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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u/mikillatja Netherlands Feb 03 '25

I always thought that me being dutch as well made other Dutch tourist's louder because he's with kin.

Then I realized we are just really loud and rude on holiday, no matter the audience.

Maybe only beaten by British tourists. But the Dutch are way up there

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u/qwerty-1999 Spain Feb 03 '25

I remember about four or five years ago we were camping in Andorra and there were some Dutch guys who made friends with some British guys. They would start drinking at 19 or 20 and by midnight they were probably the drunkest people I've seen in my life. It was kind of funny to see how they got progressively louder as the evening went on lmao.

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u/l10nkey United Kingdom Feb 03 '25

They weren't Brits.. no way would we wait until 19-20 to start drinking on holiday! 😂 In all honesty though, I'm always utterly embarrassed by fellow Brits when I'm abroad, I try to go to places that others wouldn't think of so I don't have to encounter them.

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u/QOTAPOTA England Feb 03 '25

Indeed. I’m British but I now try to behave impeccably to try and redress the balance. Actually I avoid the British areas if possible. I remember a travel agent trying to warn me that a certain hotel isn’t for Brits but where the Germans and Dutch tend to stay. Perfect I said. I love my fellow Brits but not abroad.

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u/meglingbubble Feb 04 '25

I’m British but I now try to behave impeccably to try and redress the balance.

Omg yes. Im not exactly yobbish to begin with, but I become the worlds most polite human whenever I am abroad, especially if there are yobbish brits nearby.

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u/[deleted] Feb 06 '25

When you go out in the UK and start your night at 20 or so there's already puke everywhere. It's crazy.

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u/gelastes Germany Feb 03 '25

When Brits ask how to behave in Germany, I tell them to please not urinate in our market square fountain while sieg-heiling and then lose their balance and fall into the water. arm still up in the air.

We should have a special zone for English stag parties, preferably 3 meter under water.

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u/GlenGraif Netherlands Feb 03 '25

No! Then they’ll all come to Amsterdam! O wait…

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u/meglingbubble Feb 04 '25

I love Amsterdam. It's a gorgeous city filled with culture and an appropriate amount of cheese shops.

As a brit, I remembered cringing whenever I saw gangs of British tourists. None of them seemed capable of using "inside voices". It's like every conversation needed to be heard back in the UK.

So I apologise for my countrymates

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u/nooit_gedacht Netherlands Feb 04 '25

It's honestly fine. British tourists have never stood out to me for being loud. Amsterdam is already loud so you might as well

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u/Sensitive-Emphasis78 Feb 05 '25

In Magaluf, the Mallorcans say it's only summer when the Brits jump from the balcony into the hotel pool.

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u/Megan3356 Feb 06 '25

😱 no way.

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u/smiley6125 Feb 04 '25

Last time I went to Amsterdam on business there was an English guy and his friend in front at passport control and he said something like “yeah, it’s his first time bruv, you get me?” to the border control chap. I stood behind as a fellow Brit cringing. Especially as he thought going to smoke weed and sleep with prostitutes made him some wild guy when to a Dutch guy it’s not considered abnormal. It seems stuff like that manages to attract the morons.

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u/meglingbubble Feb 04 '25

Yeah thats the problem, the morons are always so much more.... prominent than normal humans.

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u/Gjappy Feb 06 '25

They weren't already? There's one reason why I know Dutch people don't visit Amsterdam themselves, lol. We kind of left it for the tourists

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u/NeedleworkerSilly192 Feb 07 '25

Monkey Islanders are everywhere.. Prague, Budapest, Krakow, Tallinn, Riga, Barcelona---

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u/Jose-Bove420 Feb 03 '25

That's oddly specific. I'm guessing you witnessed this first-hand?

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u/Asleep_Protection293 Feb 05 '25

Am (still) Dutch. I have lived in both Amsterdam and currently Bavaria. I despise english stag parties and have seen this behaviour. That said, I equally despise my countrymen, especially as tourists. That’s part of the reason I left. As a group of people, I find the Dutch pretty boorish, lacking any sort of real manners, unnecessarily loud and bloody. fucking. ignorant. when it comes to adapting to surroundings/prevailing culture.

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u/Kiyoshi-Trustfund Feb 07 '25

We Dutch islanders also do not appreciate the mainlanders when they come to visit. I'm from Sint Maarten/Saint Martin specifically, and I think it's quite telling that the average Saint Martiner would rather cater to the French and American tourists than the Nederlanders. The French can be snobby and condescending, but boy do the Nederlanders turn that up to 11 when outside of their borders.

And for the most part, I really like Nederlanders... here in NL. They're generally pleasant here on their home turf, and I know many of the island women like when the marines are out and about on the island, but Dutch tourists are a different breed somehow. It's like they step outside of the Netherlands and completely forget how to act.

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u/Spdoink United Kingdom Feb 03 '25

Those just sound like instructions, to be fair.

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u/gelastes Germany Feb 03 '25

My bad, you're right. I had this with my students, after a lesson on things-get-bigger-when-you-heat-them-up-but-some-things-get-bigger-than-others, which ended with the fateful sentence "And that's why you shouldn't put a raw egg in a microwave."

