and coffee and call it "italian" would spit into your coffee, so never do that in Italy😂 My favourite place to drive in is basically all of Switzerland. As long as you stick to the speed limit (which isn’t always that easy as a German :D), it‘s so nice. The most beautiful landscapes you can find on earth, and quite some cultural differences and languages in such a small country.

Driving wise, I have to say Switzerland is the best place to drive. Everyone respects the rules, roads are in perfect conditions, the scenery makes it a lot nicer to drive in as well, just nothing negative about it.

So from me from my Italian half, so to speak, that Between ca. 12a.m. and 4:00 p.m. Quiet time is there, almost nothing is going on, Siesta. At my grandparents' house in Sardinia, we always have to deal with that we had dinner at 08:00 in the evening.

As a European i can say that no one here eats dinner between 4:00 and 10:30. We eat dinner between 16:00 and 22:30. One that made the map don't know how to count to 24. 😉

Yeah that Starbucks coffee... Some American is like "How can we make this coffee Italian?" Lets put olive oil in it! Hell yeah!

I just came back from Germany & Netherlands road trip. I must say the road infrastructure in Netherlands is very good, but I hated the 100 kmph (62 mph) speed limit on the highways. I missed the German autobahn entire time during the visit in the Netherlands.

I make the Italy - Austria - Slovakia trip twice a year. Austrian roads have been disastrous for at least 20 years. Continuously interrupted or have work in progress, they are often ruined. It's absurd that on the map they're better than the Italian ones, when it's the opposite.

great video and I love the Unimog hat.

During the different ice-ages a lot of the lower topography levels was under glaicers, which formed the landscapes.

About the higher numbers of traffic accidents in that part of portugal, I don't know for sure but I suspect the reason being that area population is actually very low and turism is very high, in fact that crimson red part is has the big highways everyone has to go through to get to the very south, that by itself already increases the number of accidents but if you now consider the number of accidents per population which is very low it will skew the results because turism does not count as population

@2:30 I think most of it is power generation. Eastern Europe has a lot of coal power. For Italy It is probably the high concentration of gas fired power and industry in the area.

Road fatalities : UK has very narrow roads in a lots of places, forcing people to drive slower and be more carefull -hence, less mortality. In some areas of Europe, it can be due to the fact that there are less cars per habitants. For exemple in France, you will notice that Île-de-France (Paris and its region) is white as well. It's because, despite the number of people concentrated here and the number of cars you will see when walking in Paris, the majority of the population use public transportation -I spend 8 years in Paris and its suburb and didn't even own a car while in the region, like a lot of people there. Air pollution : west europe have had stricter rules for a longer time than east Europe, hence the difference. Also, some countries, particulary in the east (hello inheritance from USSR), product electricity via thermic centrals that use coal, which pollute the air a lot (many are working on it). Dinner time: Super hot in the south in summer, particularly in Spain and Portugal, so people took a nap after eating at noon/1pm, and enjoyed the more bearable evening temperature in late afternoon and evening, and thus ate at those time. In scandinavia, in winter, 4 or 5 in the afternoon is already nightime... So people cook and ate earlier (electricity is a recent thing !) Canadian smoke reaching Europe : Well, I'm from France, from Bretagne (west peninsula in front of England) next to the atlantic. We're used to remove red sand dust from the cars a few time a year. No, not from our beaches (our sand is white), this red sand comes from Sahara ! But it doesn't always come from the south, most often it travels so much that it reaches us from the atlantic nord, from west if not the north-west...

13:40 I live in Oldenburg, in the northwest of Germany. And yes, the terrain is extremely flat here - most of it is drained boglands, and the few "hills" are basically sand dunes which have been flattened by the last ice age.

4:49 Those are not micro states as they are relatively large compared to the real micro states (Liechtenstein, Andorra and San Marino which is also the oldest still existing democracy by a large margin). Those 3 are too small to show up on that map.

The biggest shocker for me was olive oil in coffee. Any Italians here to explain this or is it some weird American/Starbucks thing? Also, any Americans here who would tell me if anybody actually tasted it and why?

The road fatalities one has a massive number of variables. Driving standards are pretty high in the UK and the reason for the differences locally is probably the time it takes an ambulance to get to the scene which is why the scotish highlands are the the most dangerous. The area around the Nederlands and Belgium is called the low countries in the UK (mostly from when there were dozens of small nation states and naming them took hours) Big chunks of the northern portions of the Nederlands are reclaimed land and much is even under sea level.

the butter and olive oil thing goes back thousands of years as in north u had to preserve food for cold winters whilst in south u had sunshine and party all year long

The pollution in Poland is probably caused by the fact that Poland is generating most of its power from coal. The pollution in the north of Italy might be caused by the fact that it is the industrial center of Italy e.g. Fiat in Torino. Romania and Bulgaria are relatively new members of the EU and might be a little behind in ratifying European Law concerning air pollution

Actually I'm really surprised that there were that many iOS users in Europe, usually Europeans are a bit more tech savvy than Americans and thus be more in favor of the more advanced Android phones.

I live in the south east of France, close to Italy. I sometimes go in Italy through a mountain road and you can see the difference at the border : the road suddenly becomes extremely narrow and is more damaged than the french part

There is a city in Poland called Krakow with interesting tourist attractions, including the Wawel Dragon and the Krakow smog.

Southern European/Mediterranean cuisine is heavy, HEAVY, on olive oil usage. You have olive oil with bread for your entree, where you dip the bread in it, then you eat a soup made with olive oil, then you eat fish seasoned with olive oil or meat fried in olive oil, and some desserts even use olive oil as a healthier alternative for other fats.

