Are there popular “when I was the same age as you now” stories that your parents like to tell?

22 comments

  1. For us (Italy) it was basically the peak. I wasn’t born yet, so the stories I hear are about how much easier life was compared to know. In particular I like hearing the stories of my mom because she was a teenager back then and she said she remembers those days as being coloured and happy. She says that’s when fashion and culture started to become more “american” and globalized and it was the time of “Paninari”, basically the trendy people with weird slang and clothes that would gather in the Italian version of McDonald’s, called Burgy.
    My grandparents always tell me how much life had changed from the 50s, after the war, to the 60-70s, when they went from having nothing to having everything.

  3. It was exciting to get our first mobile phone, but I could only call my flatmate because we didn’t know anyone else who had them.

    And computers had dial up modems for a slow internet, although there was no Google, mostly text based usenet bbs, like an early Reddit but without the crackpots and swearing.

    And music was awesome.

  4. It was the troubles here, so constant murders, bombs and sectarian violence. Not a fun place to be.

    Worst atrocity of the troubles happened in August 1998 when 29 people and 2 unborn twins died in the Omagh bomb in County Tyrone.

    So Northern Ireland is definitely an outlier for Western European countries at that time. Probably one of the most violent places in Europe in the 90s apart from the Balkans.

    Luckily I was born in January 1998 so missed the troubles, but I was in Omagh that day with my mum as she buying me baby clothes and I was in the pram, and I always get this weird feeling that it could’ve been me caught up the in the bomb. Bit morbid lol

  5. I’m old enough to have lived through the 90’s and remember at least the latter part somewhat. Sweden had a financial crisis and almost defaulted (is that the correct word for when a country is insolvent/bankrupt?), my parents bought a house at the peak of the housing bubble and divorced a few years later when the bubble had burst and they both ended up broke as fuck. We were like the only kids in the neighborhood with divorced parents at that time and I think a lot of that was because of the mortgages that went up to double digit interest, people simply couldn’t afford divorce.

    We also had the Scandinavian biker wars as well as Yugoslavian mafia stuff, and neo Nazis running around.

    Despite all that Sweden was incredibly safe, we didn’t lock our front door and left the keys in the car, us kids played outside until the sun went down and climate change was something very abstract. Sweden won the bronze at the football World Cup. The world was good.

  6. Except for NI, see another comment here… the UK had its best recent period of relative prosperity. It didn’t last very long. A weird time. Great music, optimism, jobs… and simultaneously student loans, further public sector cuts, and the warmup for Brexit.

    But yeah, in general UK folks (not NI!) look back to the 90s as a relatively carefree time. Raves were still a thing. You could stil easily travel across Europe and maybe resettle.

  7. Finland had a recession so bad that its effects are still felt, at least emotionally. I was a child and a teenager and my family didn’t really lose anything as we didn’t own anything and my parents were civil servants. It has still affected the way I feel about money and job security.

    There were some good things as well, Finland joined the EU and generally opened up (which I guess some see as a bad thing). Winning the ice hockey world championships for the first time was a huge thing and maybe helped to get past the recession emotionally. And then in the late 90s things started to heat up with Nokia.

  8. For many Greeks, the 80s/90s were great. This was before the 2010s financial crisis, and the huge increase in cost of living in the 2020s.

    In the late 80s, Greece started experiencing immigration, and the country wasn’t prepared for it. People were coming from former-communist countries first, and then from the Middle East and South & Southeast Asia. I heard a stat somewhere that the country absorbed 1 million immigrants between 1990 and 2010, the majority European (mostly from former communist countries). Immigration groups say that their cheap labor contributed to the good economy of the decade, which is logical. I remember hearing as a kid “they opened their prisons and are sending their worse”, which Trump would say about Mexico many years later. Immigration was something new for Greece, which was an emigrant-sending country until the 1960s.

    Privatizations were being introduced. The EU as a whole was trying to liberalize the EU economy. Reforms dragged in Greece; there were frequent protests and strikes. But I remember when the first privately-owned TV channels were introduced in the early 90s, and there were more things to watch on TV. The “national carrier” Olympic Airways continued to bleed money, and was (thankfully) shut down by the EU in the 2000s. Delaying that company’s closing wasted so much taxpayers’ money, and the unfair competition delayed the growth of Aegean Airlines (now an award-winning airline). And just generally, it was more expensive to fly around Europe then. Charter airlines had been growing since the 70s, but LCCs (easyjet, ryanair, wizzair, Volotea, etc) would start to take off in the 2000s.

