Recently saw a YouTube video where a tourist called Austrians "mountain Germans" and the comment section understandably erupted! It got me thinking, what other obnoxious comparisons do people make about different countries? Besides the "mountain Germans" comment, I've heard people call Slavic countries "Little Russia," which is incredibly dismissive of their unique cultures and histories.
What are some of the worst comparisons you've heard about your country?
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The only thing that comes to my mind is when elsewhere in Europe there’s a sewage canal that doesn’t look completely shit and they call it “the little Venice of [insert country]”.
Not sure it’s relevant but I can’t think of anything else.
>I’ve heard people call Slavic countries “Little Russia,”
Ha, this is basically a war declaration. Also insanely insulting.
Austrians are also called “Cliff Shitters” — an allusion to the mountains as well and the way their kept things a bit more provincial: schluchtenscheisser
Not necessarily European, but in Chinese, we call Russians “the fighting race” (I.e. people who love to fight): 戰鬥民族
In Mexico, we use “Gringo” uniquely to refer to Americans specifically. Whereas it generally means “Western Foreigner” in most of Latin America. “Yanqui” is also used pejoratively.
And in the U.S., there is “Beaner” for a Mexican person. And a few other less acceptable ones I won’t repeat here.
I sometimes hear Danes being called “the Germans of the Nordics”. Or people thinking that Danish sounds like German.
Do. Not. Compare us to Germans!
…. even though we are Germanic. And Danish has a lot of Low German words. And the royalty and nobility has at times been straight up Germans. And the food culture has a lot of similarities. And the pronunciation of words is pretty similar to that of Northern Germans. But still, we are very much not Germans. Lol.
I obviously don’t speak for all Swedes, but in general we don’t care what others call us.
We get a lot of random shit from Norway, Denmark, and a bit from Finland but it never sticks. In the end, Swedes are probably the biggest haters of Sweden.
I guess the one thing that bothers me is “lol Swedistan”, but that’s just because it almost always comes from racists.
We get a lot of comments like that in Ireland, so many tourists compare us to Britain, usually stuff like “When I visited Dublin it just felt like an irish version of Manchester/Leeds/Liverpool” etc.
Car park of Spain, which makes no sense, since car parks normally take up more space than the building itself.
Australia is the Florida of the world, not mad at all with that.
I know it’s not Europe, but it’s still an interesting comparison.
Usually they call us Turks, which imo just shows lack of imagination. Try calling someone here an Albanian (no offence) or the ones in the north Slav to see actual spicy reactions.
Honestly I can’t think of any. Some Americans sometimes call us Mexicans, but it’s fairly improbable those would end up in Spain.
My stepfather once got told by a Peruvian that Madrid looked very colonial. That must’ve been an akward experience.
Call slovenians alpine serbs, croats coastal serbs, bosnians muslim serbs, montenegrin lazy serbs, macodonians lake bulgarians and serbians landlocked croats, and you are going to reunite Yugoslavia for just long enough to beat you.
I live in Spain, sometimes when people confuse me for English and I point out that we are different countries, I’m informed that it’s all the same. No difference. Gowls.
It’s just annoying to hear people call Romania slavic. Not only is Romania not slavic but there’s an entire belt of non-slavic countries separating the north and south slavs [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:North_Slavs_and_South_Slavs.png](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:North_Slavs_and_South_Slavs.png)
Switzerland of the Balkans.
Yes we have an alpine, and pre-alpine geography. Yes you can eat burek and hear turbofolk music with Ottoman style singing in bigger cities.. and we are currently kinda the most developed of the exyu countries. Culturally there is also a mix, between our old traditions and mannerisms (influenced by old Austria, not Switzerland), and the newer yugo era slang and behavior. But I doubt that a casual tourist would notice this, they usually see the mountains and that the country is somewhat clean and developed and add this to what they think Balkan is.
We obviously are not Switzerland in the sense that it was meant in the 90s, when our populists pushed this idea, that they would bring us onto this trajectory of becoming very rich, richer than Austria even. The 90s and 00s were also a time when Balkan really became a derogatory term, a slur even, something to get away from. Which in a way is still true today, when talking about decay, corruption, nationalistic politicians who would rather see their neighbour suffer than their own nation prosper, etc. So the phrase never really made much sense, as it is contradictory, but it is somehow making a comeback on youtube and vlogger videos.
Perhaps those who make these videos are not the most informed people anyway, but they do make content that can spread around, which can be annoying.
But if you want to hear casual troll jokes that are thrown around as jokes.. Alpine Serbs, Austrian stableboys, Slavic Germans, Femboys.. come to mind.
The closest I can think of is West Mongolia, but it’s more of a joke on the internet than something serious.
