……….65% of Hungarians speak only Hungarian, a remarkably
difficult language to learn.
Europe is roughly the same size as America but it has 56
countries, depending on who’s counting and more than 80 languages (23 of them
are officially recognized). In America, one can drive for many hours, even days
only to arrive in a new place that feels eerily similar to the one you’ve left.
The topography changes, and we have regional cuisines and dialects, but the
trend is toward homogenization.
Big box chains and other aspects of our consumer culture are
creeping into Europe as well. But you never have to travel very far to arrive
in a place where the language, customs, and culture are completely different. When
I lived in Macedonia, I could be in Kosovo, Serbia or Bulgaria within an hour.
Greece was just two hours away. …….There is no place else in the world with
more cultural treasures concentrated in a relatively small area. Four of the
five countries with the most UNESCO World Heritage sites are in Europe, and
seven of the ten countries that receive the most foreign tourists are on the
Continent.
As we entered Kazakhstan, we left the greenery of Russia
behind, chugging into a barren desert landscape of abandoned prison camps and
the occasional nomad.
Macedonian mechanics see a car with diplomatic plates being
driven by a caretaker from the embassy and start to think about retiring young.
She explained that in Malta, people have the charming habit
of listing their degrees ……in the telephone book…..
Liechtenstein, ………has the highest gross domestic product per
person in the world when adjusted by purchasing power parity and an
unemployment rate of about 2%. While Liechtensteiners once had to walk to jobs
in Switzerland, now some 20,000 Swiss and Austrians commute into Liechtenstein
for work each weekday. Many live outside the country because land is scarce in Liechtenstein
and prices are high. Others simply cannot get residency permits, let alone
citizenship…………in Liechtenstein, voters cast ballots to approve or deny
citizenship and not everyone is voted in…………From 2011-2014, only 18 people
gained citizenship in this manner………..
We arose to the din of maniacally gonging church bells at
5:30 a.m. Liechtenstein is about 76% Catholic………it must lead the world in
church bell gonging. You hear them all day and throughout the night. Its all
the more startling because they make a hell of a racquet in a peaceful country
where half the people who want to get drunk drive up to Feldkirch, Austria,
twenty minutes north of Vaduz, where beer costs half the price.
“My dad says, ‘If you aren’t five minutes early, you’re
late!’”
Someone once said that you can tell a lot about a country by
the state of its public toilets. By this token, Liechtenstein might be the most
developed country in the world.
….. Liechtenstein in
Figures 2015……….. Liechtenstein is 41% wooded. There are 109 farms, 1,655 pigs,
3,522 sheep. 977 bee colonies, 36 hotels and guesthouses, 6,161 houses. 2,135
apartments, 635 unemployed persons. 37,878 motor vehicles……..12 people who died
due to an accident or from a violent death in 2013……… The army was abolished in
1868 (they essentially farm out border controls to the Swiss)…….. it is one of
just two double-landlocked countries in the world (The other is Uzbekistan.) …….Like
Switzerland, the country was officially neutral in WW2. ……..The Swiss are
nominally in charge of border control but apparently there are only spot checks
and no manned border posts. Austria and Switzerland have scores of migrants but
few bother to try their luck in Liechtenstein, which has a reputation for being
a rather difficult place to migrate to………It is essentially a nation with 11
small towns, no real cities, no highways, no Starbucks and few tourists ………
Liechtenstein is 24.8 kilometers at its longest and 12.4
kilometers at its wildest. The meandering Rhine River marks the western border
with Switzerland, while 5,000-foot peaks mark the southern (Swiss) and eastern
(Austrian) borders.
One could ride public buses for a lifetime in France and not
encounter a friendly driver who proactively offered directions in English. But this
was already the second time this had happened in a weekend of travel around Liechtenstein,
which surely has the best bus drivers in the world.
….Essad Bey’s 1931 tome, Twelve
Secrets of the Caucasus….. “Almost every tenth Caucasian is involved in
some affair that has to do with a blood feud…..Intercourse with animals-an
abuse which is very widely practiced in the mountains-also demands blood
vengeance.”
In the Balkans, breathing fresh air is seen as a danger to
one’s health…..
Belgrade may have the world’s most beautiful women.
………the Serbs [said]
……….Montenegrins were lazy and would cheat you. Macedonians were country
bumpkins and really shouldn’t even exist as a nation. Albanians were sub-human
and prone to crime. Bulgarians smelled bad and were ugly….
It is never advisable to approach someone in France and
immediately start speaking English.
I speak basic Spanish, but I don’t speak German, Portugese
or Norwegian. And yet, in each of these places, I felt like I was welcome, whereas
in France, I often felt like I was nothing more than an annoyance, an unwelcome
visitor. In France, I………was ….constantly worrying that I was going to offend
someone. Everywhere else, I could relax and not feel ashamed of my linguistic
shortcomings.
Did we encounter any nice people in France? Actually, yes we
did. Every negative encounter we had was with someone who was at work, whereas
many of the random people we encountered on buses, at beaches, or even in the
Paris metro, were quite nice. ….nearly all of our positive customer service
experiences in France involved young persons under the age of 30.
Eatwell reports that in the 17th and 18th
centuries, the French set the standard for manners and etiquette. But after the
French revolution, there was a “revolt against the rules of politeness.”
Eatwell notes that the French – particularly the working class – tends to
equate politeness, especially politeness to foreign tourists, with
subservience.
In France, nearly half the country takes the whole month of
August off. Many shops and restaurants are closed and some places, like Dijon,
feel like ghost towns. But the other half – those who still have to work – are often
resentful. By the middle of August, many are fed up after a long summer of
coping with tourists who don’t speak French. Its entirely possible that someone
visiting France off-season might encounter far less rudeness.
“In France, you always believe you will be assisted by the
government,” he said. “Unions are strong, so it is very hard to fire someone. If
you work in a restaurant, you don’t get the tips like in the States, so if you
do a good job or a bad job, at the end of the day, you make the same money. This
is the mentality in France.”
He said that in France, if someone is successful, their peer
group will be jealous and resent them; whereas, in the States, most people
assume that those who are successful worked hard to get where they are.
“This is why customer service is so much better in the
States,” he said. “There is a belief that working hard can lead to success.”
He shook his head yes, meaning no, in that odd,
counterintuitive way Bulgarians are famous for.
Where can you have a world-class meal at hole-in-the-wall
prices, see six islands from one stunning vantage point and hear a tune played
on a goatskin tsabouna by half the
town’s total population? Welcome to San Michalis, on the island of Syros,
population: two. ……Syros has a substantial Catholic minority, an oddity in a
country that is 98% Greek Orthodox.
……the distinctive Basque language, Euskara, said to be the
oldest living language in Europe.
‘In every Basque town, you will find three things,’ said a
man sitting next to us…….. “A church, a bar and a pelota court. This is our most important game”
Stone lifting evolved into a sport over the last hundred
years or so because Basque farms tend to be rocky, and farmers needed to move
big boulders to work their land.
Even during the dark days of the Franco dictatorship, when
it was dangerous to speak the Basque language, rural Basque sports flourished
as an important part of the Basque culture, even though no one could call them “Basque
sports.” And mountaineering became popular because Basques felt free to speak
their own language only when there was no risk of being reported to the
authorities.
The Basques are a proud yet somewhat reserved people.
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