    During the Cold War, Yugoslavia wasn’t behind the Iron Curtain. So in the 80s it was pretty popular for people to drive through Yugo between Greece and Austria/Germany. Then the Yugoslav wars happened in the 90s, and that was no longer possible. The only options were time-consuming ferry to Italy, or the *very* time-consuming detour through Bulgaria-Romania-Hungary, which also had bad infrastructure then. Italy became the more popular route. (So, Greeks that remember the 90s sympathize with Finland’s relative isolation today).

    But despite the good economy, a lot of dysfunctional things never got addressed, and then shit hit the fan in the 2010s.

    Infrastructure was crap. The airport terminals were shit. There was no motorway system; so, some heavily-trafficked 2-lane highways were a nightmare. Athens Metro only had one line. Then PPP was introduced (partial private sector involvement), and all those things were quickly modernized in the 2000s/2010s (many regional airports were only just modernized a few years ago). The historic preservation movement was juuuuust starting. A little belated for, say, Athens. But all these wonderful historic towns in the Peloponnese region that attract tourism today, and airbnbs, and boutique hotels, etc, I remember them falling apart as a kid.

    I remember going to Rhodes with my parents in 1995, and my parents were conversing with the locals there, and I remember them being worried that tourism was down that year. (Rhodes is very tourism-dependent). Tourism arrivals nationwide in the 90s were something like 10-12 million per year? It was 34 million in 2019, and projected to surpass that in 2023. The tourism industry has **definitely** changed by leaps and bounds. Restaurants, hotels, resorts, historic preservation, customer service, everything is a lot more sophisticated now compared to the ’90s.

    At the end of decade, Greeks very, very quickly adopted cellphones, but were very slow to adopt the Internet. And as you may know, phones didn’t have Internet until later 2000s.

    In 1996 there was the Ímia crisis with Turkey. A little uninhabited island we call Ímia, they call Kardak. It’s still a frozen issue today.

    There was a group of political assassins called N17. In the 90s they assassinated some British military guy. Our center-left govt at the time was accused by the US/UK of not doing enough to catch them. It caused a lot of diplomatic tension. Then I remember when they were caught in 2002. Some old-school hard-left revolutionary that had been a fugitive for 20 years, a few others, and his Spaniard girlfriend, lol. Make no mistake though. They were pieces of shit, but because they only targeted certain politicians and rich people, many people on the far-left sympathized with them.

    No malls. Fewer choices of stores. All family-owned. Which sounds nice, but they had crappy customer service. So the introduction of pan-European chains like the Zara’s and the Bershka’s and the IKEAs changed the retail culture of Greece. McDonald’s also arrived, and grew fast, and then everyone realized it’s shit, and it shrank just as fast as it grew; they couldn’t compete with the local fast food chains.

  9. The nineties was the decade of my teens. In my memories it was an absolutely care-free age. Here in the Netherlands there was nothing but stability, optimism and prosperity. We liberated ourselves from the last existing Christian dogmas and introduced the right to have euthanasia and lay the way to be the first country in the world with legal gay marriage. It was overall the decade where we found the middle road between liberalism and social democracy. And then 9-11 happened..

  10. Was a golden time compared to now. Berlusconi hadn’t yet had enough power to completely fuck the country, climate was still rather temperate instead of the complete dysfunctional mess we have now, people weren’t dumbed down by social media, television was better, economy was better.

    If it were for me, the world would be locked in a 80s and 90s loop forever. Sucks for what we would lose, but it’s not worth it anymore.

  11. I was a teenager during the 90s, so could easily be remembering it incorrectly, but to me it felt like a pretty positive time.

    Lot’s of things seemed to be either getting better, or at least getting *happier*. Music is a big example of this: the 80s had a lot of angst, and the early 90s was all about grungy rock. Then in the mid 90s it’s suddenly all cheerful dance, brit pop, punk rock etc. Fashion also began to be dominated by bright colours, and baggy comfortable clothing. The 90s was easily the most comfortable I’ve ever been in terms of what I’ve worn. The whole “Cool Britannia” thing came along, and suddenly it felt trendy to be British, which was a big change.

    Culturally things began to change a lot. Old prejudices began to melt away, and there was a feeling of embracing the future. The Millennium was on the horizon, and was exciting. The Internet burst on to the scene, and while nobody knew where it would take us, it felt like being at the beginning of something big.

    For those in to sport, football emerged from tragedy and violence in to an era of smart stadiums, exotic foreign players, massively increased TV coverage, and more fun to watch styles of play. Euro 96 in particular felt like football entering a new time.

