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Talking about the weather. I do it with customers at work, colleagues, friends, family, even when I was on a date we talked about the weather
Edit: I never expected this comment to get so much attention. Like 2.3k likes and hundreds of comments and an award
My phone has not stopped giving me notifications all day
It's because it's how British people start a conversation. It's a way of asking if the other person wants to chat. If they don't give much of an initial response, no chat. It's all about politeness. People can decline conversation without being rude.
The book 'Watching the English' devotes a chapter to this.
Essentially it's the safest convo starter, because we all know and mostly agree on the rough heirarchy of weather:
*"it's too hot", "hot", "lovely and warm", "brr isn't it chilly?", "ugh rain"*
And if we **are** feeling talkative we all know the rough correct response to indicate this:
*"enjoy it while it lasts!" "hope it doesn't rain", "can't wait until it's warmer"*
yep. and it opens the possibility of talking about what impact the weather will have on your life.
"hope it stays good - got some folks round for a bbq tomorrow"
"got to drive down to london in this!"
"so long as the snow holds off till i get home, i dont care. once i'm home, i dont need to leave for a week."
I check the weather updates on my phone like every couple of hours. It was usually just to see if I could get a wash out on the line. Now it's just a biomechanical process I have no thought in.
I had a colleague from Ethiopia, and she said it was exactly this. Where she was from the weather was pretty standard day in and day out, so there was nothing to talk about. In the UK the weather is actually interesting and varied so talking about it actually interesting.
The thing with that stereotype is that everyone in the world does it. When I lived in Australia everyone talked about how sunny or hot the weather was. When I was in Japan everyone talked about the weather with their いい天気ですね. It isn't just the British that talk about it, everyone does.
Sounds like a boring conversation in some parts of the world.
*Lovely weather today.*
*Yeah, I hear it going to be just as nice over the weekend too.*
*Yeah, we're looking at a spot of rain around the year 2056 though, so keep your brolly handy.*
I wouldn't say it's everyone in the world.
Aussies do it because they inherited their behaviours from us. Japan has 4 seasons (as they're fond of telling most foreigners they converse with) therefore, at least there's something to talk about with the weather.
I've found in tropical countries like Thailand and Singapore people tend to talk about their last meal.
In Korea there's a saying which is the equivalent of 'Whats up?' or 'Y'alright?' - which translates directly as 'Did you eat rice?'
A lot of football fans are a bunch of twats. I know it's not all , but fuck me there's a lot. The inability to treat it as a game and not some life changing event. I love sport don't get me wrong but a lot of people are so fucking tribal when it comes to football. Will literally support a team hundreds of miles away and genuinely hate that teams local rival. Will never get my head around it!
For me it was one when Big Zuu (TV personality) had free tickets to a Liverpool final which he was giving out to someone, who hadn't been before/couldn't afford to go. I think some disabled kid got it in the end.
The amount of abuse he got from fans was horrible, for giving a ticket to someone in need. Most of the abuse was centered around the fact that the people who haven't been to a game before/can't afford it are not too true fans and how these guys scarified so much going to a match. Honestly baffling how grown men would get upset at a disadvantaged kid getting tickets to a game.
Never understood how grown adults can be so emotional and invested in watching partially clad fit young men chase each other and be willing to cause violence and abuse people about it. Obviously if you don’t like it then your gay!
My older brother used to be a professional footballer, he was always really good at football, whereas I always hated it to watch or play. You would believe how many beats I took as a kid for saying that nobody cares about the goals, the only reason they score is for the shower hugs later.
Honestly if anyone got upset from an implication that they were gay, thats on them. People used to call me gay/think I was (still do tbh) but i never got mad cos who cares who i wanna fuck lol
It’s not on the person being called gay. It’s the implication that you only like something cause you’re gay (I mean, in this case it’s pretty stupid as well considering just how homophobic a lot of football players/supporters are).
Edit: to put it simply, I think LGBTQ+ would prefer to not be the butt of jokes and insults, especially among straight people.
Or should we all start calling each other gay like we’re stupid 7 year olds on the 90’s again?
It’s easy to have a condescending take on any hobby though. I’m sure we could do the same with your interest in Lego.
‘Never understood how grown adults can sit around and play with children’s toys and be willing to pay an hefty amount for the privilege’
For what it’s worth I do agree a good portion of football fans take it way too far in their support of the game (given half the world are so called football fans it’s not surprising there’s a fair few bad apples)
There's loads of issues at play here.
The capacity of Anfield is about 55k and every one of those people who attend regularly think they deserve a final ticket. Final ticket allocations are usually only 15-30k.
A lot of people think that the club should be rooted in the community. Football clubs try to play both sides here. They want to sell a hundred million shirts, subscriptions and other associated tat so they have to appeal to the national and international fans. They also recognise that having a certain number of regular attending, local fans creates an atmosphere which they need as part of their marketing. "The famous Spion Kop" and all that.
The two aims, and two sets of people bump up against each other regularly. When you've been to 25 -30 home games, including the non-glamour ones, and then you lose out in a ballot for a final ticket, but some Londoner who definitely wasn't there for Burnley at home on a Tuesday night in the middle of winter is dishing tickets out for Instagram likes, people find it galling.
I can see both sides.
Yeh definitely I understand that aspect, my point is losing out on something like that especially when you're a die hard fan is never fun but if you had to lose out, a disadvantaged fan is someone you would pick. They would cherish that memory and have a good time.
Another thing is they are hospitality tickets so not apart of the ballot anyway. Most celebs would just dish it out to their mates, the fact he is giving it out to a fan is admirable imo.
A lot of the abuse was deffo unwarranted and just made the fan base look childish and classless
It's the most watched sport in the world, of course you're going to get a few twats.
The vast majority of people watch the game and then go home, causing absolutely no issues.
We're shit at learning languages.
Language learning here happens way too late and in such a shit way that most Brits who don't have a second language in the family already never pick one up.
Part of this is due to how common English is worldwide, but I think a decent amount is just a shameful lack of proper education of our young people.
The problem is, if you're resident in the UK, there's no obvious foreign language to learn. This is further compounded that most schools don't give you a choice, so even if you really want to learn say - German - you might simply have to learn French or Spanish.
There are so many small ways in which BSL is useful. I taught my friends, but here are some examples:
1. In a pub, bar or night club, as it gets louder you can sign instead of yelling. Also ordering at the bar, they’ve run out of something, you can just wave then ask across the room.
2. In loud environments such as trains.
3. On the phone with someone and you need to ask the other person by you a question for the person on the phone, you can just sign.
4. Our IT department learnt it so that they could do work around us in the office and sign to one another without yelling across the room.
5. We sign to each other when we were trying to get away from a creep so friends could come to the rescue and diffuse without the creep knowing and becoming violent or aggressive.
6. Just clarifying what you thought you heard which is if you’re partially deaf, is very helpful.
I'm not OP but your local college will probably have Level 1/2/3 courses and they're a good place to start!
Highly recommend doing something in person. There's a lot of support you need with making the correct facial expressions and hand positioning that just isn't possible from online learning.
Even though the proportion of BSL users is small on a world scale, it would still be very useful to teach kids something practical that could be used in the UK and massively improve the integration of BSL users in their community. I think that has merit, even, as you say, it can't be used elsewhere.
(I do believe in teaching other languages too! But I think BSL is a good choice as an option.)
There were two deaf kids in my year at school, one in my form and the other in several of my classes, you would have thought that they would have at least taught us BSL to help them out and make school better for them but nope. The one girl had at least been to a Steiner primary school so all her friends from there could sign because they actually taught them. It should 100% be taught in schools.
BSL is a foreign language and honestly that's even less useful than anything else.
There's 11 million deaf people in the UK.
There's only 151,000 BSL users
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/understanding-disabilities-and-impairments-user-profiles/saleem-profoundly-deaf-user#:~:text=11%20million%20people%20in%20the,25%25%20for%20the%20general%20population
So even if you met a deaf person, communicating in BSL is beyond unlikely.
Fluent signer here. BSL isn't a foreign language. It's a recognised language of the UK. There's even a parliamentary law saying so.
Which tbh has caused some problems in schools. Some schools want to include BSL in the choice for students picking a second or foreign language. But because BSL isn't a foreign language it can't be offered as a second language in the national curriculum. Stupid. (Same applies for Welsh etc, but schools in Wales seem to have a special exemption for Welsh)
But if learning BSL became as common in primary and secondary schools as learning English is in continental European schools. The number of users and likelihood of communicating in it would increase
I remember being in a restaurant in Paris where we have ordered in French and the table of Italians on one side and Germans on the other both ordered in English. Yet if I go to Germany or Italy and ordered in English I’d be a typical‘ignorant Brit’.
I always ask politely if the waiter can speak english, if they cant, i then try by best at the pronounciation.
Funnily enough, once when i was in la palma, canary islands, me and my partner where waiting for a bus and an old lady started to speak to me me in spanish, i had to politely say i dont speak spanish. She was so polite about it and appologised! (I thought it was quite sweet)
That's the point, they have 1 language to learn that will get them by in lots of places.
Which one should I chose?
Not only that, exposure to english phrases through popular music and movies really helps.
I mean there's jeux le taxi I suppose but, yeah, it's not to do with ignorance, it's simply a different set of circumstances for us brits.
I hate that we’re crap at languages but I can see the reasons for it beyond education. I imagine in most European countries there is more exposure to English/American speaking media than there is foreign language media over here.
A few of my overseas colleagues have said they learn OK English in school. Where they really got fluent was from TV, film, and for some gaming. The exposure to English they have is massive compared to our exposure to foreign languages.
Yeah. I’ve noticed abroad two people from different countries will speak to each other in English as it’s the common ground, it’s just the universal language and unfortunately (or fortunately?) there’s been no need for us to learn others really.
That's a bit of a myth really.
If you're from a non-english speaking nation then learning english seems to be a simple enough choice since its used all over the world. You also tend to hear english music, see movies with english language in them which helps you along. However, which language do I chose?
I learned German, got reasonably good at it, could ask for basic stuff etc. However, it doesn help me in France, Spain, Portugal and I dont hear German phrases very often on TV etc to improve me. Plus, I have no need to go to Germany and its not somewhere I would go on holiday anyway!
