Yesterday i went to yet another great event organized by Brno expats center. This time Brno culinary. While it was interesting, i was unpleasantly surprised by the same time. Well, maybe not really unpleasantly, but it left some uneasy feeling how distant people can be for one another. This meeting was for posh people in very posh place with costumes, pretending ones understand stuff about wine and splashing on stuff worth many times less. One thing, i like cozy, not chic. Another thing, i consider myself simple and very unpretentious person and bad liar as well. So i felt extremely uncomfortable.
Also i realized once more how vain and plain stupid people can. Why to go to live in another country if you don't even learn local language and then complain how unfriendly to foreigners local people are? Here's very nice post how to feel local (or at least almost) in Czech republic. I read it several times and can't agree more. According to my very subjective experience and observation quite a lot of immigrants are rich and well, to put it slightly, boring. Rich people are rarely interesting to me because there's not much to talk about with them. Especially when they start about travels. With plain. To capitals. And call it 'traveling'. In my humble opinion it's even more absurd than some people posting questions in let's say Vilnius Tripadvisor forum. When people like that gets cheated and complains about it nobody even feels sorry for them as 99 percent of times it happens it's because they event didn't read about the country they are going to.
So back to where i started, exactly the same stuff i see in the part of expat community here in Brno. Native English speakers expecting that everybody must speak English and putting zero effort in learning beautiful and funny Czech language and getting agitated when somebody don't and later complaining that Czechs in Czech republic can't communicate in foreign language in their home country. Most of them are able to speak only about flying, restaurants, stuff they bought and that's it. Some of foreigners are nice but actually living stereotypes of their home countries. Because of their behavior in my home country i always was careful around British and south European people but only there, abroad, i noticed that i can detect them very easily as they behave like typical tourists there most of the time.
I try not to think stereotypically, but well, people act stereotypically. Brits drink a lot. South europeans shout instead of talking. Americans think that north europeans speak russian. Central europeans not knowing a thing about neighbor countries. North europeans being very sceptical and allergic to stupid and ignorant people and so on. I espeacially notice that when after stating a fact i am called rude/ignorant/angry/little sad/etc. by people not used to truth. What can i say (think most of the time)? Grow up and get a life.
