Poland is a popular tourist spot, especially among the Germans, who have been visiting it regularly for over 9,000 years, usually choosing to stay for at least 100 years. Renowned German painter and philosopher Adolf Hitler loved the country so much that he built a concrete summer cottage and several summer camps there.
Although I do recognise that people around me can be very sensitive about criticism of our country, I hope the fact that everyone else gets the same treatment will prevent them being offended. (I detect a greater affection for Poland than there is for the UK, for instance. I suspect a friendly, good-humoured resident made significant contributions.) There are lots of nice touches elsewhere, but unless you think references to sexual parts and bodily functions incredibly funny, you may find the whole thing palls quite quickly.
I particularly liked this map from the Europe page, however. I have seen several of these in the past, but I can't remember this one. Its close to what I recognise as London prejudices about many of the countries, but what (rhetorically) is that Eurovision thing all about?
I do like the adolescent (of all ages) silliness of fora discussions. Polish Forum's 'Do Poles pretend to be uppity because they have an inferiority complex?' took my notice soom after I started looking at it. The text was:
I have seen many posts on here about Poles being snooty towards the English and thinking they are superior ... Is it because they are so used to scrounging around that when they come to the US or a western European country like the UK they don't know how to be? My father says that the eastern euros he has come across were all nasty and seemed to have inferiority complexes while germanic or western Europeans were friendly and sociable.
What complete, wonderfully provocative nonsense. I mean, who could possibly think that Germans are friendly and sociable?
1 comment:
The 'Eurovision cheats' thing refers to the bloc voting that takes place in the Eurovision due to allowing people at home to vote, as opposed to music judges.
The theory is that everyone in the Balkans and Baltics votes for their neighbouring countries as opposed to the best song.
My feeling is that for this map, the 'Eurovision cheats' label was applied as a lazy last resort as they had run out of ideas, because it includes Kaliningrad (Russia), Moldova, Slovenia, Hungary and the European part of Turkey.
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