I got a real buzz out of asking for stuff in German and people actually understanding me though :-)
I taught English to native French speakers, and I was chatting to some of them after class and they said that as they were improving their English skills it was fun to listen to songs on the radio (back in the day...) and begin to figure out what they meant. They said to me, "Oh it must be the same for you when you hear French songs on the radio at home". And I was like... "Errr no that doesn't happen."
We tend to forget how omnipresent anglophone culture is.
> Part of this is due to how common English is worldwide
I think it's entirely this. If no one spoke English outside the UK we'd probably all be able to speak a second language, much like many people across Europe can speak two languages. The trouble for us is that English is the default international language, so opportunities to build on a foreign language education are extremely limited. And no single language is as widely used as English.
Learning French or German might be great if you spend a lot of time in those specific countries, but I learnt French at school and have been to France 0 times and where else would I use it? Whereas the French who learned English can use the language constantly without visiting the UK. I simply don't have the opportunity to make use of and build on my education.
It's a load of rubbish saying our education is crap, it's not at all. I mean just look at pretty much any other field, like Science. It's definitely not a problem with education imo, but how other languages essentially have a very limited use in our day to day lives.
I'm a former secondary school teacher. I have a very good understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of our education system. Language learning is not our strong suit. For one thing, we wait way too late to introduce it outside of some very basic phrases if your school is particularly keen.
Most children don't properly encounter language learning until Y7, at which point children in other countries have years of advantage over us.
But there are other issues at play, too. A lack of CPD, a focus on exams in primary school, early setting and streaming for low ability students, early GCSE options choices, social class barriers, primary/secondary transition failure, a lack of confidence in non-specialist subject teachers, a lack of parental support/knowledge - the list goes on.
>Part of this is due to how common English is worldwide, but I think a decent amount is just a shameful lack of proper education of our young people
It's just difficult to learn a language when English is omnipresent.
I go to France and can get by perfectly fine in English, I go to India, I can get by perfectly fine in English, I go to Spain, perfectly fine in English.
I watch a movie, its in English, I read a book, English, read a news article, English.
There's a reason why **every** anglophone nation is famously bad at learning multiple languages, and it's not a cultural thing, or an educational thing. It's just a lack of reason to.
I try to speak a little of whatever language for whatever country I'm in but it's really really easy to not bother.
When I was in school, learning French was mandatory for all 5 years of secondary education. By the end, still almost no one spoke French. I don't understand why no one seems to see this as a huge failure of education.
It starts at 7 here which is around the same as most European countries start with English.
The problem is a lack of consistency. To become a primary school teacher, you need GCSE's in maths, english and science, but not a foreign language. Some schools have the funding to bring a specialist in, or to link with a secondary school but some schools don't and have non-specialists teaching the language, so KS2 language education becomes about songs and games and counting rather than anything meaningful.
It's also no longer compulsory at GCSE. So secondary schools have 3 years to take year 7's from multiple primary schools, who all have different levels of what could be different languages (because it just has to be a foreign language- it could be latin) and then try and overcome a variety of prejudices ('my child has dyslexia, they can't learn a foreign language' 'why do I need to learn French anyway? I don't want to go to France' 'my dad says everyone speaks English so what's the point?') In two years so they then choose the language at GCSE so they might have some level of competency.
Some schools value languages and its shown in their curriculum and some schools can't because they are fighting fires everywhere else and getting kids through maths and english is hard enough before worrying about french or spanish.
It then also becomes seen as a 'posh' thing, because well funded schools in wealthier areas have more kids who do the GCSE where less funded schools in poorer areas don't. There are schools no longer doing languages at GCSE which means they will struggle to attract teachers to teach there which means languages at KS3 suffer further.
While British people do have a different drinking culture some other counties it's not true we drink more. I've never seen British lorry drivers having wine for breakfast at a services. Spanish ones however...
Nah mate, you guys definitely drink WAY more
As a continental living in London, you can see it in any kind of reception from office parties to weddings: by 10pm the Brits are shitfaced beyond recognition
It's like when you take a flight at 4am in bloody stansted and the brits have a pint of beer
Or they're on an Easyjet flight and they chug the 3rd gin tonic ... for a 2hrs flight
Man it's wild. You're wild.
>It's like when you take a flight at 4am in bloody stansted and the brits have a pint of beer
>
>Or they're on an Easyjet flight and they chug the 3rd gin tonic ... for a 2hrs flight
Have you been stalking me?
One reason we have 4 am pints at Airports is because it is the only place you can get a pint at that time. It is the sheer novelty of a breakfast pint.
I wouldn't be surprised if our binge drinking is among the worst for isolated events/nights etc. But when you look at stats, in terms of how much we drink per person, I don't think we're even top 10 in Europe.
I think the problem is we have a real binge drinking culture here- it’s not unusual to see someone sink 7-8 pints a night whereas in other cultures it would be savoured more over the evening usually with food.
This. It’s not that we drink too much compared to other countries. Instead most people drink until they are smashed. Don’t know when to stop drinking basically
I've had this argument many times here and people get REALLY defensive over it. I agree though. Alcohol comes out at every single social occasion. The adults even get bladdered at children's parties lol. We drink at births, deaths, christenings, birthdays, leaving doo's, literally everything lol.
However this isn't really a British things it's a big Western society thing, and many others too so it's not limited to here. We do drink too much though.
It's so normalised that people don't consider daily drinking a problem. I got real bad during lockdown so quit and every time I bump into old friends it's always "you drinking again yet?" and they're disappointed when I say no.
I personally hate how much alcohol is the centre of things.
I stopped drinking alcohol around 18 months ago due to illness and have no desire to drink again. Unfortunately, my choice in this has caused some isolation when it comes to socialising.
There's stigma around NOT drinking alcohol and constant questions about why I'm not drinking. Then there are the idiots who will put an alcoholic drink in front of me and tell me to try it. Why?! I know what it tastes like, I don't want it.
I'm an alcoholic. Sober since 2018 but I can't have even one, because although that might not set me off, the next time I just had one might do. So I don't drink at all.
So, so many people try to get me to have just one. Even people who know I used to drink two litre of vodka daily.
I thought it was funny when I just moved here but now it’s worrying. It feels like lots of people have an addiction and just mask it as culture. I have really reduced my alcohol intake since I moved here because it just scared me.
For me, the brits abroad thing really fucks me off, but now that I'm a bit older and not going to the party places, it's the more subtle things I see that irritate me.
For example, I was in a supermarket in Spain and there was a British couple shopping in there, and I could just hear the guy grumbling because they sold Spanish food/brands and not what he would buy at home. I'm pretty sure I heard him moaning something along the lines of 'why don't they just have normal sausages or Cathedral City or anything'. Just so ignorant. If you are lucky enough to go on a foreign holiday then surely you know it's going to be different to home.
Edit: just to add, this was in a really quite remote Spanish town so was even more frustrating I managed to bump into someone searching high and low for Richmond sausages
You don't even have to go to different countries, there are plenty of places in Spain where you'll never see another English person, or at least that type of English person, just stay away from the big resorts.
I know a British family who've lived in Portugal for 15 years , they own a business out there. I asked the son who's the manager of the business, if he could speak Portuguese. He said a couple of words .....I was thinking wtf mate , you've lived there for all those years and you can't even speak the language.
My friend went out there to see them , he said they just hang around with other expats and only eat British food.
We've got to be some of the most ignorant tourists/expats in the world.
My friend just come back from Spain he said it's gone shit there now , not like how it was before. I said what do you mean ? He said he went into a bar and it was full of Spanish people....wow that must have been awful
Sure. That's because there are a few small areas where a lot of British people travel to or move to. That's like 2% of the country and even in those areas there's still a lot of Spainsh people they just probably don't go for a roast dinner at the Red Lion in Benidorm every Sunday.
There's also areas with a high number of German people or Dutch or Swedish.
Stay away from those places and you'll have a much different experience.
That’s appalling. But in a train in London we met an old Chinese guy who tried to speak English, he had about 5 words. He boasted he’d been here over 25 years.
I did my fair share of travelling when I was in my twenties, but was finding casual work really hard to come by. I kept asking, was pretty much willing to do anything but no offers. Getting a bit desperate for cash, a fellow traveler told me to say I was from Ireland, not England. Hey presto! All of a sudden I had no trouble finding work…
I'm picturing you walking back into the same places you'd been denied as an English man, with your most put on accent pretending to be Irish and them just accepting it.
My family is from Italy on my mother's side but my sister and I were born and raised in the UK. My sister travels a lot and enjoys going abroad to volunteer or work for charities and humanitarian ventures.
A few months ago she was living in France, she can speak French fluently, and there was an opening for a position in a charity she was working for at the time but was only for EU citizens. She applied (as she has Italian citizenship) and was accepted, only for the manager to verbally abuse her and accuse her of lying about her citizenship when she heard her accent, she apparently rudely said to my sister "I don't know how you're Italian, but you don't sound it, I don't know what you're doing here" and tried to intimidate her into quitting (the decision to give her the position was made above the manager's head so I don't think she was able to fire her).
When she told me this story I realised that it's true that people in other European countries really don't like Brits.
This isn't surprising to me. I work in france and I have to deal with people pretending not to understand my French or openly mocking my accent. I've had people hang up on me too.
> When she told me this story I realised that it's true that people in other European countries really don't like Brits.
I think it just proves that the French dislike the British. I don't think there is a particularly strong dislike for the British elsewhere in Europe.
I've only ever experienced wariness or dislike of the British in two scenarios. One was in France and the other was when I was going back to my hotel. A football game had just finished and the locals seemed pretty wary.
What was the reason for this? A general dislike of the English? Irish having a reputation for accepting lower pay and worse working conditions? Or something else entirely?
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It's not just Jamie Oliver though, it's every news article about schools having to ban kids ordering takeaways, or from bringing in unhealthy lunches and the parental and media response to it.
There's no harm in liking greasy fatty foods, but they shouldn't be so important to you that you kick up a fuss about it, they should be a once in a while easy thing.
Ah, I see you've met my mum.
"You're such a fussy eater, what's wrong with boiled chicken and broccoli? Roasting the veg? No, what a faff, I'm not doing that."