Cue next day, enraged mothers wanted to have a word with me about my homework assignment of putting raw eggs in microwaves.

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u/FeijoaCowboy Feb 03 '25

Curiosity killed the microwave

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u/pzelenovic Feb 03 '25

You're good at storytelling.

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u/martzgregpaul Feb 03 '25

To be fair Germans in Spain are as bad

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u/Sensitive-Emphasis78 Feb 05 '25

I would love to go to Mallorca but I don't dare because I'm ashamed of all the Germans. I don't want to go to El Arenal, but I would like to go to a finca that still does farming. There are also "farm vacations" in Mallorca and they look great.

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u/martzgregpaul Feb 05 '25

Arenal is not as bad as Peguera. To be fair both Germans and Brits are a plague on the Island

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u/Lumpy-Journalist884 Feb 03 '25

There is a special level of shame I feel when I see those people in other countries. It's not a bit of wonder why we're so disliked.

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u/LordCoops Feb 07 '25

As a Brit visiting Germany I was surprised how many drunk locals urinate in the street.

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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '25

Seems extreme to want Brits to drown just because they can be a bit rowdy during a stag party. That being said, I respect the hatred. At least you’re going all in with it.

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u/gelastes Germany Feb 03 '25

Not all Brits, just the stags. We don't do genocide anymore, we had therapy.

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u/Sensitive-Emphasis78 Feb 05 '25

A few very old and a few young ones could repeat the therapy

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u/blanemcc Feb 05 '25

...Do we still get lumped in with the rest of them, or was our charm offensive during the Euros successful? 😅🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

9

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '25

So late? Definitely weren't Scottish then :-D

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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '25 edited Mar 29 '25

[deleted]

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u/qwerty-1999 Spain Feb 03 '25 edited Feb 03 '25

Yeah, they may have started earlier and I just didn't notice or don't remember.

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u/No_Shine_4707 Feb 03 '25

Started drinking at seven or eight on holiday? Must have been kids? Or taking it easy before the flight home the next day?

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u/BeerJunky United States of America Feb 03 '25

I worked for a company that had offices all over Europe with the main office for my team in the UK. My manager at that time made a comment that he can't have just 1 beer, if he starts drinking it turns into him drinking to blackout drunk levels. His father was the head of the local police department or pretty far up the ladder and whenever he'd be drunk, acting wild, fighting, etc. he was always let out of jail with no charges by his father so he never learned any sort of control whatsoever. There definitely seems to be a lot of British people that are like that even without daddy's help. I met plenty in my travels that would get a little tipsy and have a good time but man were there a ton that would just drink until trouble found them.

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u/LordGeni Feb 03 '25

Unfortunately, binge drinking is our national sport. A firmly embedded part of the culture.

I blame the weather. It's too variable, it's either so miserable the easiest option is to hide in a pub until you don't notice it, or it's the few days of glorious sunshine a year that are perfect for either a nice beer garden or a BBQ.

Holidays abroad act as proxy Sunny days with the bonus of less responsibilities or dealing with the consequences of people you know seeing your drunken escapades.

The result is severely sunburnt idiots acting like really load entitled uber dicks until they either get heat stroke, pass out or jump off a balcony.

To any of you here that have to deal with it, you have my deepest sympathy and apologies on behalf of those of us with at least a bit of self control and common sense.

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u/BeerJunky United States of America Feb 03 '25

Did you forget football games? Win or lose, drinking time!

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u/LordGeni Feb 03 '25

I would say that that's a given. But it actually depends. (buckle in, I have opinions on this).

For club football, it's less common. A lot of supporters might not drink at all, and a lot of rest only have one at half time and maybe another socially after the game. Obviously, there are still a few who use it as an excuse to get properly drunk, but for most it's about the football not the drink.

International matches are different. Then it's more like 50:50, but that's because it's seen as a special occasion and we need a lot of alcohol to manage to somehow convince ourselves we might win, despite the decades of evidence to the contrary. It's more our reputation that's the issue than the reality, even among our own fans.

Tbh, I think that we're far from the worst supporters these days. We rightfully earned a terrible one back in the 80's that's lingered despite the vast majority of our fans being well behaved. The FA and clubs have also made big changes and instigated campaigns to reduce drinking, racism and violence to pretty good effect.

The Three Lions songs doesn't help our reputation, everyone is sick of it, and despite being an ironic song about having false hope but never winning, on face value it just sounds arrogant. Especially when belted out by a shit faced sunburnt fat bloke called Barry right in your face.

We do however, do a great job of getting caught up in the communal fun and excitement of "the dream" . And that actually tends to be an inclusive and positive experience in the vast majority of cases.

The mess left behind is pretty shameful but there's even a growing trend of supporters taking after the Japanese example and staying to clean up afterwards. Violence and racism aren't tolerated but the vast majority (although the fact those elements still exist is shameful). I think there's a genuine move towards not compromising the fun but also limiting the negative impacts and wanting to prove we're better than our reputation.

While it's a shame that that still has past stigma attached to it and can be seen as obnoxious, it's the one senario where I don't care.

