It is us or can everyone spot British people a mile off? Every day without fail on a recent trip to France we'd spot at least one British family or couple out and about and it was invariably an embarrassing event. It would go like this. We'd see a couple approaching, man carrying plastic bag full of stuff, wearing sandals, black socks; British. Family on a beach making a lot of noise, all look a bit scruffy; British. Couple in restaurant, woman ordering in very loud voice to a waiter who clearly can't understand; English.
We British always seem to single ourselves out for all the wrong reason. We all to often are too noise, too scruffy, and too annoying. But why?
We even found we could spot Brits on appearance only. Fat woman with skinny man, woman too sunburned for comfort, man in cravat, couples aimlessly walking around looking fazed or confused, family having a poorly conceived picnic using bread roles that they clearly nicked form their hotel at breakfast time. Oh my god! It can be so embarrassing to think that we are possibly going to be associated to these people in any way.
The weirdest thing we saw was in a restaurant one night when a group of Irish (almost British) people came and started off by telling the waiter they didn't want any food that had garlic in it - not easy or likely in France. They then proceeded to ask for various menu items using an odd mixture of English, French, and for some reason, German. In fact at one point they got quite angry with the waiter when she couldn't understand what they meant when they were screaming "wasser, wasser" to her when they wanted some more water. They could have at least looked it up in a phrase book, but no, they just spent the next five minutes complaining about how stupid she must be for not understanding them.
Europeans must hate us - but probably not our money!
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