start a victory garden and ration your IRRATIONALLY ANGRY feelings, part 3

when i was on a jack the ripper tour there, a guy came up to us (whitechapel has a strong bangladeshi population) and said "you want jack the ripper? i'm jack the n***a!" all the americans went pale all at once. (this didn't make me ia obv, just a related anecdote)

Everyone going on and on about Selena Williams and her nude magazine cover when she's obviously wearing underpants and that's not nude

Demanding things, shouting orders, no effort whatsoever to adapt or even, at the very least, try - however flawed - to speak the local language (in this case Spanish, but it's the same where I'm from, Dutch)

I tried to speak some basic phrase-book Flemish in Belgium but strangely enough they all identified us as English halfway down the street and started talking to us in 100% flawless English before we opened our mouths, so it felt a little redundant and maybe even rude to continue with my faltering mispronunciations

still tried to thank them but when you're English and cheerily mispronouncing "dank u" you do start to think, am I recognisably attempting a foreign language or do I sound like I'm just speaking English in a silly patronising accent for the foreigners

although tbf I was there with my parents once and I tried to order in Flemish but my Dad embarrassingly decided that it was basically the same as German so he'd order in pidgin German instead. so I gave up and spoke English and waited for death tbh and would like to apologise to the entire continent of Europe and all Dutch-speaking countries for our terrible behaviour

Haha I have had exactly the same thought in regard to "dank u" and so tend to go for the "dank u wel" for clarity's sake.

American tourists are the absolute worst.

OTM on the loudness but also the unrelenting quality, they just won't shut up.

At least we're fair about it. I have vivid teenaged memories of my dad in NYC walking up to people in the subway and loudly asking them asking where the Empire State Building was.

asking asking asking.

No doubt American tourists are among the worst, if not the worst, but I often wonder when traveling if as an American my embarrassment and desire to keep clear of other Americans heightens my sensitivity to the American voice. Especially in a place where I don't understand the native language—the language you do understand has a way of cutting through the rest. At the risk of more (!) generalizing there are def tourists from a few other countries who give Americans a real run for their money in this department

you know who you are

I know, those Germans, eh?

They can be rough and they are not alone

imo the best way to ask questions as a tourist is to find a nearby bar that's not too busy, order a beer, and then politely ask the bartender

not to revive contentious ilx threads of yore, but if you come from a non-bartender-tipping country, make sure you know or are prepared to overestimate the local tipping customs first

(that would be another mistake I've made - no bad effects except a little shame years later, but still, it may increase the chances of your questions being tolerated and helpfully answered)

I order two beers, offer the second to the bartender, and pay for three just to be sure

It need not be stated, however, that yank ilxors would not be expected to fall under the derogatory heading "American tourists"

most people who are "tourists" or behave like tourists are awful. i work in westminster in london and have to navigate a maze of selfie sticks and moronic, gurning, posing faces every day, and tho many are american and many are chinese, there's certainly no shortage of people behaving that way from all over the world. the general attitude, mindset, gait and behaviour of the oblivious tourist is a real challenge to any normal man or woman's sense of decency or respect for their fellow person.

selfie sticks etc just make it worse. it's an easy target but like, when you see people posing, over and over again, for staged photos outside monuments which they've visited for... what reason exactly - it's fucking depressing and when you have to weave past these people it can be infuriating.

having said that one of the most enduring images of my life was touring the former palace of the pope in avignon, solo, a long tour with lots of big stone rooms, staircases, ramparts etc. i didn't bother getting the headset, obviously, and had been quite quiet. i was doing the classic slow interested walk around when there was a commotion behind me and a huge crowd of german tourists came in, all chuckling deeply and dancing in wide, sweeping, heavy movements, pointing at each other and chuckling some more. i was looking at them dumbfounded and eventually one woman, beaming at me, pointed at the headphones and said "zer is music! it is a banquet!!!" and i could hear faint harpsichord.

*it had been quite quiet

Maybe it's because I spent several years as a night club DJ/in-general "nightlife" person that I have the understanding of a context in which outright SHOUTING is the only appropriate means of communicating, but man these loud talkers have really been grating on me lately. Like, dude, the person you are talking to is less than thirty six inches away from you. There is no good, understandable reason that your voice is at the volume that it is presently.

There was a combination loud talker/line evader behind me at Starbucks this morning and I was very near speaking up about it. I mean, it got to a point where I felt like she was actually trying to manipulate the situation by being loud, drawing attention to herself and her companion, therefore directing the attention of the cashier to them, and subsequently hovering out of the line so much to the point where the cashier might have mistaken them to be next in line.

That and blocking the fucking doorway. It's a fucking high traffic area, not a social stop.

