austrian and american perspectives

Last night I met a few people from Austria and it was really interesting to talk to them about the stereotypes of America and everything like that. They said that there is a stereotype of Americans that we are very prudish and religious, and also that we are the "police of America" and have to be involved in everything (which I have already heard). We told them how there were a lot of huge differences even just within America about beliefs regarding religion and war, and that different parts of America were vastly different from each other.

Then they asked us what the stereotypes of Austria were. So I told them, well most Americans don't even really know much about Austria except for the Sound of Music and skiing, and that we tend to just lump it in with Germany and the stereotypes are probably: punctual, harsh, and of course the idea of "Nazi"s which still exists today. First of all, most of them had never seen the Sound of Music, and one of them saw it at age 18..and said it was nothing like Austria at all. Then, we talked about the Nazi thing, and she said it was something that younger generations still feel like they have a burden of and they feel responsible for, even though they weren't even alive when it happened, because some of them have family members that were involved during that time. I guess it's comparable to slavery and the Civil Rights Movement in the USA.

I asked them if they thought Americans were "loud" and they said no the Spanish and the Italians were stereotypically the loud ones. They also surprisingly said we have a stereotype of being friendly and polite, since it's expected in America that when you go into a store or meet someone on the street you say "hi, how are you?" when you don't necessarily ask people how they are in European countries. They said Americans are much more open, and willing to talk about their lives, but in Europe it's more closed.

The other thing they said was that they thought it was "strange" that Americans were so patriotic. They said that when you see flags flying in front of American homes, that you would never see that in Austria. They found such strong patriotism for your country very strange. I asked them why they thought the Austrian flags were flying in the city center if that was the case, and they said they thought it was more for tourism. They said that greeting soldiers on the street and thanking them for their service was also very strange to them.

We talked about how in Austria and much of Europe you HAVE to be intelligent and smart to continue in school, while in the USA, even if you are really not smart at all, if you have the money to pay for it you can still go to school. They said they got the idea that if you have the money, you can do just about everything in America..which I think is mostly true that money is power. We also said we wished we knew multiple languages, the girl we were talking to mostly had been taking English for 12 years and was basically completely fluent. We said we were almost embarassed we weren't fluent in another language. She said, "I understand why you might only know English, English is the world language, so as long as you know that you're all set."

Well, it's really interesting to get different perspectives! I do appreciate my country but I think we have many problems (as do many countries really). It's interesting to hear what other people my age think.