• @[email protected]OP
    link
    fedilink
    English
    1511 months ago

    My favourite country to visit would be France, I like the food, I like the language, I like the people, I like the culture in general.

    Many people claim the French are rude which is not my experience at all. Maybe because Danes are ruder? 😂

    Au contraire, I’ve only been met with respect and professionalism when I’ve been to France.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      711 months ago

      France is amazing by the diversity of the landscapes you can find there. French people are alright if you get out of big cities, like Paris, Lyon or Marseille.

      Source: am French

      • @[email protected]OP
        link
        fedilink
        English
        511 months ago

        Hehe, I’ve been to Paris twice, and to Bordeaux, Montpellier, Hauts de France, and surrounding countryside as well. This year we’ll drive to Alsace-Lorraine and visit the Vosges. I’ve liked every visit 🙂

        I mean, some people are rude, that’s normal. But overall we’ve been treated really well no matter where we’ve been.

        I was in Bordeaux with my family for the world cup in 2018, it was a great experience even with thousands of people and us with two toddlers.

        Sorry, this comes of as a love letter to France 😂 I promise, I also love visiting other parts of Europe!

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          4
          edit-2
          11 months ago

          That’s a nice tour indeed! The Vosges are great for nature, I think it’s the last rainforest in France.
          Alsace has some of the most beautiful villages in the country, great wine and great food.
          Lorraine is a bit plain but you have some pretty spots (pays de Bitche is cool) and loads of history (Verdun, Maginot Line).
          A few underrated spots for me are Cantal and Ariège, the first one is a massive dormant stratovolcano and the second one is a pretty wild area (at least in the mountains). They’re both great for nature and hikes.

          • @Mr_Blott
            link
            English
            511 months ago

            Having just returned from a tour of Alsace, I’d describe the food as more “comical” than “great”

            😂

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      6
      edit-2
      11 months ago

      Many people claim the French are rude which is not my experience at all.

      99.9% of this is from US-americans who visit just Paris and speak very loud US-english to everyone. The Parisians are not as nice as the rest of France and no one appreciates an ignorant tourist speaking loud US-english into one’s face as if it were a walmart in Texas or something.

      In general the French are nice people.

      • @[email protected]OP
        link
        fedilink
        English
        411 months ago

        I think it’s a power-thing. Some Americans follow the ‘customer is always right’ thinking and expect staff to be servile. But my experience in Europe is that when you interact with a waiter or a shop assistant you’re interacting with an equal who happens to be serving you at that moment, and who also expects a certain something from you.

        I still remember a waiter who was very disappointed in me because I didn’t know which wine I wanted to have with my fish 😂 Sorry, Danes don’t know much about wine. Anyway, the only time I’ve encountered rude staff was in Belgium and only once or twice - and probably just because we seemed impatient.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      211 months ago

      My impression is that things have changed in the last 20 years or so. These days, people will not look at you like you’re some disgusting bug if you speak to them in English. Haven’t really been there a lot, though.

    • tryptaminev 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇪🇺
      link
      fedilink
      English
      111 months ago

      I found the Danes to be direct but nice.

      French on the other hand can be nice on the front, and then stab you in the back. Also i have made the experience that many of them are increadibly racist and when they travel assume a colonial attitude. I’ll never travel again with French people for that matter.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        111 months ago

        That’s incredibly generalizing. You seem to have had the misfortune of traveling with some assholes, that doesn’t mean all or even most of us have that kind of behaviour.

        • tryptaminev 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇪🇺
          link
          fedilink
          English
          411 months ago

          Well it was also “aided” by the experience of a friend, who is a french citizen, but living in Germany. When he visited a family member in France, some french teenagers harassed and spit on them, because there was an arab among their group. When he told the people of his group to properly make a scene, they told him not to bother as this is just normal in France. On the same voyage this friend was almost killed on the highway as a french driver tried to get him to steer off the asphalt by breaking in front of him and making moves of steering into him from the side repeatedly.

