Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/10/24
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 04:17 AM 10/24/2001, you wrote: >Actually I don't know of anybody in my vicinity who dislikes Americans as >such. (At times black Americans invite longer stares - we haven't seen too >many of them around as of yet.) But to speak of hatred - sorry! Or is it >another joke I don't get?? Being a native Southerner here in North Carolina, and having traveled rather heavily in Europe, India and Japan, I think I can draw a comparison/similarity. Where I live, our town has grown in 25 years from 14,500 to 100,000 people; from 45,000 in 1990 alone. Nearly all of this growth is from transplants from the North coming in. What irritates natives here is when a transplant will criticize by saying something like, "We didn't do it like that where I come from." What I noted can irritate Europeans is when an American says the same thing. In both cases the criticizer is showing a lack of respect for the local customs and culture. Americans who perceive dislike of the locals while in Europe have likely done something like this. Or maybe run into somebody having a bad day. Either way, I do not believe that a 'hatred' of Americans is the norm, or even a substantial minority, in Europe, no more than there is a similar hatred for Northerners in my area. If a Northerner comes in huffing and blowing about the local ways being the ways of rubes and hicks, well sure he's going to catch a lot of hell from locals. If one travels someplace different, respect for local customs and culture will gain one many many friends in that place. Or as my momma taught me, you get more bees with honey than you do with vinegar. - -- Craig Zeni - REPLY TO -->> clzeni at mindspring dot com http://www.trainweb.org/zeniphotos/zenihome.html http://www.mindspring.com/~clzeni/index.html Some mornings it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps. - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html