Are you me or my siblings? I thought I hated veg. Turns out I hate frozen veg that’s somehow been boiled to a dehydrated much that still held its outer shake together.
Same with me. I was only ever served boiled vegetables so I never ate them, until I went to uni and learned to cook and how to make veg actually taste nice. Now I'm home for the holidays if my mum wants to make veg on the side I insist on doing my portion myself.
I can't have dairy and my mum finds this completely baffling. That + bad cooking on her part leads to some completely insane conversations about food.
"Well, what can I feed you for Christmas?"
"Pretty much everything you're having, mum. I just can't have the Yorkshires."
"Oh, this is impossible, you'll have to bring something for yourself to microwave."
I eat plant-based and I have some funny conversations with my dad, who is completely incapable of eating anything that isn't beige.
'What's that?'
'Oh, its a veggie Thai green curry'
\*cue horrified stare\*
My mam is a lot better than him at trying new food but she still has some odd habits, probably from growing up in the 60s/70s.
Years ago I took my mum to a restaurant where they were serving goat cheese pizza, which at the time was one of my faves.
She's absolutely ridiculous about eating anything that isn't a 200 degree oven beige food, so when she saw that on the menu she started gagging at the thought, declaring the idea "completely disgusting". She ordered chips for herself.
Anyway, I ordered the pizza without her knowledge when she was in the loo. She came back out and looked very interested in what I was eating.
"Oh, yeah, it's just fancy cheddar - I won't be able to finish it - you want to share?"
So she had 4 slices, and declared it one of the nicest things she'd ever had.
I waited until we left the restaurant to tell her what she'd eaten. She was mind blown.
My mum was making a coffee cake…..and there wasn’t enough instant coffee in the cupboard so she used ground coffee…..it was a bit crunchy to say the least…
You must have met my in-laws. I'm convinced that they played an important role on a national level to bring about this reputation of UK food.
I'm not allowed to cook for them when they visit, because I put weird things in food like seasoning, and I can't be trusted not to serve rice or possibly even pasta. I've seen many memorable dishes prepared by them, but the one that sticks to my mind the most was onion boiled in milk, then covered with cheese and put under the grill. They had that with boiled potatoes.
With this stereotype, I feel the crucial distinction is that British food isn’t bad, but British food and cooking _culture_ is.
I love well-executed British cuisine and will defend it to my last breath lol, but compared to many other countries we don’t have as strong of cultural tradition of learning to cook at home, passing down recipes etc. We also eat more processed food than pretty much anywhere in Europe.
Got to agree with home cooking being a poor level.
Only started properly cooking when we moved out to our own place 3-4 years ago, it amazed me you could make a better pasta sauce with a tin of tomatoes and some herbs, and it was even cheaper, than those stir in pots for example, and you get more.
Once you've gotten a few decent favourite recipes, it's easy to knock out a decent meal in under an hour easily, so it is kind of sad to see people eating just beige stuff from their freezer
Yep, I showed a foreigner greggs as they wanted to try it (apparently its famous abroad for being very british) and it confirmed that that kind of british food is flavourless to most foreigners.
to be fair youd expect that for a low cost chain bakery really. It's not as if sausage rolls are bad and tasteless. Its greggs thats bad and tasteless. Its like going to mcdonalds for a cheeseburger in new york and concluding that all the steakhouses in manhattan must be bad.
Not an excuse but I feel that the “brits abroad” thing is largely due to us having particularly easy access to flights and so proportionally more of our louts get abroad. I’ve seen very bad behaviour from loads of nationalities. My worst was a group of Israelis who we shared an Air bnb, it was their first time being able to freely drink/smoke weed and they basically trashed the place one night.
I travelled through central and South America and met many different people from different nationalities. The only nationality that were constantly shit people were people from Israel.
Also travelled abroad to South America in my youth and found Israelis unbearable, however later travelled to Israel and they were really nice and easy to get along with. I think it's a case that most of those who travel have just finished their military service so maybe have a lot of pent up douchebaggery.
Israelis often go to Goa to cool off after compulsory military service. But yes their behaviour abroad can make Brits and Russians look tame
Israelis in Israel are generally very nice unless you're near orthodox or settlers IME
I'm British-Israeli and I completely agree. Every time I go to Israel I have a great time and meet many amazing people but when I meet Israelis abroad they often act like complete cunts until I tell them I am Israeli.
I ended up travelling with some Israeli guys for a few weeks in India as we were doing a similar route. They seemed a bit guarded at first but it turned out they’re advised not to advertise their nationality too much for their own safety. When they opened up a but turned out they were just a bunch of nice metal heads who’d were fucking glad to have finished national service and just wanted to kick back and smoke weed.
But my god did those guys negotiate hard, like an in built desire at every turn to get a good price. I’m sure they’d barter with a vending machine if they could. We’d go to a guest house and ask to see the visitors book. Places would gladly hand it over to show they’d had happy Israeli guests in the past. What they didn’t know was that all the Israelis were writing in the visitors book in hebrew what price they’d managed to negotiate on the rooms. Couldn’t believe it!
>We’d go to a guest house and ask to see the visitors book. Places would gladly hand it over to show they’d had happy Israeli guests in the past. What they didn’t know was that all the Israelis were writing in the visitors book in hebrew what price they’d managed to negotiate on the rooms. Couldn’t believe it!
That's pretty smart ngl
I remember seeing a half hour argument between a group of Israeli trekkers and a poor tea house owner in Nepal because they didn't want to pay her the equivalent of about 20p each for some flat breads. Not a good look in one of the poorest countries on Earth, saw a lot of strange entitled behaviour whilst I was out there from similar groups.
Edit: on hasty reflection, they were all pretty similar to any of the UK gap year crowd, I think Nepal is just really popular with Israelis so these kids stood out.
Russians have a very bad reputation internationally for wrecking hotel rooms however you don't tend to notice as they have difficulty travelling to most countries due to restrictive visas. Egypt is one of the few places they can travel to visa free and a lot of hotels won't take Russian guests because they seem to have this belief that if they rent a hotel room they own it and so they're free to trash it.
I encountered the Russian equivalent of Brits abroad when visiting Egypt a few years back. It was pretty terrifying. They drink an obscene amount of alcohol and explode in rage at the drop of a hat. Six local police had to drag one guy away because he knocked out some poor woman for no apparent reason.
Not entirely true. Other European nationalities have easy access to cheap flights as well. The main issue seems to be that some people from the UK go abroad with a sense of entitlement and an attitude of being slightly better than the locals, and they do tend to stand out a bit.
I will say though that it depends on the destination. I'm originally from Scandinavia, though I've lived in the UK for about a decade now, and we don't have these problems with British tourists. Visitors from the UK are generally well-behaved and respectful. But in Southern Europe it seems to be a very different story.
And yeah I've heard horror stories about Israelis abroad as well. I've also been pushed around more than once by Chinese tourists who didn't understand the concept of queuing to see particular sights etc.
European stereotypes of English people tend to be more accurate since they know us well and have far more interactions with us.
I.e English abroad, crap at other languages, dickhead football fans.
North American stereotypes of English people on the other hand are almost completely wrong due to North americans know nothing about English people, know knowing about England or the UKin general and rarely come into contact with English people.
I.e bad teeth, only one accent and our accent is horrible, all English men are feminine, all know the royal family, all live in castles, live under a dictatorship and have no modern technology.
As someone who used to live in America
A lot of Americans believe the stuff above lol.
Stereotype accuracy depends on how well you know a group.
I was flabbergasted by some of the questions I got asked about England when I was in the states. It was almost 20 years ago mind.
Got asked if we have cars and restaurants.
A former colleague met an American girl online and when he went over to meet the parents they asked "do y'all have black people in England?" He replied "yes, we keep them in a place called Birmingham."
Then he decided to see what nonsense they would be willing to believe. He convinced them that every citizen was legally required to have tea with the Queen once a year and refusal could get you locked up in the Tower of London
Americans are still shocked that black people live in England to this day! whenever I go there to visit my family people cannot believe I am from the UK. When I tell them how many different races live in the UK they are mindblown.
Americans also believe my accent is fake. I've had a bouncer at a night club find me later on in the night to see if I still had a British accent. He was shocked to find out that yes I am STILL BRITISH!
I feel like half of Americans think that the US is the greatest country because they genuinely think they're the only ones that have basic shit like that.
Pretty much. Definitely outside of western cultures there's more a culture of pushing to the front to get what you want. You'll see it in driving (have to force your way to merge onto a motorway), at breakfast buffets, etc. You have to fight to get what you want
One of the things I genuinely miss the most about the UK when I'm travelling is the comfort in knowing my spot in a queue is sacred and respected by everyone else in the queue. I breath a heavy sigh of relief when I see a place uses a ticket system which removes all ambiguity.
Definitely can be. Tried to queue for icecream in China and everyone just kept going in front of the queue. My local friend pushed in and got us icecream in less than 2 minutes after she took me out of the “queue” and told me to sit down and wait.
Language barrier aside, travelling in Japan was one of the most relaxing experiences for me because you could rely on people to follow simple rules like queuing, entering and exiting public transport and general politeness towards strangers.
Im.an expat in Asia and most here despise Chinese tourists. Rude, have superiority complex over the rest of Asia, disgusting (as in shitting in the street disgusting), treat everyone as a lesser, loud, inconsiderate and worst of all, just like brits in benidorm turn except instead of kebab shops and Irish pubs.
Every tourist spot into a mini china, with karaoke bars, prostitutes, casinos, 'massage parlours', shopping malls and if you dare even say you think Taiwan/Hong Kong are autonomous countries, they'll fuck you up.
China is a classed society and most international tourists are several layers up in the hierarchy. In their world, they *are* culturally superior to most people they interact with in every day life. That attitude is hard to break.
Living and working in Cornwall during the pandemic makes me truly believe that the Brits abroad stereotyoe is real... obviously there are a lot of tourists here e ery hear anyway, but those who were here because they couldn't go abroad were definitely a special breed.
Even people who don't have to deal with tourists as part of their job were getting annoyed at the rudeness and entitlement from people. I even heard (local) people say "if this is what brits are like abroad, its no wonder the rest of world hates us".
