Originally Posted by gotovkotzepkoi

This is a bit off subject but I could not resist. Can't stand the French? I hear this a lot from other Americans and it usually turns out that the people who say this have zero direct experience with the French. I have been to France many times (while in the US Army for 12 yrs in Germany I used to go hang gliding in S. France a lot, for instance). I very rarely encountered the mythical, asshole Frenchman. I found the French to be generally a very gregarious, happy, polite people. Ok, there was the occasional impolite waiter but let's face it, they are a planetary wide phenomenon. On one HG'ing trip to Provence I drove from our base in Germany into the wee hours of the night, pulled my beat up old BMW over in some vineyard in S. France in the dark, put my sleeping bag on the ground and went to sleep. At dawn I awoke to an old guy whacking my legs with a stick and babbling in French. He made me get up and come to his farmhouse a couple of hundred meters away. I thought he was going to call the police. Turns out he led me into the massive underground storage room with huge casks of fermenting wine and told me to fill whatever containers I had with as much wine as I wanted directly from the tap. Then he fed me one of the best impromptu meals I can remember, shook my hand and wished me well. That was a very pleasant beginning to a wonderful 3 weeks of HG'ing in France! Why do Americans so dislike the French? OK, here's my theory: France is associated with what some consider the more refined aspects of life: food, wine, fashion, perfume, a certain lack of interest in the mass slaughter of other humans, etc. Insecure anglo saxon males see these as feminine interests and reject France for fear of even the most remote hint that they might be interested in something that is, well, for girls. This explains why Germany is liked so much! Why? Germany means fast cars, beer, spiked helmets, Messerschidts, rocket scientists, etc. You get it right? Real honest to goodness bad boy stuff. To sum it up, these comments about "hating" the French have become a tired cliché and have more to say about the hater than the French. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.