^

This is totally off-topic, but right you are. What seriously pisses me off is american tourists that we unfortunately get sometimes here in Helsinki, bitchin "these damn backward nations can't even speak english well enough to please my fat ass." A big fuck you to them.

This is of course generalization, we do get nice tourists also, and I'm not saying that all americans are stupid, selfcentered assholes.

Sorry, needed to get that off my chest.

It´s funny, you know - I work at a citzen central (yeah, I´m a public servant), which is this place in my states´ administration that unites several public offices that the common citzen will find useful, like offices of public taxes, consumer defense (my place), traffic fines, power, water, post, and the likes.

Fortunately, we are located at a small mall (no pun intended - if there is ANY to read), at 50 yards from the beach (we have notoriously beautiful beaches here in my town, sunny almost all the year - but not now). Of course that we have a LOT of tourists. Most of them are italian, german, dutch, swiss and sweden (don´t ask me why), and we have some american and english too, but it doesn´t matter, because ALL of them only speak english and some god-awful spanish (that they seem to have learned from a drunken walrus). Several times I am called at the front desk to help people dealing with nordic tourists trying to be undstood in a frantic spanish - and failing miserably.

They don´t seem to understand that we speak portuguese, not spanish.

So, it´s not annoying, but funny. Specially when they´re half-drunk, wearing only their bathsuits and a t-shirt saying "kiss the tourist" or something like that, and demanding that they have been robbed: how in hell can a sun-block cocoa lipstick cost the same as a 2-course meal?

But they do. I´ll probably die without ever knowing why, but we have the strangest price relation EVER in the whole history of economy.

Well, since you're Brazilian, I think you'll find the following hint interesting: M'Boi (escrito de umas cinco maneiras diferentes dependendo da fonte que estamos a ler).

Thanks for understanding that. I personally know some "ugly Americans" having heard stories about their travels. It embarasses me to no end to be associated with them.

I have to disagree. Some of the nice ones are Americans pretending to be Canadians....

And now back to our regularly scheduled topic.

Still off-topic, just today I saw some kids in the tram, maybe seven or eight years old, and they were talking about how stupid americans are, how ignorant they are and the usual yada-yada you hear from ADULTS mostly.

The point is, as an american citizen, but also as a finn, it really worries me how negative the attitudes againts "yankees" are. Hate is a sad thing, especially when there's little or no basis for it.
The other really depressing thing is how little the foreign policy of the states is doing to negate this, on the contrary even.

But that's that.

What is it? A phrasebook telling you how to pepper your sentences with "eh" and "aboot?"

I'm not kidding. I think I saw it on CNN. The kit included an obviously Canadian t-shirt, a facts & slang book, and pictures of Canadian landmarks that you could show to your European guests. *shakes head*

Me, like my country, I'm all for tourists.