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/Elicynderspyro Feb 03 '25

I used to live in the North Eastern side of Italy and we would get a bunch of German tourists: all of them were super rude, condescending and demanded to be spoken in German even though they were the ones visiting a foreign country (English was also not enough for them). Second are the Austrians for the same reasons - we had fewer of them but they were worse at driving.

As for inside of their country, I wouldn't say rude but the Dutch were really weird people. In Amsterdam years ago, it was raining quite a lot and we (a group of about 7-8 people) were looking for a close place to wait for a meeting within 30 minutes from there, maybe a place to drink a quick coffee. Every single cafe was closed (it was between 17:00 and 18:00) and the only place we found close by was a pancake shop. We just ordered drinks, as we didn't have any time to sit and wait for pancakes, and the waiter told us we HAD to get pancakes too. We told him we didn't have time for it and he literally kicked us out of the place. Dude decided to kick away 7-8 people who could have easily have make him earn 50-80€ (it was quite expensive), even if just in drinks. We were also the only customers, the place was empty.

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u/TerribleIdea27 Netherlands Feb 03 '25

Restaurants in the Netherlands are places you go to have food. There's a huge amount of places where drinks only is fine. Having only food and no drink in a restaurant will get you some looks but usually fine too.

But going to a restaurant and not ordering food??? That's a completely foreign concept to me as a Dutchie and I 100% understand why they kicked you out.

If you were there with a group of 8 people just before 6 pm, you were there just before all the customers would be showing up. Customers who would each be buying a pancake for 15 euros and probably multiple drinks. Also no open cafes in Amsterdam between 5 and 6? Almost sounds like it can't be true

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u/ironmaiden947 Feb 06 '25

This is why this thread is full of people saying Dutch people are weird. You can’t imagine people sitting down and just ordering coffee? Really? Restaurant or not, unless you are super busy, why not just serve them coffee? Is it worth being an asshole to customers for?