    What really summed it up was the election in ’97. It was not only a massive landslide politically, but it was a big social landmark as well. A tired old government full of shabby scandals was booted out and replaced by a brand new one with modern ideas and young actual human seeming politicians. At first anyway. The lustre of that definitely faded pretty quickly, but it still had a big sense of an old era finishing and a new one starting.

    We look at the Millennium as being a big dividing line, but to me that real change over from the past to the future felt like it was happening a few years early in the late 90s instead.

  12. The nineties were really a breath of fresh air and there was hope in the air. The 80s were very much always under a cloud of World War 3 breaking out any time now. I remember having nightmares about atomic bombs dropping. There was a very clear division between East and West.

    Then the wall fell, still the most important event during my lifetime. Did that mean the hard times are over? Can we dream of a future not under an atomic cloud? We were weary at first but when the coup in the USSR failed and the enemy was no more, we knew good times are ahead of us. Life looked good, we started to see people from the Eastern Block, hell they even became personal friends. Life was good, we made it as a human race.

    Then 2001…

  13. As a child born early 80s, the 90s was the best decade!

    Today my generation is full of nostalgia about the 90s.

    There are several 90s parties held, with music from that decade, and people dressing (or try to) like we did back then.

    Also, we like to tell our kids how things were different and simpler back then. (only 1 TV channel, no youtube/netflix, no smartphones, no ipads, children played outside, knocked on friends houses and asked if he/she would come and play. Called the “house phone” and asked if he/she was home)

    Economically / politically I don’t know, because I was too young to care, but I know Gro Harlem Brundtland was prime minister for many years of the 90’s (first woman), and she is condidered our “Land Mother” and highly respected.

    I guess also we must mention the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer 1994. This is considered (at least by Norwegians) the best olympics ever.

    Everything in that olympics was perfect, and it boosted our national pride my 10000%

    ​

    One more thing: Norway qualified to the football World Cup (USA 1994 and France 1998). First time since 1938. This is extremely important as well.

    I miss the 90s <3

  14. We had much more unemployment compared to for example the 70’s and also today, higher suicide rate (though it peaked in the 80’s – the false stereotype that Nordic countries have high suicide rates come from that time) and we hadn’t paid off our national debt yet. There was also the Nordic Gang War in the 90’s. But *on the world scale* it certainly felt kind of optimistic and exciting I guess.

    But in Denmark, basically a time with its ups and downs, though it’s my impression it was also broadly seen as better than the 80’s which is/was literally known as “the poor 80’s”.

  15. As a teenager in the 90s in the UK, it was great. Football wise the decade started badly for my team but from the 92/93 season it became really fun, and football generally was going through a bit of a renaissance. The music was excellent, TV in the UK was brilliant, great video games too. Record Shops and Video Game shops were better.

    Of course we watched the tragedy of the wars in the former Yugoslavia on the TV news, but in many ways the 90s was a positive, progressive and peaceful decade. The Cold War had ended and it was pre 9/11.

    I believe that the 1990s was the zenith of human civilisation.

  16. For Germany it was the time of reunification. Turns out trying to unify two states, two ways of thinking and two ways of doing economy is fucking difficult. Especially when one country as at its last legs economically and the other one isn’t.
    I wasn’t born until 2001, so I can only tell you stories from my parents and grandparents. Also my family lived in the GDR (east Germany) right up the border to West Germany.

    They said that you could buy anything all of a sudden and you could also travel everywhere, but everything became expensive overnight.
    Lots of companies closed in the span of a couple of years/months since they didn’t know how to compete in a capitalist system and they were also horribly outdated in terms of machinery and general technical stuff.

    Also there was the problem of teaching people what democracy, real democracy with real voting is, when they have only known the SED with 99.9% all their lives.

    It was a very difficult time, especially for many east Germans. Some say the reunification has failed entirely, which is not true, but not wrong either. It wasn’t 100% success either.
    Personally I am glad everything happened the way it did, otherwise Germany would be a whole lot different today.

  17. I was born 1991. In ROI we had the Celtic tiger. The state went from poor to wealthy for the first time ever. Emigration went way down. Lots of American influence: cartoons, toys in cereal boxes, a big Disney movie every 6 months or so and McDonald’s happy meal toys to go with them. It was a time of hyper-consumerism. So many plastic toys that were all made in China. I’m from just over the border and I didn’t know NI existed until around 1998 when we could cross the border freely. I remember my parents being amazed and excited about that. I also remember Bill Clinton being in the news a lot. I thought we were in the centre of the world stage right next to America (I guess we kinda were at that time). I also remember Omagh, praying for peace at mass, attending vigils for the victims. My wee town was so distraught by that. I can only imagine what the 70s and 80s must’ve been like.

