Do Europeans strive to understand us as much as they . . .
. . . expect us to understand them?
I recently got into quite a heated discussion at work with a Frenchwoman who called New Yorkers rude and said Southerners were uncultured. When I gently tried to point out to her that her attitude was a bit arrogant/insular and that maybe she found them that way because they were different from her fellow Frenchmen and her, she got quite angry and said I was the arrogant one.
It got me to thinking. I know that Rick is quite big on Americans travelling to Europe with an open mind and not expecting everything to be as it is back home, but do Europeans strive to understand us and how different we are from them? Do Europeans understand that "being American" doesn't mean "being wrong or being inferior" but that it simply means that we have a different way of doing things?
I used to work in the tourist industry and Europeans have a strong reputation for being extremely difficult tourists: they don't understand our drinking laws, they don't learn our tipping customs, they don't usually travel to "Real America" but head to tourist traps instead, etc.
I'd really like to hear from people who have experience dealing with Europeans on a personal basis to see if they want to understand us or if I just have a really rude coworker who happens to be French.
Kathleen
Bolton 2/5/10
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I think you have a rude coworker.
I spent 3 years working in Europe on projects that had people from all over Europe. Just as you cannot generalize about Americans, you also cannot generalize about Europeans.
Thank you. This woman is quite difficult in other ways too, so I'm wondering if she's just one of "those" people (we've all met one or two right? :-) )
I know judging Europeans by how they behave as tourists isn't the best way, but I wonder if we and they really try to understand our relationship or if we just write each other off as rude/arrogant instead.
I think they are people with open mind and not so open mind everywhere. Some European people who stereotype think that Americans are somewhat naive and generally not well educated.
.....strong reputation for being extremely difficult tourists: they don't understand our drinking laws, they don't learn our tipping customs, they don't usually travel to "Real America" but head to tourist traps instead, etc........
Just the same as the ugly American tourist that we have seen, encountered, and wish that we had not. I doubt if there is much difference. Remember we always remember the pain in the butt but not the polite one.
I would bet that your co-worker would be disliked by most French people as well!
To Frank: Believe me, there is definitely ugly Europeans out there too. I'm wondering why there isn't an Ugly European Wall on this site.
I think countries vary a lot in their level of interest in other cultures generally - and their interest in our country varies a lot too.
American literature and culture is a popular academic major at German universities. Not so in some other cultures. And in the US, you can count the German majors on two hands at any given college, the foreign language majors on maybe a dozen. We're not nearly as interested in learning about Europe as they are in learning about us as a rule, I'd say.
Based on my chats with Europeans, it's just possible that the average European is better informed about American history and politics than the average American.
Traditionally, Germans spend 3 times as many travel dollars in the US as the French do, but the population of Germany is only slightly larger. It seems the French have a disproportionately small interest in things American. You're likely to find a much larger number of competent English speakers among the Germans than among the French. It wouldn't surprise me at all if French attitudes on the whole toward the US were more negative than German attitudes.
But you'll probably find a higher percentage of competent English speakers among the French than you will find Americans who can speak passable French OR German. These places just don't interest most Americans, who probably can't locate France on a map of Europe.
To Russ: I wonder if Americans are losing interest in Europe because our population is becoming more and more diverse. A much larger percentage of Americans are NOT descended from Europeans; whereas, in my parent's time, this was not the case. While I welcome this change in diversity (I'm not an American who hyphenates herself and I LOVE all cultures of this planet), I have to wonder how it's going to affect our relationship with Europe.
I have plenty of friends who don't see Europe as the Mother Land for the simple reason that their ancestors did not come from there. Interesting times ahead.
And I think that Europeans learn English because it's considered the second language of this planet, not because Americans speak it. I don't know any native English speaking country that is known for being multilingual and that includes England!
Kathleen, where is Notlob? (for you Monty Python fans out there) Isn't that in "Merry Olde ..."?
I know this is a generalization. Not all of these people are this way, but from my 65 years of experience, and speaking objectively, New Yorkers ARE rude and Southerners ARE uncultured. And a lot of the French are arrogant. Probably, a lot of Coloradans are cowboys, too.
As for languages, only in the sense of speaking English as a second language are Europeans multilingual. Less than 1/3 of Europeans speak a second language other than English. I was amused in Hallstatt last August. I never heard another native English speaker, but I heard lots of Orientals and Italian speaking English with Austrian merchants and waiters.
Kathleen,, you do sort of have some pretty strong opinions and sterotypes going there yourself. One grouchy co worker does not a nation represent .
I worked in the tourist industry for years,, and didn't find your assesment that true. It may have been your experience,, but not mine.