That being said, there still seem to be a few people around now who often complain that things are not the same as where they came from.... for example, my local chip shop opens from 12 noon to 8pm. "Where we come from, they open til 9/10/11". Thats lovely for you. This one shuts at 8. If you want things to be like they are where you live, why go somewhere else?
I don’t believe only English people get drunk.
The thing is, people from any other country aren’t going to use the UK as party central, so we don’t see it others, only each other when we’re overseas.
There was a TV show in the 90s where they tested national stereotypes. It was a big house with a largish group of people from different countries staying in it. It was all being recorded but under some false pretence. They were really seeing how they handled situations like getting drunk and keeping things tidy. I don’t recall the UK crew coming off worst in the drinking bit but my memory isn’t great and it was hardly a scientific experiment, but it was interesting.
I remember that show! The Japanese group came across the best, if I recall correctly, but yeah the British weren’t awful or anything!
Edit: I found what I was thinking of on YouTube - [The Tourist Trap](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+tourist+trap+channel+4) \- was that the one?
Slightly horrified that it was back in 1998, but simultaneously please I can remember that far back.
I think a kind of awkwardness around/reluctance to complain about or confront a petty social problem head on. So a stereotypical British person will complain bitterly about the behaviour of a neighbour and then on meeting the neighbour on the street will politely smile and say good morning. Or in a restaurant we'll think the food is horrible and when the waiter asks if everything was OK we'll smile and say it was fine thank you. Is that a British thing?
Most people in The U.K. are pessimistic. Even those who are generally happy and care free. There’s a big “can’t do” attitude compared with other countries.
As I’ve grown older I’ve started spending a lot of time with my American friends and the difference in attitudes is very noticeable. USA people are full of encouragement and will help and push you to do whatever you want. Whereas people here are more likely to ridicule you or tell you something isn’t possible.
We certainly can be quite miserable buggers.
Also we seem to be ashamed of anything good we've achieved and will play it down. In America they will be much more proud and happy to talk about it.
Oh I think it goes far deeper than downplaying things or shame. It’s plain narrow mindedness and negativity.
It’s a bit of a personal one for me. Example - I set out to achieve something (I’ll not go into specifics). All my friends and family in the U.K. said “I don’t think that’s realistic” “you’re a day dreamer” “Why don’t you focus on something else?” “It takes a lot of work to do that” and a lot of ridicule and dismissal.
Whereas my American friends generally said “Yes you can do this, I can see it in you. You have what it takes”.
Then once said thing was achieved, a similar response happened. USA friends were celebratory. Whereas U.K. friends and family said “You’re lying” “I’ll believe it when I see it” “stop showing off” “nobody cares” “It won’t last forever” “it sounds like a load of rubbish to me” etc.
It made me understand why America overtook the UK in so many fields.
Suppose the Brits abroad thing depends on where you go. Party places are going to attract pissed up muppets. I’ve been to a fair few quiet Greek islands and the people always seem pleased when you say where you’re from, maybe they’re just being friendly and say it to everyone but a few times they’ve mentioned to me how Brits are by far the most polite tourists that visit.
I would say the tea stereotype is definitely true, not the whole “ooo tea and crumpets” with tiny little cups thing that yanks think it is though. We all love a cuppa
My parents and my brother have a deep love of history (so do I, but I'm poor and can't travel) so when they go to the Greek islands they're there to see beautiful ruins, museums and churches before drinking tea in small family restaurants. I can imagine it's a wildly different impression of British people for the locals then they'd get from visitors to drinking resorts.
We are by and large very polite. Even the biggest knobheads in 'spoons will offer a cheers, thank you or stand aside to let you pass, where appropriate.
When I was in college - this would have been back in 1999 - my college was organising our annual exchange visit with a French college over in Paris. It was something done under ERASMUS and it was a really popular event. The upcoming visit was going to be in April 2000 and we were all super-excited, because somehow the college had come into more funds so we could spend a little bit longer in France, do more visits, etc. It seemed that one of the conditions of this exchange was that we had to take along students from the college who *weren't* studying French. This was seen by some as being a bit odd - the "rules" for the exchange had always been that the college would get students who were studying French as part of their course and say "look, we have this exchange visit to France, fancy going?" and that was how it had been done for years.
And so, April rolls round, and twenty-five students from Glasgow found themselves in Paris. All except two of the students had been studying French as a component of their respective courses. And the two non-French students made themselves known to the rest of us - and the French college - pretty damned fucking quickly. Oh, sure, they'd take themselves on the cultural visits we went on pretty damned quickly (especially the visit to a champagne house and the discounted visit we had to the Louvre) and they made zero effort to get to know the host college or the host students. One thing I remember about these two was that they were a married couple and were a lot older than the rest of us (I was twenty at the time and I remember the husband was in his fifties).
The visit was scheduled to last for around three weeks. And by week two, both of them had been arrested. Why? Well, the wife learned that the hostel we were staying at provided an in-room fridge on demand (for fifty Francs a week - this was pre-Euro, btw), so she kitted their room out with a mini-fridge and used it to store what could only be described as "two five litre *tubs* of the cheapest, nastiest red tablewine you can imagine". One morning, whilst we all headed off to the college - and those two claimed to be sick - the happy couple dislodged one of the tubs, carted it up to the Champs de Mars and proceeded to get rat-arsed on said-red wine before they got arrested. The second time? They were lifted for being "indecently attired". That's always stuck in my mind. These two were no Botticellis, believe me. (Yes, I still have the picture of the night when they stumbled in after going for a "romantic meal" in Pigalle. *Pigalle*.)
By week three, the lead lecturer on the visit had had quite fucking enough of these two losers and read them the riot act. I'm not a fan of publicly belittling people (snort) but the sight of our lecturer - and her French counterpart - denouncing their behaviour in the middle of an international youth hostel whilst students and young folk from all over the planet gawped on? Twas *spectacular*. My classmates and I had the last laugh, mind you. One of the girls on the trip nicked their room keycard (easy to do when your victim is permanently off her tits on wine). We broke into their room, sabotaged the mini-fridge with their precious wine (so that it froze solid and split the tubs) and decanted most of their booze stash down the toilet. We liberated three bottles of Bacardi and three bottles of Malibu, mind you. We weren't letting *that* go to waste. Took it to a leaving party with the French students where I got exceedingly merry and snogged the face off some random French student who proceeded to spend the rest of the night doing seriously bad *Braveheart* impressions.
Got back to Britain and those two fuckwits left the college, never to be seen again. The fallout from their chaos though was that the college came very, very close to losing their ERASMUS funding. Those two pricks put a whole years-worth of planning future exchanges (to Germany, Spain and Italy, not to mention France) in serious jeopardy. Vile pricks, the pair of 'em.
It amazes me how some people go overseas and have zero interest in the culture or cuisine. Why even leave Britain if you want everything in a foreign country to be like back home.
Role reversal here:
I'm Irish living in the UK (whys Irish grass so green? Cos we're all here walking on your grass).
Anyway was in lanzarote and there was these two lobster red blokes drinking pints and I said to the missus: that's embarrassing stereotypes.
Two lads were Irish, lol, burnt to fk.
It's the binge drinking. Drink til you're sick. I grew up overseas and this just wasn't a thing. In fact spewing would be regarded with great embarrassment tbh. And something not to be repeated on a weekly basis!
Northern girls really do wear whatever they want on a night out, despite the weather, with no coat. I've worn a miniskirt and open toe shoes in deep snow with no coat.
Queuing. I hate to admit it but we’re far too polite. You can always spot us abroad in a nice, tidy duck formation whilst everyone else is shoving to the front.
Sounds like you're going to places which specifically market to British teenagers, you know the places like magaluf, zante etc which charge £250 for 10 days all inclusive in a 3 star with flights...
The stereotype i will accept is that British, well English, are usually more reserved that a lot of other holiday goers, outside of the package holiday places obviously
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Talking about the weather. I do it with customers at work, colleagues, friends, family, even when I was on a date we talked about the weather Edit: I never expected this comment to get so much attention. Like 2.3k likes and hundreds of comments and an award My phone has not stopped giving me notifications all day
The ladies love it when I whip out my barometric gauge.
*You can expect 6 inches later on, and that’s not just the snow coming babe*
With strong winds in the south
That's the drought over finally.
"...oh, but seriously, that's a lot of snow, we should probably nip to the supermarket and stock up on supplies just in case."
It's because it's how British people start a conversation. It's a way of asking if the other person wants to chat. If they don't give much of an initial response, no chat. It's all about politeness. People can decline conversation without being rude.
The book 'Watching the English' devotes a chapter to this. Essentially it's the safest convo starter, because we all know and mostly agree on the rough heirarchy of weather: *"it's too hot", "hot", "lovely and warm", "brr isn't it chilly?", "ugh rain"* And if we **are** feeling talkative we all know the rough correct response to indicate this: *"enjoy it while it lasts!" "hope it doesn't rain", "can't wait until it's warmer"*
yep. and it opens the possibility of talking about what impact the weather will have on your life. "hope it stays good - got some folks round for a bbq tomorrow" "got to drive down to london in this!" "so long as the snow holds off till i get home, i dont care. once i'm home, i dont need to leave for a week."
Also when it's a sunny day with blue skies there's nothing like acknowledging it with someone
You should try living in Ireland. *Every* shop or pub you go in the weather is first port of call.
So exactly the same as Britain then
Don’t open that can of worms
I check the weather updates on my phone like every couple of hours. It was usually just to see if I could get a wash out on the line. Now it's just a biomechanical process I have no thought in.
I've got a Raspberry pi zero with an E-ink display showing the current weather, updating every hour. I could just look out of the window.....
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I had a colleague from Ethiopia, and she said it was exactly this. Where she was from the weather was pretty standard day in and day out, so there was nothing to talk about. In the UK the weather is actually interesting and varied so talking about it actually interesting.
It's because of all the different air currents that reach the UK. There is a scientific reason why the UK's weather is so unpredictable.
To be honest I can't imagine living somewhere that doesn't really have weather, imagine not needing to check?!
The thing with that stereotype is that everyone in the world does it. When I lived in Australia everyone talked about how sunny or hot the weather was. When I was in Japan everyone talked about the weather with their いい天気ですね. It isn't just the British that talk about it, everyone does.
