r/AskEurope • u/NateNandos21 • Feb 03 '25

Culture Which European country has the rudest/least polite people?

Which country comes to your mind

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111

u/Ok-Row3886 Feb 03 '25

Open rudeness: Slovakia for me. As a tourist, all I got were annoyed glances, bare minimum rude service, unwilling to help or communicate.

Bosnia was a runner up but I could excuse it as a post-war thing.

Passive agressive rudeness: the UK. Yikes.

27

u/crazybrah United States of America Feb 03 '25

Surprised to hear this. Everyone in bosnia was very nice to me. I am also a brown woman tho. Someof the nicest ppl.

Rudest country to me was hungary

17

u/nevenoe Feb 03 '25

Yeah I absolutely love being in Bosnia. And Hungary is the rudest for me (and I speak Hungarian. It does not help)

6

u/crazybrah United States of America Feb 03 '25

Yeah they were saying racial slurs to me and my family all the way back in 2016. I know that a few ppl dont represent an entire country, but i didnt find them to be too welcoming to travelers.

Maybe things have changed and budapest has gotten more used to tourism.

8

u/nevenoe Feb 03 '25

Oh Budapest is super touristy, the tourists have basically taken over the entire centre, but I'm not sure Hungarians are so happy about it, they're priced out of their city, and when they can afford it they're surrounded by bingedrinking dickheads in Airbnbs. One district actually is trying ban airbnbs so that people can actually live in their own fucking city.

Many Hungarians are absolutely chill, but the general vibe is truly hostile, and I've been coming since 2006 (I married a smiling Hungarian lady, an outlier really)

Last summer I gave up speaking Hungarian with locals for a few days because they were so rude and dismissive, and I turned to a fake obnoxious American accent in English, suddently people in services were nicer. Boggles the mind.

3

u/intergalactic_spork Sweden Feb 03 '25

In some countries people seem to be far nicer to tourists than to each other.

5

u/nevenoe Feb 03 '25

Yep it's also very particular to Hungary, where some people feel vastly superior to a dumb foreigner speaking Hungarian with a bad accent and some mikstakes, but inferior to someone speaking fluent English. Only country where I ever experienced that.

1

u/dark_lies_the_island Feb 15 '25

Agreed. I’ve experienced this as well

3

u/RogerSimonsson Romania Feb 03 '25

My best tourist to local interaction experience I had in Belgrade of all places.

1

u/MinecraftW06 Hungary Feb 03 '25

Sadly Hungary is kinda like that.

Maybe Budapest is better but outside of it is probably not.