He: “For an American that’s very long. Americans never spend more than eight days away from their country.”
Someone behind us: “Speak for yourself!”
Another voice behind: “Yeah, speak for yourself!”
What followed is a conversation about who came from where (Florida, Texas) and who’s been where and so on. The conversation didn’t have any depth or any added value, but they seemed to enjoy it. They didn’t have any problems discussing their being American in the full tram. Suddenly it struck me that their behavior is more or less the opposite of what I’m used to from Russian speaking community.
Russian speakers are much more reserved. We usually do not address each other just like that, very often we find it annoying if some stupid tourist happens to jump on us: “Are you also from Russia?”. We try to pretend we don’t see or hear each other and if we start a conversation, we do not hit right away with ‘where are you from’.
What is the reason for such a difference?
Here’s a nice short animation, one of those I saw at KLIK! in Amsterdam:
Prettige vakantie!!! – Nicolien Opdam
PRETTIGE VAKANTIE!!!
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Like your дневник a lot.
ReplyDelete"Are you also from Russia" - that is indeed most stupid question in the world. But if you think about it twice why does it seem so? Because we, people, who come from the Russian speaking communities or Soviet countries feel little tight about their 'past'. Can't change that.