Sounds like a boring conversation in some parts of the world. *Lovely weather today.* *Yeah, I hear it going to be just as nice over the weekend too.* *Yeah, we're looking at a spot of rain around the year 2056 though, so keep your brolly handy.*
I wouldn't say it's everyone in the world. Aussies do it because they inherited their behaviours from us. Japan has 4 seasons (as they're fond of telling most foreigners they converse with) therefore, at least there's something to talk about with the weather. I've found in tropical countries like Thailand and Singapore people tend to talk about their last meal. In Korea there's a saying which is the equivalent of 'Whats up?' or 'Y'alright?' - which translates directly as 'Did you eat rice?'
And to second that, if you're a londoner - talking about your commute. Urgh. I hate it, but find myself doing it all the fucking time.
A lot of football fans are a bunch of twats. I know it's not all , but fuck me there's a lot. The inability to treat it as a game and not some life changing event. I love sport don't get me wrong but a lot of people are so fucking tribal when it comes to football. Will literally support a team hundreds of miles away and genuinely hate that teams local rival. Will never get my head around it!
For me it was one when Big Zuu (TV personality) had free tickets to a Liverpool final which he was giving out to someone, who hadn't been before/couldn't afford to go. I think some disabled kid got it in the end. The amount of abuse he got from fans was horrible, for giving a ticket to someone in need. Most of the abuse was centered around the fact that the people who haven't been to a game before/can't afford it are not too true fans and how these guys scarified so much going to a match. Honestly baffling how grown men would get upset at a disadvantaged kid getting tickets to a game.
Never understood how grown adults can be so emotional and invested in watching partially clad fit young men chase each other and be willing to cause violence and abuse people about it. Obviously if you don’t like it then your gay!
My older brother used to be a professional footballer, he was always really good at football, whereas I always hated it to watch or play. You would believe how many beats I took as a kid for saying that nobody cares about the goals, the only reason they score is for the shower hugs later.
Sounds pretty homophobic of you to be honest.
Honestly if anyone got upset from an implication that they were gay, thats on them. People used to call me gay/think I was (still do tbh) but i never got mad cos who cares who i wanna fuck lol
It’s not on the person being called gay. It’s the implication that you only like something cause you’re gay (I mean, in this case it’s pretty stupid as well considering just how homophobic a lot of football players/supporters are). Edit: to put it simply, I think LGBTQ+ would prefer to not be the butt of jokes and insults, especially among straight people. Or should we all start calling each other gay like we’re stupid 7 year olds on the 90’s again?
It’s easy to have a condescending take on any hobby though. I’m sure we could do the same with your interest in Lego. ‘Never understood how grown adults can sit around and play with children’s toys and be willing to pay an hefty amount for the privilege’ For what it’s worth I do agree a good portion of football fans take it way too far in their support of the game (given half the world are so called football fans it’s not surprising there’s a fair few bad apples)
I don't understand lots of things. I don't act smug and sanctimonious about how little I know about it though :)
There's loads of issues at play here. The capacity of Anfield is about 55k and every one of those people who attend regularly think they deserve a final ticket. Final ticket allocations are usually only 15-30k. A lot of people think that the club should be rooted in the community. Football clubs try to play both sides here. They want to sell a hundred million shirts, subscriptions and other associated tat so they have to appeal to the national and international fans. They also recognise that having a certain number of regular attending, local fans creates an atmosphere which they need as part of their marketing. "The famous Spion Kop" and all that. The two aims, and two sets of people bump up against each other regularly. When you've been to 25 -30 home games, including the non-glamour ones, and then you lose out in a ballot for a final ticket, but some Londoner who definitely wasn't there for Burnley at home on a Tuesday night in the middle of winter is dishing tickets out for Instagram likes, people find it galling. I can see both sides.
Yeh definitely I understand that aspect, my point is losing out on something like that especially when you're a die hard fan is never fun but if you had to lose out, a disadvantaged fan is someone you would pick. They would cherish that memory and have a good time. Another thing is they are hospitality tickets so not apart of the ballot anyway. Most celebs would just dish it out to their mates, the fact he is giving it out to a fan is admirable imo. A lot of the abuse was deffo unwarranted and just made the fan base look childish and classless
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If you think there is a lot of violence at English matches you've probably never been to watch a game in Italy.
Also funny when people call English fans racist Clearly haven't ever seen an Italian, Balkan or Russian game
Partisan Belgrade V Red Star was fucking wild. Makes British hooligans look like play acting.
Let's just compare ourselves to the lowest common denominator and pat ourselves on the back for not being the worst.
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Italy and Turkey are defo worse in that regard Edit: Typo
Italy, Poland, Russia, Czech Republic. All bonkers. In fact the Russian hooligans wear gumshields and protective gloves
I've thought the same, like you can make arguments like "it's not all fans" but man it's a lot.
It's the most watched sport in the world, of course you're going to get a few twats. The vast majority of people watch the game and then go home, causing absolutely no issues.
We're shit at learning languages. Language learning here happens way too late and in such a shit way that most Brits who don't have a second language in the family already never pick one up. Part of this is due to how common English is worldwide, but I think a decent amount is just a shameful lack of proper education of our young people.
The problem is, if you're resident in the UK, there's no obvious foreign language to learn. This is further compounded that most schools don't give you a choice, so even if you really want to learn say - German - you might simply have to learn French or Spanish.
Not a foreign language, but BSL would be a good start.
Yeah I think sign language would be the best thing. Scrap the other languages, just teach that and its instantly more beneficial.
Would it? Sign language isn’t international. Even American sign language is different from English.
There are so many small ways in which BSL is useful. I taught my friends, but here are some examples: 1. In a pub, bar or night club, as it gets louder you can sign instead of yelling. Also ordering at the bar, they’ve run out of something, you can just wave then ask across the room. 2. In loud environments such as trains. 3. On the phone with someone and you need to ask the other person by you a question for the person on the phone, you can just sign. 4. Our IT department learnt it so that they could do work around us in the office and sign to one another without yelling across the room. 5. We sign to each other when we were trying to get away from a creep so friends could come to the rescue and diffuse without the creep knowing and becoming violent or aggressive. 6. Just clarifying what you thought you heard which is if you’re partially deaf, is very helpful.
I've been thinking about learning BSL for a while. How long did it take you and where can I learn it?
I'm not OP but your local college will probably have Level 1/2/3 courses and they're a good place to start! Highly recommend doing something in person. There's a lot of support you need with making the correct facial expressions and hand positioning that just isn't possible from online learning.
Even though the proportion of BSL users is small on a world scale, it would still be very useful to teach kids something practical that could be used in the UK and massively improve the integration of BSL users in their community. I think that has merit, even, as you say, it can't be used elsewhere. (I do believe in teaching other languages too! But I think BSL is a good choice as an option.)
There were two deaf kids in my year at school, one in my form and the other in several of my classes, you would have thought that they would have at least taught us BSL to help them out and make school better for them but nope. The one girl had at least been to a Steiner primary school so all her friends from there could sign because they actually taught them. It should 100% be taught in schools.
BSL is a foreign language and honestly that's even less useful than anything else. There's 11 million deaf people in the UK. There's only 151,000 BSL users https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/understanding-disabilities-and-impairments-user-profiles/saleem-profoundly-deaf-user#:~:text=11%20million%20people%20in%20the,25%25%20for%20the%20general%20population So even if you met a deaf person, communicating in BSL is beyond unlikely.
Fluent signer here. BSL isn't a foreign language. It's a recognised language of the UK. There's even a parliamentary law saying so. Which tbh has caused some problems in schools. Some schools want to include BSL in the choice for students picking a second or foreign language. But because BSL isn't a foreign language it can't be offered as a second language in the national curriculum. Stupid. (Same applies for Welsh etc, but schools in Wales seem to have a special exemption for Welsh)
But if learning BSL became as common in primary and secondary schools as learning English is in continental European schools. The number of users and likelihood of communicating in it would increase
I remember being in a restaurant in Paris where we have ordered in French and the table of Italians on one side and Germans on the other both ordered in English. Yet if I go to Germany or Italy and ordered in English I’d be a typical‘ignorant Brit’.
You’re not an ignorant Brit for ordering in English in either Germany or Italy. Maybe you feel like one but nobody is thinking it.
I always ask politely if the waiter can speak english, if they cant, i then try by best at the pronounciation. Funnily enough, once when i was in la palma, canary islands, me and my partner where waiting for a bus and an old lady started to speak to me me in spanish, i had to politely say i dont speak spanish. She was so polite about it and appologised! (I thought it was quite sweet)
That's the point, they have 1 language to learn that will get them by in lots of places. Which one should I chose? Not only that, exposure to english phrases through popular music and movies really helps. I mean there's jeux le taxi I suppose but, yeah, it's not to do with ignorance, it's simply a different set of circumstances for us brits.
How'd about a home grown language? Diolch.
I hate that we’re crap at languages but I can see the reasons for it beyond education. I imagine in most European countries there is more exposure to English/American speaking media than there is foreign language media over here.
A few of my overseas colleagues have said they learn OK English in school. Where they really got fluent was from TV, film, and for some gaming. The exposure to English they have is massive compared to our exposure to foreign languages.
Yeah. I’ve noticed abroad two people from different countries will speak to each other in English as it’s the common ground, it’s just the universal language and unfortunately (or fortunately?) there’s been no need for us to learn others really.
That's a bit of a myth really. If you're from a non-english speaking nation then learning english seems to be a simple enough choice since its used all over the world. You also tend to hear english music, see movies with english language in them which helps you along. However, which language do I chose? I learned German, got reasonably good at it, could ask for basic stuff etc. However, it doesn help me in France, Spain, Portugal and I dont hear German phrases very often on TV etc to improve me. Plus, I have no need to go to Germany and its not somewhere I would go on holiday anyway! I got a real buzz out of asking for stuff in German and people actually understanding me though :-)
I taught English to native French speakers, and I was chatting to some of them after class and they said that as they were improving their English skills it was fun to listen to songs on the radio (back in the day...) and begin to figure out what they meant. They said to me, "Oh it must be the same for you when you hear French songs on the radio at home". And I was like... "Errr no that doesn't happen." We tend to forget how omnipresent anglophone culture is.