  18. I grew up in the 90s, and here in Sweden just like in much of Europe and the world it was a time of rapid transition and change.

    First of all, in the early 90s Sweden was still recovering from the yet unsolved murder of our prime minister Olof Palme in 1986. Then a major financial crisis hit in the early 90s, with a lot of economic difficulties and uncertainty and very high unemployment. A very hard time.

    Sweden also saw a sharp right-wing turn politically, as the Social Democratic Party which had dominated Swedish politics for decades was losing power, and the populist and xenophobic far right was on the rise. There was also a lot of racism and xenophobia in society as a whole, with growing ”white power” movements holding manifestations, and there were even racially motivated murders. At the same time, there was also a large problem with criminal biker gangs who were fighting each other, sometimes also killing outsiders who got in the way. The first half of the 90s was an unruly, troubled and turbulent time.

    It was also a time when Sweden saw its first really large refugee immigration waves in a very long time, due to the wars in the Balkans. I remember how large refugee camps were built out in the fields near my small home village to house war refugees, and temporary buildings were set up on the yard of my school where refugee children had their own school lessons.

    Towards the mid 90s, it was slowly getting better again in Sweden. And in the summer of 1994, when Sweden won a bronze medal at the Soccer World Cup in the US, the whole country came together like a whole big party of joy, pride and optimism. It was an unforgettable summer. But then, in the autumn of the same year disaster struck, as the passenger ship Estonia sank in the Baltic Sea and 400 Swedes died on board. The entire country was immediately plunged into shock and mourning, and it truly felt like everyone had known someone who died on the ship. Once again, it was like the whole of Sweden came together as one, but this time in mourning.

    The 90s was also a time when Sweden got a lot closer to the rest of Europe – joining the EU in 1994 and Schengen in 1996. Just such a thing as being able to freely and casually take the ferry to the former East Germany, which had been such a hassle just a few years before was of course a huge change. And during the later years of the 90s, the Öresund Bridge was built between Malmö and Copenhagen, finally opening to in summer of 2000. That was of course a huge change as well, not only in binding Sweden and Denmark closer together, but also in getting Sweden closer to continental Europe in terms of travel.

    Then there was of course the huge transition in information with the coming of the internet, from very few people even having a computer at home in the early 90s to basically every single home having a computer and internet connection by the late 90s, with immediate access to the entire rest of the world. The world felt a lot closer, smaller and more connected than ever before. That was such an amazing thing.

    In the late 90s, Swedish society again seemed to take a left-wing turn politically, with the Social Democrats back in power, together with the Greens and the Left Party. There was also what seemed like a large green and left-wing turn in society as a whole. Environmental issues became a lot more important, and I remember that veganism was very trendy at my school. It also felt like there was much optimism for the future in general when going into the new, exciting millennium full of promise. But then, in 2001 September 11 happened, and I guess everyone knows the rest…

  19. In Czech, after velvet revolution in 1989, there was big boom of freedom in peoples mind. After 40 years, there was no oppression on our freedoms. People could star businesses and express in ways they could not before. Art was booming and generally mood in streets was great. It took few years for people realize that with freedom comes a lot of problems they did not experience during communist era (like unemployment, big scams and rise of corruption).

    But in general, 90s in Czech are considered positively for obvious reasons (end of dark ages).

  20. In Sweden things were great. We had a bump in the early nineties with a short recession,but nothing bad. Economy was great. Music was fantastic. Not too much immigration. Sweden was safe and happy. My generation was pretty carefree,we didn’t want to study. Everyone went backpacking for a year or more. I. Miss. It. So. Much 😭

  21. I was born in 1990. The gabber subculture was huge in the Netherlands in the 90s. I still remember being in elementary school and kids talking about the gabbers in the neighborhood having beef with the skaters. My older brother who was a teenager back then didn’t dress like a gabber but he was very into the music and had a Thunderdome poster on his door. He was always playing loud hardcore music on his DJ set, and we had neighbors complaining about it. Where other western countries had “grunge” as *the* 90s subculture, for us it was gabber.

  22. Belgium

    90s technology advancement is the most impressive IMHO:

    * When Internet went from a very happy few working in IT in large companies and (parts of) universities, to a wide-spread commodity.
    * When we went from cassette tape and record players via CDs to MP3s to iTunes
    * When we went from VHS via laser disks to DVD
    * When camcorders shrunk from VHS style to DV and went from analog to digital in the same motion.
    * When cameras went from film to digital.
    * When BSD became free of encumbered licenses: FreeBSD. [But Linux is on the same timeline as well]

    Overall it was a worry-free time for myself.

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