Frankly,, Americans are very demanding tourists, and they most DEFINATELY did NOT understand OUR drinking laws, , had quite a few arguments with Americans wanting Bloody Marys before we could legally serve liqour( we could only serve so many hours a day)or who didn't understand why their kids couldn't have lunch in the pub with them,, or why they couldn't find booze in the grocery stores, etc. , so ,, it totally works all ways .
and your tourist trap assesment is hilarious.. all tourists ask about going to main tourist sites,, look on any forum,, anywhere. Every one asks about the Eiffel Tower, or London Eye, or the Colisuem,, and I don't even consider those tourist traps.
I will tell you one thing,, Europeons as a rule have a much better grasp of basic geography then most North Americans,, period.
Depends on the individual. However, since we are dealing in Generalities: I think MOST (not all) Europeans do have a better understanding of the U.S. than we have of Europe. Not because they are better people or smarter or anything like that. But because they are constantly awash in TV, films and music from the US. Some of it rubs off. (Yes, it is sometimes a distorted image.) Also: America is the "elephant in the middle of the room" when it comes to the news. Your average European knows about the health care debate because its mentioned in European papers. Most Europeans similarly know that Hillary is Secretary of State. How many Americans can name a single European foreign minister? Again, this doesn't make Europeans better people, they are just exposed to it in the daily press. Finally, yes, the fact that English is the worlds second language gives them an advantage too. Almost defacto, you can't help but study elements of a culture when you study a language. Anyone who has ever studied German, French or Italian remembers picking up elements of the culture in the process. U.S. English is often what is being studied over here. After 6+ years living in Europe and traveling around the place, I'd generally say Europeans probably do know more about us than we (generally) know about them. However ---at the same time--- some also cling to wrongheaded stereotypes about us, just as many Americans hold outdated stereotypes about Europeans. I deal with Europeans daily at work and on the street. Normally they are about as polite and thoughtful as people anywhere. I think the message is: deal with people open-mindedly as individuals, not with preconceptions that they live up to some cherished national stereotype. But you'll find people on both sides of the ocean who prefer the easy shortcut of lumping people into big, gross, cartoonish stereotypes. I only rarely run into such folks, however. Most are friendly, polite, curious and welcoming.
I work in the medical field in a hospital close to St Petersburg Beach, Fl. I treat a lot of Europeans, especially Eastern Europeans and Germans. They are constantly reminding me of what a great country this is and that us American born citizens do not realize how good we have it. They seem to think that we take this country for granted. Now, these are people whose parents and grandparents were taken away to work camps in Siberia and some of them actually had to escape to so that they would not be taken to camps (Big Lithuanian population here). Being that the US has never experienced being taken over by oppressive governmental occupations (please no added remarks on either Bush or Obama), I can see what they are saying. These people love America, what it stands for and the freedoms that America fought for. They think that we have forgotten this. My patients seem to think that I am crazy when I tell them I would like to live over in Europe some day.
So a different take on the topic. Some Europeans are down with the American way and can't really understand why we all are not down with the American way.
"America is the "elephant in the middle of the room" when it comes to the news. Your average European knows about the health care debate...and that Hillary is Secretary of State. How many Americans can name a single European foreign minister? Again, this doesn't make Europeans better people, they are just exposed to it in the daily press."
American news is prominent in the media there, but we must remember that the media serves up what viewers want. European news is much more internationally focused because Europeans tend to know more and care more about international events. There has always been a stronger intellectual tradition among the general European population than here. That's why the news broadcasts here are sensationalized and dramatized, and only about half of them are really news anymore; the half hour of NBC, CBS or ABC news we get is peppered with puff pieces on rescued doggies and cancer survivors. Our news is intended to entertain, really, to make a news program palatable for the average American viewer, who wouldn't know enough to make sense of international news stories anyway.
Europeans aren't "better", but I have no doubt that it's part of their character to groom their intellects in a way that we Americans generally don't care about.
A few things that come to mind about this discussion:
First, there is no single European culture in the way there is an American culture. There are very defined regional differences between say a New Yorker and a Texan but they still share a core "Americanness" with the same, base, cultural touchstones. The same doesn't really hold for generalising about Europeans. You can talk about French culture or English culture even though there are big differences between Paris and the Alsace or Cornwall and Yorkshire but it doesn't work even with close neighbours like France and the UK. I know this is one of my bug-bears but I truly believe it. If you want to understand Europe the first thing you need to do is stop thinking about "Europe".
Secondly, I think every country has a place, an "other" that really serves as a cypher for local issues and ideas. In a lot of the world America fills that role, "Europe" does the job for many Americans. How they view this "other" usually tells more about the person than the target, the OP tells me more about Kathleen's views than any insight into Europe. Which brings me to my third:
(Amateur psychology alert!) I think American history gives you guys a strange relationship with Europe. On the one hand you have the hyphenated Americans and the longing to connect with their "roots." On the other you have this idea that Europe is the place you leave for a "better life". I think this leave an odd contradiction of ideas where you have this romanticised view of Europe but also the need for Europe to be some how "less" than America.