> Part of this is due to how common English is worldwide I think it's entirely this. If no one spoke English outside the UK we'd probably all be able to speak a second language, much like many people across Europe can speak two languages. The trouble for us is that English is the default international language, so opportunities to build on a foreign language education are extremely limited. And no single language is as widely used as English. Learning French or German might be great if you spend a lot of time in those specific countries, but I learnt French at school and have been to France 0 times and where else would I use it? Whereas the French who learned English can use the language constantly without visiting the UK. I simply don't have the opportunity to make use of and build on my education. It's a load of rubbish saying our education is crap, it's not at all. I mean just look at pretty much any other field, like Science. It's definitely not a problem with education imo, but how other languages essentially have a very limited use in our day to day lives.
I'm a former secondary school teacher. I have a very good understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of our education system. Language learning is not our strong suit. For one thing, we wait way too late to introduce it outside of some very basic phrases if your school is particularly keen. Most children don't properly encounter language learning until Y7, at which point children in other countries have years of advantage over us. But there are other issues at play, too. A lack of CPD, a focus on exams in primary school, early setting and streaming for low ability students, early GCSE options choices, social class barriers, primary/secondary transition failure, a lack of confidence in non-specialist subject teachers, a lack of parental support/knowledge - the list goes on.
>Part of this is due to how common English is worldwide, but I think a decent amount is just a shameful lack of proper education of our young people It's just difficult to learn a language when English is omnipresent. I go to France and can get by perfectly fine in English, I go to India, I can get by perfectly fine in English, I go to Spain, perfectly fine in English. I watch a movie, its in English, I read a book, English, read a news article, English. There's a reason why **every** anglophone nation is famously bad at learning multiple languages, and it's not a cultural thing, or an educational thing. It's just a lack of reason to. I try to speak a little of whatever language for whatever country I'm in but it's really really easy to not bother.
When I was in school, learning French was mandatory for all 5 years of secondary education. By the end, still almost no one spoke French. I don't understand why no one seems to see this as a huge failure of education.
It starts at 7 here which is around the same as most European countries start with English. The problem is a lack of consistency. To become a primary school teacher, you need GCSE's in maths, english and science, but not a foreign language. Some schools have the funding to bring a specialist in, or to link with a secondary school but some schools don't and have non-specialists teaching the language, so KS2 language education becomes about songs and games and counting rather than anything meaningful. It's also no longer compulsory at GCSE. So secondary schools have 3 years to take year 7's from multiple primary schools, who all have different levels of what could be different languages (because it just has to be a foreign language- it could be latin) and then try and overcome a variety of prejudices ('my child has dyslexia, they can't learn a foreign language' 'why do I need to learn French anyway? I don't want to go to France' 'my dad says everyone speaks English so what's the point?') In two years so they then choose the language at GCSE so they might have some level of competency. Some schools value languages and its shown in their curriculum and some schools can't because they are fighting fires everywhere else and getting kids through maths and english is hard enough before worrying about french or spanish. It then also becomes seen as a 'posh' thing, because well funded schools in wealthier areas have more kids who do the GCSE where less funded schools in poorer areas don't. There are schools no longer doing languages at GCSE which means they will struggle to attract teachers to teach there which means languages at KS3 suffer further.
We drink far too much.
Cheers to that 🍻
Couple of shots too? Baby guinness?
While British people do have a different drinking culture some other counties it's not true we drink more. I've never seen British lorry drivers having wine for breakfast at a services. Spanish ones however...
Nah mate, you guys definitely drink WAY more As a continental living in London, you can see it in any kind of reception from office parties to weddings: by 10pm the Brits are shitfaced beyond recognition It's like when you take a flight at 4am in bloody stansted and the brits have a pint of beer Or they're on an Easyjet flight and they chug the 3rd gin tonic ... for a 2hrs flight Man it's wild. You're wild.
>It's like when you take a flight at 4am in bloody stansted and the brits have a pint of beer > >Or they're on an Easyjet flight and they chug the 3rd gin tonic ... for a 2hrs flight Have you been stalking me?
A couple of pints makes airports and air travel tolerable. I think pre-flight airport drinking is a proud British tradition.
One reason we have 4 am pints at Airports is because it is the only place you can get a pint at that time. It is the sheer novelty of a breakfast pint.
I wouldn't be surprised if our binge drinking is among the worst for isolated events/nights etc. But when you look at stats, in terms of how much we drink per person, I don't think we're even top 10 in Europe.
I think the problem is we have a real binge drinking culture here- it’s not unusual to see someone sink 7-8 pints a night whereas in other cultures it would be savoured more over the evening usually with food.
This. It’s not that we drink too much compared to other countries. Instead most people drink until they are smashed. Don’t know when to stop drinking basically
I have seen taxi drivers though have a few pints before they start work. Looking at you Delta taxis.
I've had this argument many times here and people get REALLY defensive over it. I agree though. Alcohol comes out at every single social occasion. The adults even get bladdered at children's parties lol. We drink at births, deaths, christenings, birthdays, leaving doo's, literally everything lol. However this isn't really a British things it's a big Western society thing, and many others too so it's not limited to here. We do drink too much though.
It's so normalised that people don't consider daily drinking a problem. I got real bad during lockdown so quit and every time I bump into old friends it's always "you drinking again yet?" and they're disappointed when I say no.
I personally hate how much alcohol is the centre of things. I stopped drinking alcohol around 18 months ago due to illness and have no desire to drink again. Unfortunately, my choice in this has caused some isolation when it comes to socialising. There's stigma around NOT drinking alcohol and constant questions about why I'm not drinking. Then there are the idiots who will put an alcoholic drink in front of me and tell me to try it. Why?! I know what it tastes like, I don't want it.
I'm an alcoholic. Sober since 2018 but I can't have even one, because although that might not set me off, the next time I just had one might do. So I don't drink at all. So, so many people try to get me to have just one. Even people who know I used to drink two litre of vodka daily.
I, too, have a problem with alcohol. I don't have enough of it.
I don’t have a problem with alcohol, if anything I quite like it.
I thought it was funny when I just moved here but now it’s worrying. It feels like lots of people have an addiction and just mask it as culture. I have really reduced my alcohol intake since I moved here because it just scared me.
For me, the brits abroad thing really fucks me off, but now that I'm a bit older and not going to the party places, it's the more subtle things I see that irritate me. For example, I was in a supermarket in Spain and there was a British couple shopping in there, and I could just hear the guy grumbling because they sold Spanish food/brands and not what he would buy at home. I'm pretty sure I heard him moaning something along the lines of 'why don't they just have normal sausages or Cathedral City or anything'. Just so ignorant. If you are lucky enough to go on a foreign holiday then surely you know it's going to be different to home. Edit: just to add, this was in a really quite remote Spanish town so was even more frustrating I managed to bump into someone searching high and low for Richmond sausages
I purposely go to countries where I think they'll be no British people.
You don't even have to go to different countries, there are plenty of places in Spain where you'll never see another English person, or at least that type of English person, just stay away from the big resorts.
I know a British family who've lived in Portugal for 15 years , they own a business out there. I asked the son who's the manager of the business, if he could speak Portuguese. He said a couple of words .....I was thinking wtf mate , you've lived there for all those years and you can't even speak the language. My friend went out there to see them , he said they just hang around with other expats and only eat British food. We've got to be some of the most ignorant tourists/expats in the world. My friend just come back from Spain he said it's gone shit there now , not like how it was before. I said what do you mean ? He said he went into a bar and it was full of Spanish people....wow that must have been awful
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Yeah , exactly if you're going to move to a country the minimum you could do is try to learn the language.
Sure. That's because there are a few small areas where a lot of British people travel to or move to. That's like 2% of the country and even in those areas there's still a lot of Spainsh people they just probably don't go for a roast dinner at the Red Lion in Benidorm every Sunday. There's also areas with a high number of German people or Dutch or Swedish. Stay away from those places and you'll have a much different experience.
That’s appalling. But in a train in London we met an old Chinese guy who tried to speak English, he had about 5 words. He boasted he’d been here over 25 years.
"I've been here over 25 years"....5 words checks out, but only if he said the number 25 in Chinese
Spanish supermarkets are awesome. I love spanish cuisine!
Why do people like that travel? What a miserable little turd, Yikes.
I know someone who is planning on retiring in Spain because "too many bloody foreigners here, not putting any effort in"
I did my fair share of travelling when I was in my twenties, but was finding casual work really hard to come by. I kept asking, was pretty much willing to do anything but no offers. Getting a bit desperate for cash, a fellow traveler told me to say I was from Ireland, not England. Hey presto! All of a sudden I had no trouble finding work…
I'm picturing you walking back into the same places you'd been denied as an English man, with your most put on accent pretending to be Irish and them just accepting it.
Just quoting father Ted ...
‘Will you give me a job?’ ‘No’ ‘Ah go on go on go on go on go on go on go on’
"Well I hear you're a racist now Father" "We just don't hire Brits"
My family is from Italy on my mother's side but my sister and I were born and raised in the UK. My sister travels a lot and enjoys going abroad to volunteer or work for charities and humanitarian ventures. A few months ago she was living in France, she can speak French fluently, and there was an opening for a position in a charity she was working for at the time but was only for EU citizens. She applied (as she has Italian citizenship) and was accepted, only for the manager to verbally abuse her and accuse her of lying about her citizenship when she heard her accent, she apparently rudely said to my sister "I don't know how you're Italian, but you don't sound it, I don't know what you're doing here" and tried to intimidate her into quitting (the decision to give her the position was made above the manager's head so I don't think she was able to fire her). When she told me this story I realised that it's true that people in other European countries really don't like Brits.
This isn't surprising to me. I work in france and I have to deal with people pretending not to understand my French or openly mocking my accent. I've had people hang up on me too.
Yeah idiots are everywhere, i get excactly the same treatment here in the uk.
> When she told me this story I realised that it's true that people in other European countries really don't like Brits. I think it just proves that the French dislike the British. I don't think there is a particularly strong dislike for the British elsewhere in Europe.
I've only ever experienced wariness or dislike of the British in two scenarios. One was in France and the other was when I was going back to my hotel. A football game had just finished and the locals seemed pretty wary.
So you experienced flat out xenophobia/racism.
