Mar 26, 2011 -- 12:49PM, fodaoson wrote:

Paravani posts” In general, I've found the majority of tourists and expatriates from anywhere else in the world to be warm, friendly, and charming, whether they spoke a great deal of English or not.  I've never met any others as pushy and rude as the Germans were.

 

 I take it you never came in contact with American overseas.  I have traveled  in Europe, Mexico, and Japan  And Americans are the loud ,pushy and mono-linguists

Not to mention, the fattest.

Mar 26, 2011 -- 4:40PM, mytmouse57 wrote:

Mar 26, 2011 -- 12:49PM, fodaoson wrote:

I take it you never came in contact with American overseas.  I have traveled  in Europe, Mexico, and Japan  And Americans are the loud ,pushy and mono-linguists

Not to mention, the fattest.

Hi, All!

...  Yup...  Especially since 1993, when our Food and Drug Administration okayed the use of hormones to fatten our beef before slaughter.

I gained 50 pounds (~23K) that year.  Turns out that the hormones aren't destroyed by cooking.

:-(

I'm so jealous that you guys get to eat real food!

Love,

-- Claudia

Mar 26, 2011 -- 5:13PM, Paravani wrote:

Mar 26, 2011 -- 4:40PM, mytmouse57 wrote:

Mar 26, 2011 -- 12:49PM, fodaoson wrote:

I take it you never came in contact with American overseas.  I have traveled  in Europe, Mexico, and Japan  And Americans are the loud ,pushy and mono-linguists

Not to mention, the fattest.

Hi, All!

...  Yup...  Especially since 1993, when our Food and Drug Administration okayed the use of hormones to fatten our beef before slaughter.

I gained 50 pounds (~23K) that year.  Turns out that the hormones aren't destroyed by cooking.

:-(

I'm so jealous that you guys get to eat real food!

Love,

-- Claudia

 Just in case you misunderstood, I am an American and currently living in Texas. Here is a little information on hormones in Beef and other “natural “ foods, an area of apparent misunderstanding

www.beefmyths.org/beefmyths/cattlegrowth...

Mar 27, 2011 -- 10:42PM, jane2 wrote:

A story--when we were staying in a London hotel our 3-y-o daughter wanted to run up and down the luggage ramp and we halted her. The doorman told us it was okay, that all the youngsters did. In London when we took the family for dinner at Simpson's in the Strand the captain sat and talked with our 3 children for twenty minutes. In Italy the small staff at a restaurant across from Trevi Fountain brought the children fruit before dinner. Our children, then 3, 7 and 8, were entranced when we took them to a small audience with Pope Paul VI.

What a rich life, Jane!

Also a story from me. Returning from a bike tour I did with my cousin in the early 1990s, which had taken us through the Île de France's major gothic cathedral cities (Chartres, Reims, Noyon, Senlis, Soissons, Saint-Denis, ...), we shared the train compartment from Paris to Berlin with a young couple from the US who spent their honeymoon in Europe. They were very insecure after a three-day Paris experience, where they had run into all sorts of language difficulties. They expected better on their next stops in Germany, and we tried to explain the cultural differences between Germany and France a bit. These two persons came across as a tad too naïve and unexperienced for European traveller standards, but very sensitive and open-minded. Still, they seemed to expect the English language to safely carry them all over the world... Well. I am quite confident that their expectations about being understood when speaking English in Germany were met. And, maybe to add this: as of today, I would think that also France is no major language obstacle to English speakers any more. I think...

Mar 28, 2011 -- 5:38AM, CharikIeia wrote:

Mar 27, 2011 -- 10:42PM, jane2 wrote:

A story--when we were staying in a London hotel our 3-y-o daughter wanted to run up and down the luggage ramp and we halted her. The doorman told us it was okay, that all the youngsters did. In London when we took the family for dinner at Simpson's in the Strand the captain sat and talked with our 3 children for twenty minutes. In Italy the small staff at a restaurant across from Trevi Fountain brought the children fruit before dinner. Our children, then 3, 7 and 8, were entranced when we took them to a small audience with Pope Paul VI.

What a rich life, Jane!

Also a story from me. Returning from a bike tour I did with my cousin in the early 1990s, which had taken us through the Île de France's major gothic cathedral cities (Chartres, Reims, Noyon, Senlis, Soissons, Saint-Denis, ...), we shared the train compartment from Paris to Berlin with a young couple from the US who spent their honeymoon in Europe. They were very insecure after a three-day Paris experience, where they had run into all sorts of language difficulties. They expected better on their next stops in Germany, and we tried to explain the cultural differences between Germany and France a bit. These two persons came across as a tad too naïve and unexperienced for European traveller standards, but very sensitive and open-minded. Still, they seemed to expect the English language to safely carry them all over the world... Well. I am quite confident that their expectations about being understood when speaking English in Germany were met. And, maybe to add this: as of today, I would think that also France is no major language obstacle to English speakers any more. I think...

On that same trip we had no problems in Paris in the 70s. My husband was fluent in French and mine was pretty minimal. I went to a pharmacy near our hotel to look for nail lacquer and those workiing there were very helpful when I said I spoke only a little French. In Rome Italians did not seem to care if we couldn't speak Italian--when they ran out of English they just spoke Italian. Pope Paul VI addressed our small audience of about 40 in six languages. The fun thing about that audience was all the Viva Il Papa from the Italians--it was downright rowdy.

My husband spoke what I'll call some kitchen German. His mother took him and his sister home to Maine while his father was serving in Europe during WWII. There, as a preschooler, he became friends with German POWs working in the potato fields.

I have had a rich life and I give thanks for it.