I'm sorry, but I have to laugh at some of this.
All French are rude. All Americans are difficult, All Martians are green....
I spent many years working with people from all over the world. And here's what I learned:
People are people. Our cultures may be different, our belief systems may be different, but people are individual. To group one nationality together in a negative way is absurd--as some of you have done in this thread.
For every difficult person of a single nationality, I've met some who were terrific.
Yes, some French are rude. Yet one of my closest friends was born and raised in France and is one of the nicest guys you could meet.
Yes, some Americans can be difficult tourists, and yet others are so friendly they are embraced by the locals wherever they visit.
I've met Canadians who spend all their time putting down America, and others, when visiting here, appreciate the fact that two nations so physically close and culturally similar, we have our differences.
I could go on and on. But stereotyping a nationality is like stereotyping in general. Some might say: All French are so and so. But would you then say "All African Americans are this, or all Jews are that, or all Hispanics are....."
People are people. Some are nice. Some are rude. We see that right here on the board.
A big reason Europeans get so much news from the US is that the US is the dominant power in the world today. What happens in America has a big impact on the rest of the world.
I think most people are basically the same, and every culture has a wide variety of individuals who exhibit all kinds of behavior. There are characteristics that tend to be true of cultures, but they don't apply to all individuals in that culture. For example, New Yorkers (in general) are not as friendly as Americans in the South or Midwest. This does not mean that all New Yorkers are rude or that all Southerners are friendly.
There is one general characteristic of Americans that I don't see in other cultures and that is the tendency to be so self critical. We are always apologizing and agonizing over our bad behavior. Do other countries do this? I can't think of any. I find it curious and wonder where it comes from.
Yep, people are people. Just like there's been comments on here about our American friends wondering why we would want to go to Europe, there's people with opinions everywhere.
On our last trip to Austria, we were apparently the first Americans to ever stay at the farmhouse we had booked, so we were the talk of the place before we even got there. There were 4 other families staying there. We're still in contact with 3 out of the 4. The 4th family, who were Austrian, had no interest in having anything to do with us, especially the dad. This was during the Bush years, don't know if that had anything to do with it or not.
One of the families, though, was planning a trip to Disneyworld the next year. They ended up not going since they got disgusted with the capitalism of the whole thing. My thoughts were, "duh, it's Disney", but I guess I knew more of what to expect than they did.
"Not all of these people are this way, but from my 65 years of experience, and speaking objectively, New Yorkers ARE rude and Southerners ARE uncultured."
Is this a joke? By the way, you are speaking subjectively, not objectively....
As one of them there unkultured, unedukated sutherner's I reckon I ain't got no cause to express my unobjektive opinion but I have to agree with whut Frank II so wisely said. During my travl's I have found the majority of folks to be nice, friendly and helpful with very few being whut I wud call rude, obnoxious or mean spirited. However, being a simple unkultured suthern boy from Jawga maybe I'm not smart enuff to be aware when them folks who are akshully being rude to me are being perceived by me as being friendly. Me and my wife of 42 years have friends in Holland and Germany who have treated us like royalty during our vists with them but I suppose their friendliness has ben out of symppathy for our unkultured upbringing. I wuz brung up by my momma and them to treat folks the way you wished to be treated. I have tried for the most part to live by that simple backwoods filosofy and as I look back over my almost 67 years of living, I appreciate that advice. Ain't it funny how it ofen seems that the folks who komplane about other people being rude and unfriendly to them are the same ones who constantly run into them kinda people. Might'n it be its the way we treat others as to how we ourselves are treated. Thems my thunks.
Back in my touring days, I spent a couple of years taking people from all over the world on tours of the U.S. At the end of each one, I'd ask: "What did you experience that was unexpected?"
The most common answer: "That Americans are so friendly."
They, too, came with stereotypes about the U.S. and Americans, and once they experienced it, their attitude changed.
A lot of negative stereotype people either have never met anyone from the places they put down, or simply hate others through their own ignorance. General bigotry is usually a mixture of ignorance and fear.
Pat is right on about Geography!
That's a very rude coworker and does not represent all of French people.
It is true that "some" Americans "can" be very demanding. I must say that my last couple of trips we saw less and less demanding Americans. But then again, others from different countries do come to the US expecting things to be exactly like what they have back home.
For example, we met a group of Jamaicans who said to us that after travelling to several states they figured out American culture...Coca Cola, hamburgers and hot dogs. :-) Apparently, we are the simplest culture to figure out.
Lane, I absolutely love Southerners and their sense of humor.
I think my coworker is just a difficult person in general because she does have a pretty well established habit of "expecting" things to be her way (don't even get me started on the coffee room). I think she's led a very privileged life. :-)
Kathleen, I went back to school recently to work on my Masters. When I say recent, I'm talking about 8 years ago. I had a French professor who has to be the worst French person I have ever come across. Rude, arrogant, always insulting Americans, always wanting things HER WAY.