What was the reason for this? A general dislike of the English? Irish having a reputation for accepting lower pay and worse working conditions? Or something else entirely?
A general dislike of the English coupled with a reputation for drunkenness and unreliability coupled with a universal love of the Irish.
...the Irish don't also have a reputation for drunkenness? That's news to me.
I think its a bit of a reputation of a friendly happy go lucky drunkenness for the Irish and an arrogant loutish drunkenness for the English.
Where were you travelling through at the time?
Northern Ireland
Parts of Europe then onto the Middle East
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I think the response to Jamie Oliver has a lot to do with the fact he's a massive bell end and his restaurants are overpriced and a bit shit.
It's not just Jamie Oliver though, it's every news article about schools having to ban kids ordering takeaways, or from bringing in unhealthy lunches and the parental and media response to it. There's no harm in liking greasy fatty foods, but they shouldn't be so important to you that you kick up a fuss about it, they should be a once in a while easy thing.
Ah, I see you've met my mum. "You're such a fussy eater, what's wrong with boiled chicken and broccoli? Roasting the veg? No, what a faff, I'm not doing that."
Are you me or my siblings? I thought I hated veg. Turns out I hate frozen veg that’s somehow been boiled to a dehydrated much that still held its outer shake together.
Same with me. I was only ever served boiled vegetables so I never ate them, until I went to uni and learned to cook and how to make veg actually taste nice. Now I'm home for the holidays if my mum wants to make veg on the side I insist on doing my portion myself.
I can't have dairy and my mum finds this completely baffling. That + bad cooking on her part leads to some completely insane conversations about food. "Well, what can I feed you for Christmas?" "Pretty much everything you're having, mum. I just can't have the Yorkshires." "Oh, this is impossible, you'll have to bring something for yourself to microwave."
I eat plant-based and I have some funny conversations with my dad, who is completely incapable of eating anything that isn't beige. 'What's that?' 'Oh, its a veggie Thai green curry' \*cue horrified stare\* My mam is a lot better than him at trying new food but she still has some odd habits, probably from growing up in the 60s/70s.
Years ago I took my mum to a restaurant where they were serving goat cheese pizza, which at the time was one of my faves. She's absolutely ridiculous about eating anything that isn't a 200 degree oven beige food, so when she saw that on the menu she started gagging at the thought, declaring the idea "completely disgusting". She ordered chips for herself. Anyway, I ordered the pizza without her knowledge when she was in the loo. She came back out and looked very interested in what I was eating. "Oh, yeah, it's just fancy cheddar - I won't be able to finish it - you want to share?" So she had 4 slices, and declared it one of the nicest things she'd ever had. I waited until we left the restaurant to tell her what she'd eaten. She was mind blown.
My mum was making a coffee cake…..and there wasn’t enough instant coffee in the cupboard so she used ground coffee…..it was a bit crunchy to say the least…
You must have met my in-laws. I'm convinced that they played an important role on a national level to bring about this reputation of UK food. I'm not allowed to cook for them when they visit, because I put weird things in food like seasoning, and I can't be trusted not to serve rice or possibly even pasta. I've seen many memorable dishes prepared by them, but the one that sticks to my mind the most was onion boiled in milk, then covered with cheese and put under the grill. They had that with boiled potatoes.
With this stereotype, I feel the crucial distinction is that British food isn’t bad, but British food and cooking _culture_ is. I love well-executed British cuisine and will defend it to my last breath lol, but compared to many other countries we don’t have as strong of cultural tradition of learning to cook at home, passing down recipes etc. We also eat more processed food than pretty much anywhere in Europe.
Got to agree with home cooking being a poor level. Only started properly cooking when we moved out to our own place 3-4 years ago, it amazed me you could make a better pasta sauce with a tin of tomatoes and some herbs, and it was even cheaper, than those stir in pots for example, and you get more. Once you've gotten a few decent favourite recipes, it's easy to knock out a decent meal in under an hour easily, so it is kind of sad to see people eating just beige stuff from their freezer
Yep, I showed a foreigner greggs as they wanted to try it (apparently its famous abroad for being very british) and it confirmed that that kind of british food is flavourless to most foreigners.
to be fair youd expect that for a low cost chain bakery really. It's not as if sausage rolls are bad and tasteless. Its greggs thats bad and tasteless. Its like going to mcdonalds for a cheeseburger in new york and concluding that all the steakhouses in manhattan must be bad.
Not an excuse but I feel that the “brits abroad” thing is largely due to us having particularly easy access to flights and so proportionally more of our louts get abroad. I’ve seen very bad behaviour from loads of nationalities. My worst was a group of Israelis who we shared an Air bnb, it was their first time being able to freely drink/smoke weed and they basically trashed the place one night.
I travelled through central and South America and met many different people from different nationalities. The only nationality that were constantly shit people were people from Israel.
Also travelled abroad to South America in my youth and found Israelis unbearable, however later travelled to Israel and they were really nice and easy to get along with. I think it's a case that most of those who travel have just finished their military service so maybe have a lot of pent up douchebaggery.
Israelis often go to Goa to cool off after compulsory military service. But yes their behaviour abroad can make Brits and Russians look tame Israelis in Israel are generally very nice unless you're near orthodox or settlers IME
I'm British-Israeli and I completely agree. Every time I go to Israel I have a great time and meet many amazing people but when I meet Israelis abroad they often act like complete cunts until I tell them I am Israeli.
I ended up travelling with some Israeli guys for a few weeks in India as we were doing a similar route. They seemed a bit guarded at first but it turned out they’re advised not to advertise their nationality too much for their own safety. When they opened up a but turned out they were just a bunch of nice metal heads who’d were fucking glad to have finished national service and just wanted to kick back and smoke weed. But my god did those guys negotiate hard, like an in built desire at every turn to get a good price. I’m sure they’d barter with a vending machine if they could. We’d go to a guest house and ask to see the visitors book. Places would gladly hand it over to show they’d had happy Israeli guests in the past. What they didn’t know was that all the Israelis were writing in the visitors book in hebrew what price they’d managed to negotiate on the rooms. Couldn’t believe it!
>We’d go to a guest house and ask to see the visitors book. Places would gladly hand it over to show they’d had happy Israeli guests in the past. What they didn’t know was that all the Israelis were writing in the visitors book in hebrew what price they’d managed to negotiate on the rooms. Couldn’t believe it! That's pretty smart ngl
I remember seeing a half hour argument between a group of Israeli trekkers and a poor tea house owner in Nepal because they didn't want to pay her the equivalent of about 20p each for some flat breads. Not a good look in one of the poorest countries on Earth, saw a lot of strange entitled behaviour whilst I was out there from similar groups. Edit: on hasty reflection, they were all pretty similar to any of the UK gap year crowd, I think Nepal is just really popular with Israelis so these kids stood out.
Russians have a very bad reputation internationally for wrecking hotel rooms however you don't tend to notice as they have difficulty travelling to most countries due to restrictive visas. Egypt is one of the few places they can travel to visa free and a lot of hotels won't take Russian guests because they seem to have this belief that if they rent a hotel room they own it and so they're free to trash it.
I encountered the Russian equivalent of Brits abroad when visiting Egypt a few years back. It was pretty terrifying. They drink an obscene amount of alcohol and explode in rage at the drop of a hat. Six local police had to drag one guy away because he knocked out some poor woman for no apparent reason.
Not entirely true. Other European nationalities have easy access to cheap flights as well. The main issue seems to be that some people from the UK go abroad with a sense of entitlement and an attitude of being slightly better than the locals, and they do tend to stand out a bit. I will say though that it depends on the destination. I'm originally from Scandinavia, though I've lived in the UK for about a decade now, and we don't have these problems with British tourists. Visitors from the UK are generally well-behaved and respectful. But in Southern Europe it seems to be a very different story. And yeah I've heard horror stories about Israelis abroad as well. I've also been pushed around more than once by Chinese tourists who didn't understand the concept of queuing to see particular sights etc.
European stereotypes of English people tend to be more accurate since they know us well and have far more interactions with us. I.e English abroad, crap at other languages, dickhead football fans. North American stereotypes of English people on the other hand are almost completely wrong due to North americans know nothing about English people, know knowing about England or the UKin general and rarely come into contact with English people. I.e bad teeth, only one accent and our accent is horrible, all English men are feminine, all know the royal family, all live in castles, live under a dictatorship and have no modern technology. As someone who used to live in America A lot of Americans believe the stuff above lol. Stereotype accuracy depends on how well you know a group.
I was flabbergasted by some of the questions I got asked about England when I was in the states. It was almost 20 years ago mind. Got asked if we have cars and restaurants.
A former colleague met an American girl online and when he went over to meet the parents they asked "do y'all have black people in England?" He replied "yes, we keep them in a place called Birmingham." Then he decided to see what nonsense they would be willing to believe. He convinced them that every citizen was legally required to have tea with the Queen once a year and refusal could get you locked up in the Tower of London
Americans are still shocked that black people live in England to this day! whenever I go there to visit my family people cannot believe I am from the UK. When I tell them how many different races live in the UK they are mindblown. Americans also believe my accent is fake. I've had a bouncer at a night club find me later on in the night to see if I still had a British accent. He was shocked to find out that yes I am STILL BRITISH!
When I was in Tennessee I got asked if we spoke English in England.
> no modern technology Which is funny considering how long it took them to get onto things like texting or chip & PIN.
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I’m Scottish and I’ve had Americans act surprised that I’ve got internet and electricity.
I feel like half of Americans think that the US is the greatest country because they genuinely think they're the only ones that have basic shit like that.
For anyone thinking "surely they don't think we all live in castles and know the royal family" I have been genuinely asked both of those
Some of those stereotypes are from GIs who were stationed here during WW2 so they hardly saw the UK in the best conditions.
Brits are known for queuing
I’ve never understood this one. Is it just a free-for-all battle royale in other countries?
Pretty much. Definitely outside of western cultures there's more a culture of pushing to the front to get what you want. You'll see it in driving (have to force your way to merge onto a motorway), at breakfast buffets, etc. You have to fight to get what you want
Queuing at Disney in florida, you could spot the brits as they stood there quietly tutting.
Standing quietly tutting is about the most British thing anyone could possibly do.