What annoys people in general is when people call us Slavs, especially when they think that we speak Russian. This mostly comes from Americans.
Another thing is the “hungry” joke, which some tourists think is the funniest thing ever. It’s not offensive, but we’ve heard it so many times that we roll our eyes every time someone says it.
Any association with the UK really. Or calling Ireland part of the UK or British.
Used to work in the tourist industry and was usually one of the first things I’d warn them of since many didn’t seem to realise what a hot button topic it was to some people.
Some people say the UK or at least England is the “Florida” of Europe. And I don’t see the parallels there besides the fact that we’re both humid and surrounded by sea.
Some others say the UK are the “hillbillies of Europe” and there is some cultural/historical connection between Appalachians in America and the British, but again it’s a reductionist comparison because the UK is filled with all types of people.
Comparing Portugal to parts of the US. For example:
Portugal = The California of Europe
Lisbon = The San Francisco of Europe
Madeira = The Hawaii of Europe
Why’s it got to be the [insert place in the US] of Europe? Why can’t it be its own thing?
(I do sometimes compare my region of the Algarve to Florida though 😭)
Aside from the obvious one, I hate being compared to South Korea and other countries like that( basically implying we are “free-spirited Russians”, as if Nordics are very dissimilar) and to Canada( but that’s what online users do and this is a problem, I am sick of that myth about our climates being similar( there are similar places but we are often compared to West Central Canada which is different)).
Ireland here. Lots of people say Ireland is “Just like the UK but with nicer people and better Guinness.” They’re only partially right. We’re not really like the UK.
It does annoy me slightly when people compare Scotland to England I guess. And what I mean by that is that I prefer it when people appreciate my country for being more than just “that country in the UK that isn’t England”, there’s like two more of those. I dunno we’ve existed as a nation for longer than the UK has even existed, it feels like an insult to our entire history to just write us off as just “the not-English place” and not much else.
Buenos Aires is sometimes praised as “The Paris of South America”.
Then writer Peter Matthiessen commented that “Buenos Aires on a good day is like Paris on a bad day.”
That the Netherlands is a party destination for pot and prostitution.
It’s a beautiful and fairly conservative country.
I mean, mountain Germans sounds way nicer than the slur some Germans use for Austrians. Funny, I use the mountain analogy for Bavarians.
I’ve heard people call Germans robots and the Dutch use the slur “mof” which literally means sleeve, but has nothing to do with that. It seems it’s quite a derogatory term.
Serbs sometimes call us “Alpine Serbs,” but it’s usually a joke. Austrians sometimes call us “Tschusch,” but that’s a slur for any Slavic person.
About 95% of this thread is two neighbouring peoples who hate eachother being mistaken for eachother by people from further away, which is just classic Europe really!
I am Russian. Yeah, the flag looks the same as most Slavic ones do. However, I am a dual citizen, and in the USA, a lot of Americans just assume that when I say Slovenia, they respond with, Oh, Russia? I am just like, yeah, sure. I am not about to give them a Yugoslavia history lesson. We even had a president (you know) who, I am certain, did not know his wife was from Slovenia; he said she was also from Russia in many interviews.
I really don’t mind these things. I’d be thoroughly unoffended if someone said Sweden was poor Norway, forested Denmark, Germanic Finland, or if they just call us the Mexico of the Nordics. (though I’d play annoyed on the internet)
Pre-war Warsaw was called Paris of the North.
1. I can get behind it as French culture, incl. architecture, had an immense influence over there in XVII-XIX c. and there were whole disctricts looking like a Paris carbon copy. We even had a small Versaile of our own in Wilanów. Most of it is gone now and you can see only few isolated patches of it.
2. Why call it “of the North”?? It’s barely 4 deggres up, not in north Sweden….
“Mountain Germans” must be particularly offensive considering what the Nazis thought about mountain people…
He was right though…. Austrians are mountain Germans…. The Dutch are swamp Germans. Them the rules
There was this one time when Nintendo added a skin for Luigi to a game wearing the traditional German Lederhosen and eating Bretzel and they called him “Berlin-Luigi”. That’s like making a cowboy redneck Mario and naming him New York Mario
Someone said Australians were desert Americans. And NAS Daily was trying to pit Aussies against Kiwis. Lets just say the Australians and Kiwis destroyed him that Video, Only Sport can make us hate each other
Irish goodbyes…. As an Irish person, we say goodbye one hundred goodbyes to everyone and you can’t make us leave the party.
If I hear another person saying Bucharest is “little Paris” I will punch myself lol
Like I get there’s a few areas where Paris was imitated (like l’arc de triomphe) but having lived here my whole life and having been to Paris as well the only thing they actually have in common is the amount of trash lol
Oh also tourists surprised we don’t speak Russian aside from Romanian 😅