The olive oil/butter map of Europe immediately says 'history' and 'wealth' to me. Olives and olive oil were a major crop in the ancient world (Greek, Rome, Spain) and all the civilisations around the Mediterranean. It was a major wealth producer and trade item. I find fascinating that we're still finding 2,200+ year old olive oil amphorae being found in shipwrecks in the Mediterranean.

This cap is for sure his favourite cap. I love how he is still preforming with that salty lines.

Oppenheimer vs Barbie is a movie related search and what the map is showing, which country has a dumb population looking for the Barbie movie compared to to the little countries where the population seems to prefere a movie with a lot more substance like Oppenheimer, basically a map of "where are the idiots?". Or to phrase it differently: which movie are edjucated people more likely to watch? A movie about some plastic doll or a movie about a brilliant scientist?

I remember reading an article in Newsweek a number of years ago comparing "excellent" French roads to "terrible" American roads. The article pointed out that roadworks in the United States always go to the lowest bidder while roadworks in France generally go to the company that proposes the highest quality (within reason) and it is never the cheapest bid.

I think in Northern Italy it is because that is where the Alps make a sudden leap towards the sky from a large low valley and land, so I guess air gets trapped there more than normal.

Man I would love your reaction to similar maps of other continents like Africa, this is fun

Dinner times correspond with sunset, especially in Spain and Portugal (although Portugal and England are in a different timezone than Spain and central Europe) or northern countries starting the day earlier and therefor ending the day earlier as well.

Being from Poland, I can make a few comments: 1) About the Android vs iOS map: If I bought an iPhone, I'd immediately be ridiculed by my friends. Apple products are considered to be overpriced here and because of that people owning them are often considered to be show-offs who basically use Apple products to show how wealthy they are. It also doesn't help that Apple has bad reputation for poor customer service, difficulty of repairing their products by yourself or by an unauthorised service (which doesn't rhyme well with Europe's "Right to Repair") and being kind of backwards with common features (like lack of audio jacks or the reluctance to include USB-C in iPhones). EDIT: For the record, I have nothing against Apple users or Apple in general. I just know that if I owned an iPhone, I wouldn't hear the end of it from my friends. 2) Road fatalities: I'm not sure why there are so many car-related deaths in Poland but I can make a guess. Contrary to a lot of Europe, Poland is a very car-oriented country. While Europe has been kind of moving away from cars, Poles have been becoming richer relatively quickly and therefore feeling they can finally fulfill their moto-dreams. I've just found a statistic according to which Poland has the largest number of cars per 1000 people in the EU. So maybe more cars on the roads -> more people involved in accidents? Just a wild guess, though. 3) Pollution: While I think the comments you read explain well why Poland is a bit of a hot spot on the map (although I doubt the usage of coal power plants has that much of an effect, to be honest), I think there is one detail missing. Poland's air quality decreases dramatically in winter. The reason is that a lot of buildings still have independent heating systems based on burning wood/coal. Now, if you use good quality wood or coal that shouldn't be such an issue. However, Poles have an unfortunate mentality problem - most of us just don't care what we put in those furnaces. Have some old furniture? Burn it. Some plastic packaging? Burn it. Whatever you don't want that's taking up space? Burn it. During the recent winters, town and city authorities have been dispatching drones with probes measuring contents of the smoke coming out of chimneys and have been giving out hefty fines for burning illegal fuels. Unfortunately, old habits die hard.

09:00 Because in Portugal in the SUMMER, at 22:00 (10PM) there is still sun. We are used to eat late. In Hamburg(DE) in WINTER at 17:00 (5PM) its pitch dark. We where used to eat more earlier.

Spain is similar to my experience in Mexico City and Monterey for dinner. Great roads in Holland, Germany is also good and England so-so, I have driven a fair bit in all 3.

Olive tree need a lot of sun to grow well, and when people didn't have a fridge, it was difficult to preserve milk and butter compare to olive oil in warm climate too, so, this make sense that the more you go south, the more we use olive oil rather than butter. I live in an area where we use both, and also sunflower oil. It's not a strict rule at all but generally we use butter for sweets, green vegetables or potatoes cooking, olive oil for meat, fish, red vegetables, and sunflower to cook eggs, solid cakes and biscuits, frying... And we mix both oils or more with vinegar for our salad.

The reason Spain eats late (also for bfast and lunch) is because Spains clock is aligned with central Europe not to its solar time, so mid day in Spain is not at 12 is at 2, that's the highest point of the sun during the day. So in reality, 9 pm is more 7pm. Is funny sometimes to have meetings at 7.30am in winter and colleagues in central Europe will have full light while in Madrid is still dark.

Use of olive oil vs. butter is predicated by how far north can olives be grown.

I do like drive to Italy, Italian higways are from my point of view the best in Europe. BUT, probably most expensive, too.

That dinner map shows you how warm the country is, like the further south you go the later they eat. In summers we do eat later up here in the north too because you are not hungry when its too hot outside.

I feel like we do have nice roads up here in Finland, problem is they keep getting torn up by the cold winters every year, so we keep having to fix them which costs a lot of money (the asphalt)

About dinner time. In Norway we have dinner around 5 (sometimes as early as 4). But we do have a fourth meal of the day too called kveldsmat. That we have around 8 in the evening. So that's why dinner is early here

Re road quality: As a motorcyclist, I pay much attention to road quality. I always found that in the Alps regions, Italian roads are usually of insanely good quality, whereas once you cross the border into France, quality drops so much it's not even fun to drive anymore. (Contrary to the map, which summarizes whole countries.) Can anyone relate? :D

In winter in Spain we have dinner early because the sun sets earlier and it gets dark early. So these hours change a bit. In summer we have sub until 10-11 h.