Well, now that I am taking French classes, I am blessed to have a Parisien teaching me, and she is the opposite. She actuallys knows that other woman and said she would never associate with her. Maybe this coworker is related to the French woman I am writing about?
I don't believe it has anything to do with being French. We all know someone like that, and they are not French. I remembered "L" when you posted, so I came back to say that "I feel your pain!" Just continue being the "better" person.
This has been another interesting topic. I agree that people are people and think Kathleen's co-worker is just a self-centered person.
As many have said, most Americans do not know as much about European geography, history and current events as most Europeans know about the US. One of the things I always take w/ me is a small laminated map of the US w/ my small town in northern Idaho indicated by a red dot. Most Europenas ask where we're from, and this is a quick way to show our location. Most are amazed when they see how far east of Seattle we are (5-5 1/2 hrs driving and no good train service). In the US, I'm been asked how close I live to Des Moines and how often I go to the beach in the summer...............
Lane: loved y'alls comments---great reminder that humor and a smile will overcome most situations.
I totally agree with Frank,, I mean ,, some Americans suck,, and some are GREAT!!! I have met both types, in person and online.
I have also had a grouchy encounter with a burntout metro worker in Paris.. so they're not perfect either,, LOL ,, but thats just as it is everywhere,, no place is perfect.
I really think there have been some great posts here, especially regarding the whys of how they ( Europeons) seem to know more about us then we know about them ( tv, media etc) .. makes alot of sense.
Last thing,, human nature is what it is,, and that supercedes any cultural ideology or customs . We are all more similar then different. Sometimes its just so much easier to see the differences though.
As one of those uncultured Southerners, I've found that you find what you expect to find. If you expect all French to be rude, you'll only notice the ones who are. If you expect all New Yorkers to be rude and all Southerners to be uncultured, that's all you'll see. You'll certainly miss out on the majority of nice and interesting people because you've limited your vision to only see the stereotypes you've invented. And by the way, this is the first time it's been pointed out that I'm uncultured. I thought I was just ignorant and racist. Next time I'm in Florence, I'll be sure to concentrate more on the gelato and leather than the museums and art. Oh, and it's been Asian, not Oriental, for quite some time, I believe.
Wow- it truly amazes me how often this topic and different variations of it, comes up! There are billions of people in this world! To try to lump any group/country/culture into one "category" is truly pointless. Why bother? There are rude and obnoxious people all over. Posting these types of questions just tends to insult and inflame. As someone else said, different cultures have different mannerisms and approaches to things. That doesn't mean either is necessarily right or wrong. Accept the fact that no matter where you are, predjudices, unfortunately, exist. If you take responsibility for yourself (and really that's all you can do) and treat others with respect and a smile, more than likely you will be treated this way back. If they still are truly rude and miserable, killing with kindness will confuse them :)!
Michelle, great post!
Carroll, the Brits criticise themselves and their culture quite a lot.
I'll make a comment that is along a little different line.
Consider not where someone is from, rather consider what life experiences they choose to seek. Those who choose to travel, not those who are expatriate, but specifically those who choose to experience other cultures as a means of relaxation are a unique breed.
Among those who choose to travel, to expose themselves to new and possibly uncomfortable differences, and who also happen to be women are a particularly unique lot.
In my personal, subjective, experience, women who are travelers are among the most pleasant people to know. Not always 'nice', but always fair, and always willing to explore an issue, an experience, or simple time together in such a way as to become better people.
Women travelers are simply a delight.
Oh... and more in line with the topic... Canadians are, in my very subjective experience, the most inclined of any group on the planet to try to start all encounteres politely than any other geographically defined group. How the encounter ends up varies by the individuals involved... ;)
Hi Kathleen:
One of the most obvious things I learned while working and traveling in Canada, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, England, Germany, Italy, France, Austria and America is that women were always nicer than their husbands no matter what country. No surprise. The other observation is that when gathered around a very large table in a working session made up of people from these countries, Americans were always the peacemakers. Finally, I have lived many places in the U.S. Southerners are kinder and gentler and more courteous (Charleston consistently rates as the most polite city in the nation) but as a region have less money. Fewer I meet have been to Lincoln Center, Versailles, Prado etc. North Easterners including Mid-Atlantic are more frantic and hurried thus more direct and abrupt. Westerners have to be looked at as Mountain States, Pacific NW and N. Calif and S. Calif. Hawaii is different. Alaskans are really different. The Goldilocks section of the U.S. is the Midwest - friendly, considerate, urgent. But of all the places I have been I would rate the small town American South as the friendliest, followed by small town Austria. If rude is defined as discourteous, I would rank the center of Paris well ahead of NYC. Bill K
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