Tourists

[Anagaharad]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2137729.stm

Apparently Brits are the worst tourists, Germans are the best, and Americans refuse to try local food.

I have been abroad 3 times: 2X england, once in germany. I was generally a good sport about food, i think. Was I? I cant remember. I just remember that EVERYTHING had bacon in England and Germans eat a lot of Turkish and Italian food.

[Kute Kitty]

You were awesome about food, and me and Gray were both really surprised to see that actually just about everything does have bacon or ham in it - something neither of us had noticed before!

I have to say, I'm not surprised at all that we're regarded as awful tourists. I always make an effort to at least learn enough of the local language to apologise for not knowing more, and to say "please" and "thankyou". A lot of Brits don't, and regard a holiday abroad as just somewhere else to get pissed and eat McDonalds - but now without the possibility of anyone they know seeing them make utter tits of themselves, sleeping with someone who isn't their girlfriend, etc, so just behave utterly appallingly and make me embarrassed to be English.

We are taught very little of foreign languages in school - I had to learn French from age 10 to age 16 but that's all, and then we were only taught to talk to other school kids, not so helpful when you're actually there and want to know what the menu in a restaurant says or where the train station is - while kids in mainland Europe are taught English from a very young age. We're far too used to the rest of the world accomodating us!