          So within just a few weeks independantly and literally across the world, we experienced numerous occasions of french people being incredibly racist, showing an extreme sense of self entitlement and superiority, while not hesitating from deadly violence. Now at some farmers protest someone was killed and multiple people seriously injured too.

          I do not want to claim that this is representative of every french person or person living in France. But it seems to be representative of an underlying and structural problem in franch society and culture. Therefore the positive experience that i replied to, should equally not be expected as a general sentiment in France.

          Given that i am from Germany i also want to preemptivel warn everyone, that Germany as a whole is an incredibly racist country and racism has had a huge increase even more in the past few months. In this regard there seems to be many more similiarities between French and Germans than either people like to admit to. Unfortunately these similiarities are all not on the good side of behaviours and cultures.

  • Rose56
    link
    English
    811 months ago

    Romania and France. Romania for the people and the castle’s and France for the wine!

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    7
    edit-2
    11 months ago

    Greece Malaka! The original Europeans, the honorary middle easterners. Great food, beautiful nature, lovely people. Additionally, Athens is a fucked up but also very interesting place.

    I’m hating on the influx of non-European tourists that are willing to pay the most ridiculous prices. This has made most of the islands impossibly expensive, where 5 years ago it was still very affordable if you avoided places like Mykonos and Santorin.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      811 months ago

      Both my parents immigrated from Germany before meeting and marrying each other.

      When I went back on my own in the late 80s, I got the most disconcerting feeling of being somewhere that was simultaneously intimately familiar while also being completely foreign.

      Even just walking through the countryside gave me an indescribingly aching feeling in my chest, like I wanted to lie down in the tall grass and become one with the land and bind myself to it like some giant oak tree. Even the small villages with homes that often were a thousand-plus years old gave this impression of disturbingly compelling and eternal intimacy, and It absolutely freaked me out because I couldn’t understand it.

      In all the places I have physically been, I have only ever felt something familiar in one other place: Vancouver Island in the Nanaimo region.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      511 months ago

      I like visiting Germany :) Lots of good electronic music festivals and clubs! And board games!

    • @[email protected]OP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      411 months ago

      I’ve never vacationed in Germany, mainly because my wife does not speak German. I do want to go, though, I have a feeling that there’s a lot of regional culture and food to discover if we just gave it a go.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        411 months ago

        Don’t worry too much about not speaking German. You will be fine speaking English 99% of the time.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        311 months ago

        if you do don’t concentrate on the southern regions with brezn and weisswurst. visit the north! eat fischbrötchen, krabbenbrötchen and braunkohl mit pinkel.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          511 months ago

          See that’s why we’re not coming to Germany, how are we supposed to take these dish names seriously.

      • @JeffreyOrange
        link
        English
        311 months ago

        Also beautiful places for biking and hiking, especially the forests are worth a visit.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        311 months ago

        I’d also like to take a look, about a year ago I started regularly speaking to some Germans and it’s a lot more interesting to me for some reason now…

  • Che Banana
    link
    fedilink
    English
    611 months ago

    Andorra, because: snow!

    (also amazing food & people are super nice)

  • Lath
    link
    fedilink
    611 months ago

    Russia because usually it’s Russia that visits you. Then stays way too long, eats your food, sleeps in your bed, clogs your toilet and finally leaves with everything you own.

  • Resol van Lemmy
    link
    English
    511 months ago

    Belgium is weird.

    I am weird.

    The answer is Belgium.

  • Eggyhead
    link
    fedilink
    511 months ago

    There are many places I’ve yet to visit, but Spain stands out to me specifically for the tapas.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    511 months ago

    I love visiting Portugal, been a few times to Lisbon, amazing city, and to the Algarve region. Visiting Porto is still on my todo list, I hear it’s really nice too.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    411 months ago

    Denmark or Estonia. Both beautiful countries that constantly make me feel like “I wish we had this where I live”.