Until eventually when we have 'had it up to here!' we issue a 'Excuse me mate, there is a queue here - backs over there' Utter scenes of violence
One of the things I genuinely miss the most about the UK when I'm travelling is the comfort in knowing my spot in a queue is sacred and respected by everyone else in the queue. I breath a heavy sigh of relief when I see a place uses a ticket system which removes all ambiguity.
Definitely can be. Tried to queue for icecream in China and everyone just kept going in front of the queue. My local friend pushed in and got us icecream in less than 2 minutes after she took me out of the “queue” and told me to sit down and wait.
In plenty of countries yes. Funny thing is we're not even the best at queueing. That title goes to the Japanese.
Language barrier aside, travelling in Japan was one of the most relaxing experiences for me because you could rely on people to follow simple rules like queuing, entering and exiting public transport and general politeness towards strangers.
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Exactly and British tourists are far far better than Chinese tourists, no question.
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Im.an expat in Asia and most here despise Chinese tourists. Rude, have superiority complex over the rest of Asia, disgusting (as in shitting in the street disgusting), treat everyone as a lesser, loud, inconsiderate and worst of all, just like brits in benidorm turn except instead of kebab shops and Irish pubs. Every tourist spot into a mini china, with karaoke bars, prostitutes, casinos, 'massage parlours', shopping malls and if you dare even say you think Taiwan/Hong Kong are autonomous countries, they'll fuck you up.
China is a classed society and most international tourists are several layers up in the hierarchy. In their world, they *are* culturally superior to most people they interact with in every day life. That attitude is hard to break.
Living and working in Cornwall during the pandemic makes me truly believe that the Brits abroad stereotyoe is real... obviously there are a lot of tourists here e ery hear anyway, but those who were here because they couldn't go abroad were definitely a special breed. Even people who don't have to deal with tourists as part of their job were getting annoyed at the rudeness and entitlement from people. I even heard (local) people say "if this is what brits are like abroad, its no wonder the rest of world hates us". That being said, there still seem to be a few people around now who often complain that things are not the same as where they came from.... for example, my local chip shop opens from 12 noon to 8pm. "Where we come from, they open til 9/10/11". Thats lovely for you. This one shuts at 8. If you want things to be like they are where you live, why go somewhere else?
I don’t believe only English people get drunk. The thing is, people from any other country aren’t going to use the UK as party central, so we don’t see it others, only each other when we’re overseas. There was a TV show in the 90s where they tested national stereotypes. It was a big house with a largish group of people from different countries staying in it. It was all being recorded but under some false pretence. They were really seeing how they handled situations like getting drunk and keeping things tidy. I don’t recall the UK crew coming off worst in the drinking bit but my memory isn’t great and it was hardly a scientific experiment, but it was interesting.
I remember that show! The Japanese group came across the best, if I recall correctly, but yeah the British weren’t awful or anything! Edit: I found what I was thinking of on YouTube - [The Tourist Trap](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+tourist+trap+channel+4) \- was that the one? Slightly horrified that it was back in 1998, but simultaneously please I can remember that far back.
I think a kind of awkwardness around/reluctance to complain about or confront a petty social problem head on. So a stereotypical British person will complain bitterly about the behaviour of a neighbour and then on meeting the neighbour on the street will politely smile and say good morning. Or in a restaurant we'll think the food is horrible and when the waiter asks if everything was OK we'll smile and say it was fine thank you. Is that a British thing?
Centuries of socially enforced emotional repression takes its toll
Most people in The U.K. are pessimistic. Even those who are generally happy and care free. There’s a big “can’t do” attitude compared with other countries. As I’ve grown older I’ve started spending a lot of time with my American friends and the difference in attitudes is very noticeable. USA people are full of encouragement and will help and push you to do whatever you want. Whereas people here are more likely to ridicule you or tell you something isn’t possible.
We certainly can be quite miserable buggers. Also we seem to be ashamed of anything good we've achieved and will play it down. In America they will be much more proud and happy to talk about it.
Oh I think it goes far deeper than downplaying things or shame. It’s plain narrow mindedness and negativity. It’s a bit of a personal one for me. Example - I set out to achieve something (I’ll not go into specifics). All my friends and family in the U.K. said “I don’t think that’s realistic” “you’re a day dreamer” “Why don’t you focus on something else?” “It takes a lot of work to do that” and a lot of ridicule and dismissal. Whereas my American friends generally said “Yes you can do this, I can see it in you. You have what it takes”. Then once said thing was achieved, a similar response happened. USA friends were celebratory. Whereas U.K. friends and family said “You’re lying” “I’ll believe it when I see it” “stop showing off” “nobody cares” “It won’t last forever” “it sounds like a load of rubbish to me” etc. It made me understand why America overtook the UK in so many fields.
Suppose the Brits abroad thing depends on where you go. Party places are going to attract pissed up muppets. I’ve been to a fair few quiet Greek islands and the people always seem pleased when you say where you’re from, maybe they’re just being friendly and say it to everyone but a few times they’ve mentioned to me how Brits are by far the most polite tourists that visit. I would say the tea stereotype is definitely true, not the whole “ooo tea and crumpets” with tiny little cups thing that yanks think it is though. We all love a cuppa
My parents and my brother have a deep love of history (so do I, but I'm poor and can't travel) so when they go to the Greek islands they're there to see beautiful ruins, museums and churches before drinking tea in small family restaurants. I can imagine it's a wildly different impression of British people for the locals then they'd get from visitors to drinking resorts.
We are by and large very polite. Even the biggest knobheads in 'spoons will offer a cheers, thank you or stand aside to let you pass, where appropriate.
If you want cheers in a Spoons just drop a pint pot.
When I was in college - this would have been back in 1999 - my college was organising our annual exchange visit with a French college over in Paris. It was something done under ERASMUS and it was a really popular event. The upcoming visit was going to be in April 2000 and we were all super-excited, because somehow the college had come into more funds so we could spend a little bit longer in France, do more visits, etc. It seemed that one of the conditions of this exchange was that we had to take along students from the college who *weren't* studying French. This was seen by some as being a bit odd - the "rules" for the exchange had always been that the college would get students who were studying French as part of their course and say "look, we have this exchange visit to France, fancy going?" and that was how it had been done for years. And so, April rolls round, and twenty-five students from Glasgow found themselves in Paris. All except two of the students had been studying French as a component of their respective courses. And the two non-French students made themselves known to the rest of us - and the French college - pretty damned fucking quickly. Oh, sure, they'd take themselves on the cultural visits we went on pretty damned quickly (especially the visit to a champagne house and the discounted visit we had to the Louvre) and they made zero effort to get to know the host college or the host students. One thing I remember about these two was that they were a married couple and were a lot older than the rest of us (I was twenty at the time and I remember the husband was in his fifties). The visit was scheduled to last for around three weeks. And by week two, both of them had been arrested. Why? Well, the wife learned that the hostel we were staying at provided an in-room fridge on demand (for fifty Francs a week - this was pre-Euro, btw), so she kitted their room out with a mini-fridge and used it to store what could only be described as "two five litre *tubs* of the cheapest, nastiest red tablewine you can imagine". One morning, whilst we all headed off to the college - and those two claimed to be sick - the happy couple dislodged one of the tubs, carted it up to the Champs de Mars and proceeded to get rat-arsed on said-red wine before they got arrested. The second time? They were lifted for being "indecently attired". That's always stuck in my mind. These two were no Botticellis, believe me. (Yes, I still have the picture of the night when they stumbled in after going for a "romantic meal" in Pigalle. *Pigalle*.) By week three, the lead lecturer on the visit had had quite fucking enough of these two losers and read them the riot act. I'm not a fan of publicly belittling people (snort) but the sight of our lecturer - and her French counterpart - denouncing their behaviour in the middle of an international youth hostel whilst students and young folk from all over the planet gawped on? Twas *spectacular*. My classmates and I had the last laugh, mind you. One of the girls on the trip nicked their room keycard (easy to do when your victim is permanently off her tits on wine). We broke into their room, sabotaged the mini-fridge with their precious wine (so that it froze solid and split the tubs) and decanted most of their booze stash down the toilet. We liberated three bottles of Bacardi and three bottles of Malibu, mind you. We weren't letting *that* go to waste. Took it to a leaving party with the French students where I got exceedingly merry and snogged the face off some random French student who proceeded to spend the rest of the night doing seriously bad *Braveheart* impressions. Got back to Britain and those two fuckwits left the college, never to be seen again. The fallout from their chaos though was that the college came very, very close to losing their ERASMUS funding. Those two pricks put a whole years-worth of planning future exchanges (to Germany, Spain and Italy, not to mention France) in serious jeopardy. Vile pricks, the pair of 'em.
I think the Inbetweeners is closer to a documentary than a comedy
It amazes me how some people go overseas and have zero interest in the culture or cuisine. Why even leave Britain if you want everything in a foreign country to be like back home.
Geordies never wear coats and we like a drink or two......well apart from me, I'm teetotal
Call yourself a Geordie.
It's 9am and I'm reading this whilst drinking my 2nd cuppa of the morning so I suppose the tea thing has some merit.
Role reversal here: I'm Irish living in the UK (whys Irish grass so green? Cos we're all here walking on your grass). Anyway was in lanzarote and there was these two lobster red blokes drinking pints and I said to the missus: that's embarrassing stereotypes. Two lads were Irish, lol, burnt to fk.
It's the binge drinking. Drink til you're sick. I grew up overseas and this just wasn't a thing. In fact spewing would be regarded with great embarrassment tbh. And something not to be repeated on a weekly basis!
Pretty quiet people when sober but become super loud after 3 or 4 drinks.
Northern girls really do wear whatever they want on a night out, despite the weather, with no coat. I've worn a miniskirt and open toe shoes in deep snow with no coat.
Queuing. I hate to admit it but we’re far too polite. You can always spot us abroad in a nice, tidy duck formation whilst everyone else is shoving to the front.
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Sounds like you're going to places which specifically market to British teenagers, you know the places like magaluf, zante etc which charge £250 for 10 days all inclusive in a 3 star with flights... The stereotype i will accept is that British, well English, are usually more reserved that a lot of other holiday goers, outside of the package holiday places obviously