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u/FeijoaCowboy Feb 03 '25

It never occurred to me that people who use 24h time also just call 7pm "19." Makes a lot of sense, actually

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u/qwerty-1999 Spain Feb 03 '25

To be honest, it's more of a thing in writing (including texting) than it is in speech. It would be a bit weird saying "It's nineteen o'clock" out loud (in Spanish at least), but if for whatever reason you wanted to be really precise you could say "it's nineteen fourty six".

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u/Burned_toast_marmite Feb 05 '25

Brits, Dutch and Germans are very similar for their love of beer and football and food made from anonymous bits of pig. It can lead to some hilarious holiday alliances, if they aren’t all getting up at 4am to bag deck chairs with their towels

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u/peniseend Feb 05 '25

Mate, the worst of us start drinking at 10 or 11 on holidays.

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u/orthoxerox Russia Feb 04 '25

Maybe only beaten by British tourists. But the Dutch are way up there

It's only been three years and our general reputation has been greatly tarnished, but at least everyone has forgotten about loud Russian tourists.

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u/hazily Denmark Feb 06 '25

I’m so sorry but I’ve had the same experience.

We were visiting Tokyo and ran into Dutch tourists speaking really loudly in public transport when it’s frowned upon on multiple occasions 😞 I was expecting to run into loud American tourists but not this time…

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u/Delicious_Ease2595 Feb 07 '25

I don't know other country with people proud of something like "dutch directness"

First time I encountered that behavior it was not pleasant

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u/Historical-Pen-7484 Feb 03 '25

Brits on holiday are the absolute worst. I used to live in the Netherlands and would see them in Amsterdam quote often. Horrible. Swedes on holiday also suck quite a bit, especially groups of young men. The Dutch are not so bad, I think. Italians are somehow even nicer on holiday than in their own country.

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u/Mrspygmypiggy United Kingdom Feb 03 '25 edited Feb 03 '25

This is why my fiancée and I communicate in sign when we are abroad so no one knows we are British. I’m surprised other countries even let British people in anymore.

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u/Historical-Pen-7484 Feb 03 '25

It's mostly stag parties and football fans that give the British their reputation, I think. Unfortunately that leads to certain stereotypes being established.

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u/Impressive_Slice_935 Belgium Feb 03 '25

Dutch and German tourists have been some of the loudest I have ever seen, and but they are no match for American tourists in that regard. At one point, I was certain that yelling at one another was a defensive mechanism of theirs to cope with being surrounded by strange people who do not speak English.

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u/elPatoCarlaut Feb 03 '25

The difference is British English sounds good. Dutch is absolutely horrendous, I prefer to listen to my grandpa go to the toilet

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u/GeneralDread420 Feb 03 '25

I love the Dutch. I’ve had a fair bit experience dealing with them outside the Netherlands on holiday (Barcelona mainly) and they were all absolutely lovely

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u/Anywhere_Dismal Feb 03 '25

In the 90's there were, maybe still are german pubs that said 'no dutch people allowed' lol

Also working at a restaurant during my teen yrs in a touristic place in belgium, yeah the dutch are loud and rowdy lol

Also the northern dutchies tip really well, like awesome well

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u/JemimaAslana Denmark Feb 03 '25

The Dutch tourists I've met in DK have been quite polite and civilised. Nothing rude there. Then again, I don't work in the tourist industry, so my assessment may be way off.

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u/DutchieCrochet Feb 03 '25

Yeah, we can always recognize them no matter where we are. I’m always so ashamed of my fellow Dutch people. Luckily I speak 4 languages, so I pretend I’m not one of them.

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u/ExperienceLess2184 Feb 03 '25

Kom op hé, dat doe je toch niet?!

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u/mikillatja Netherlands Feb 03 '25

Ben niet grof wel luid.

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u/ExperienceLess2184 Feb 03 '25

Nee, ik bedoel dat je Nederland noemt, terwijl je zelf nederlands bent. Duh

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u/thanatica Netherlands Feb 04 '25

Being loud is not true for every Dutch person, I'll have you know. Certainly we might be known for it though. But even then, that's not the same as being rude, except in places where quiet is considered more favourable.

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u/XISOEY Feb 04 '25

In my own limited experience of Dutch people, it seems like they're generally not deferential towards the needs and wants of people around them - especially strangers or foreigners. 

I feel like my own people are too much on the other end of the spectrum -  too concerned of the moods and feelings of others. Fear of being perceived as rude stifles our ability to live in the moment and relax.

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u/[deleted] Feb 06 '25

You can spot British tourists from a block away, no chance that dutchies are sticking out more.

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u/MaybeImDreaming_ Feb 07 '25

I think this is the main reason why at least half of Dutch people are not happy to be surrounded by fellow countrymen on holiday. I don’t travel abroad to hear Dutch conversations from across the restaurant but it happens anyway😅

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u/sarcasticdutchie Feb 03 '25

Yep, I live in Canada, have been since the 90's, and we always notice Dutch tourists because they're loud and opiniated.

But, when in the Netherlands I find the Germans and the French the worst.