Hacker News Reader

Comment by HPsquared | Hacker News Reader

Literally illegal in many places. Edit: including much of Europe.

where is it illegal in Europe? I've not encountered this yet and I've lived here my whole life. It's always struck me as a weird puritanical American thing

Looked online and found maps suggesting eastern Europe has more laws relating to it, although many of them in practice don't apply

Nordics, Eastern parts (except Czechia), even many parts of the UK have byelaws (e.g. Glasgow). Illegal in Russia and Ukraine too.

Russians drink anywhere and everywhere. Including cops themselves. Polish and Slovaks too. Ukraine has war related prohibition, other then that? Where exactly eastern is it not allowed (or not completely normalized to the point locals would be surprised there is such law)?

Maybe they just don't follow that law, but public drinking is apparently illegal in Poland, Romania, even some cities in Slovakia apparently. Supposedly the police in Poland take a strict approach? (See wiki article "Drinking in public / By country")

> Eastern parts (except Czechia)

Which "eastern parts"? I've never seen that rule here, but have seen people drinking in public. Do you know that or are you just asking AI to confirm your biases?

My biases were that Eastern Europeans like a drink, I was surprised to see the laws. I already knew about Nordics and my hometown, Glasgow.

Public drinking is generally illegal in Poland ('police take a strict approach'), Romania, Lithuania, Slovakia (apparently not enforced in Slovakia).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_in_public

Well, at least the Finnish laws against it aren't enforced at all and public drinking is very common. Judging by what I've seen, it seems to be the case in Sweden too.

Which in itself is a crime, IMO.

Most places do have a few dedicated areas like beer gardens. No supermarket beer allowed, of course.

So it's not true freedom for everyone; you're just staying at someone's place so the local rules of public space don't apply there.

Yeah, that annoys me as much as registering for a camping spot in a park (that doesn’t have congestion issues).

Technically. Enforcement is nonexistent, though. Hell, I've had police officers hand me drinks in public on numerous occasions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com