maybe .. i didnt get to meet a lot of friendly swiss people around since i moved into zurich tho v_v~
i like this one : DDDDD
You'll find that many Swiss are being friendly (in their eyes), and will be totally convinced that they are super friendly, but it doesn't always seem or come out that way. They just have a different definition of what friendly is.
Although I notice this trend very often when different cultures mix. Simple questions, or comments intended to be friendly or even inviting, can come across as rude, ignorant or offensive. It goes without saying that you need a tough skin when mixing culture, but I lose it sometimes when I'm in a bad mood and someone asks me why I'm brown.
Yes, but a significant proportion of the population in South Africa is not black and their wide-eyed reaction implies that they believe that everyone in Africa is black. Have they never heard of apartheid? Or Colonialism? Guess not. And also, although there are many African countries where French is spoken there are plenty of countries where it is not spoken and countless languages more. And on that topic, how do they think Africans learnt French in the first place?
But anyway, point is, not everyone knows everything about every land.
Years ago, buying gas in Italy, the attendant sees my Ticino plate, and starts speaking to me in bad German. He was shocked to learn that parts of Switzerland are Italian speaking!
Another time in Italy, I was speaking with some Italians (and my Italian was really bad at that time), and one of them asked which part of Italy I was from. (I guess he/she, can't recall which, figured I was from one of the non-Italian speaking regions, as surely they couldn't think that Italian was my mother tongue!)
Tom
Who say I cannot? You never hear me speak only.
What is a Hong Kong? Is it related to King Kong?
Iiiihhhh now you complainig! What about the one in Hardbrueck-BH and what about bevor you moved to zuerich?
sine he was asking me about the opening hours of the swiss post office .. i dont think hes Swiss .. unless he is =P .. or unless it was like #7 said that he was just trying to be flirtatious ._.
I love-D Switzerland so much before moving to Zurich i was in Neuchatel. and since I graduated and moved to Zurich last June, i cried so many times because of rude people all around ME (maybe just around ME) and had thoughts of going back to Hong Kong because I started hating the people around Zurich is just a different land than what I have had in my impression of Switzerland...
I am from Zürich , and I am a nice guy Just ignore the bad rude S.O.B.`s and concentrate on the nice ones Think of the rude ones , there from Paris
I'm bad at math. What does two of these ">" mean...? Be careful what you answer!
Me too! LOVE tex-mex food & 2 for one margaritas!!!
I actually just stopped starting conversation with people : ) especially women or female products, they seem more "cool" , like the same people i see them in dance classes almost everyday, they dont even like to say Grüzi/Hey or to use whatever other terms in any languages to say hi or bye
i started going to this dance place since last September and I have so far made TWO cute friends, because we all couldnt understand Swiss-German in class ..
tex-mex, not so much, but 2for1 margaritas
I get the same
Also, the OP really messed the guy up with the Vietnamese reference, he's never going to get Geography now - he left thinking that Hong Kong is the capital of Japan and that they speak Vietnamese there.
I was thinking about that too, hes gonna share to his friends as well...
being Swedish in Switzerland is not the easiest either...
(it should be considering it is the same country to most people )
I would say that most people know that Hongkong is in China for sure. But some people are of course exceedingly dull and in geography lessons in school accidentally were sitting behind that big pillar in the room and their atlas had a coffee scar right where Hongkong is
Yeah. Those are easy to confuse in Portuguese & Spanish. People down here & in Portugal ask if I speak Swedish (sueco/sueco) when I tell them I moved here from Switzerland (Suiza/Suíça).
Switzerland: Suíça (PT), Suiza (SP)
Swiss language: (aha! caught you!!)
Sweden: Suécia (PT), Suecia (SP)
Swedish language: sueco (PT), sueco (SP)
well, if you wish, here you go
[](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Second_world_war_europe_1940_map_de.png)
You should have offered a glass of Blue Nun to go with it.
Cheers,
Nick
The whole North including Paris was defacto-part of Greater Germany between 1940 and 1944 ! Elsass-Lothringen was German from the times of Karl der Grosse (Charlemagne) until 1648, then became increasingly, step-by-step French and as a result of the French Revolution had to adopt French as official language. It was taken back by the Germans in 1871 but lost again in WW-I .
-> history at its worst