I cannot stand it when I'm standing in a line and someone comes and stands not behind me but to my side, usually talking on the phone, and kind of floating there, as though they might break off from the line at any moment. And then as the line moves forward they end up stepping ahead of me a bit until there's an inevitable moment when we make eye contact and they can see me giving them a what-the-fuck-are-you-up-to? look.

i was doing the classic slow interested walk

― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Friday, June 30, 2017 8:36 AM (fifty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm planning my next holiday and i have been thinking about how i treat it as opposed to how a lot of other people treat it

i'm more of a take-my-time, learn-the-culture type, and a lot of people have recommended i jam pack about three or four cities in two weeks and just see as much as possible and as many countries as possible so i can "tick" it off some list

i just can't see myself doing that. i have a cousin who is notorious for doing this. she's been to dozens of countries but whenever i've asked her about her time in those places, she has nothing to say except the landmarks she visited. she's been to almost every us state and she casually throws that fact in conversation but she actually just did i think it was a three week roadtrip across the entire country. i mean, yes, that's cool, but there is no depth to that

so ya i understand why people treat holidays as a time to just give zero fucks and treat the culture they're in superficially

i get pissed at automatic toilets that flush too often

a couple toilets at work flush 3-4 times while i'm standing in front

If this post gets through it would seem I have not been fp'd for my generalization about Americans abroad. Deems otm though that obv ilxors do not fall in this category, and yes "American tourists" might be derogatory. It just grated for eight weeks straight.

Infinity otm imo.

tourists are good, hate everyone from the Americas tho

tourists are terrible and american tourists in europe are particularly bad.

i now live somewhere where there are a reasonable amount of british tourists, and i can't stand them either

^^ Rules to live by xp

obv I was being silly with my post but idk sometimes you're on holiday

ey guey tu eres mexicano

comportate

jim

vancouver used to be an echo chamber for those who hated australian tourists and it was so bad 5+ years ago that there was a facebook group that was started

yeah, tourists suck, but there are exceptions to everything

I hate myself a little

I remember hearing about the guy who had run the stall next to me on the O'Connell bridge in the years before i was there. He had a habit of starting to make yapping noises like a dog if a tourist spent more time inspecting the merchandise than might be expected if one was actually likely to buy anything. Think the story was that these tended to be mainly either German or American.

Galway gets bus loads of Italian and French teenagers staying somewhere along my bus route. So you get a lot of noisy kids filling out the bus.
& now it looks like emopty buses are leaving the head stop without people on board when buses are likely to be filled if more than one is there at a time. Would think it would be better to let people on since they weren't going to fill the extra bus. I'm assuming that it heads off empty and picks up people at later bus stops since you tend to see an extra one only shortly in front of you during rush hours.
Would just think that the idea of doubling up the amount of buses at certain times was straightforward. Also that it seems to have been tried before , not sure how intentionally.

as a canadian I make sure I have a leaf on my bag when travelling abroad because there's a ton of disparaging attitudes about american tourists or U.S.A. politics for example.

Saying this, there's a ton of reasonable americans here on ilxor but the attitudes do exist abroad....and jim is otm that tourists in general are awful

i should clarify that mostly i've travelled to the U.K. where people could think at face value that I'm as likely american as canadian

I start to pronounce vowels like a canadian if in canada for more than a week. maybe a stopover before heading elsewhere would be useful

There's a ton of reasonable American tourists but you tend not to notice them over the din from the worst of them.

yeah Tom D OTM

i have a buddy who constantly tries to sound more american than canadian lol

you think you're american, eh

that's what i tell him

i laugh so hard and he's not one to show his frustration but i feel like it bothers him because he talks to a lot of americans when dealing with business clients and they tell him he sounds so canadian

as an american I make sure I have a leaf on my bag when travelling abroad because there's a ton of disparaging attitudes about american tourists or U.S.A. politics for example.

foreigners have sussed that USAers sometimes hide behind maple leaves, so all leaf-brandishers are suspect, too

Manufacturers of maple leaf emblems must be breaking all sales records at the moment.

yeah the maple leaf thing is an old trick. i'm surprised no ones mentioned how terrible aus tourists are overseas, but i guess most of our shiteness is in places like Bali

Yeah I stayed at a resort in Phuket a couple years ago and there were lots of very loud, shockingly tanned Australians with southern cross tattoos smoking and drinking by the pool all day. A lot of the staff assumed my wife and I were Russians because we are quiet and stern looking midwesterners.

people who won't wrap up their convos w/ cashiers at convenience stores while you're trying to put your stuff down and pay

^^^

That everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Complete your transaction AND MOVE ON.

This one is c/o my friend:

A little background, he is on call at different physical rehab. places and everyone is always eating up his time and every minute counts. He told me he had a discussion with a lady about east indian food and she suggested he take her left overs. He didn't have time to eat and had to keep moving, so he told her this. She said she could put it in a to-go container, but he drives around all day in the sun and that food would turn to soup by the time he could take a break. She finally suggested she would do some home cooking and bring it another day.

TLDR point: People really can kill you with kindness

xpost conversely, customer service people who are ott chatty when there is a line of people

line of 4 ppl waiting while this dude bullshits & lols with a customer about his day job, chillaxing, offering to go check in the back for something that customer already said he doesnt really need anyway .. omg wrap it up buddy!!

no beef with friendliness but you gotta be efficient too, my dude