Comments on: Packing Clothes for Your Trip to Europe

By: alana

alana — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:31:06 +0000

Kinsey -- I agree entirely. Our trip to China a few years back was a fantastic lesson in no matter what one does, you'll never do enough to be taken as a local. It's hard to blend in within an Asian country when you are over six feet tall and lily white. You can certainly be polite and engaged in the cultural experience, but no one is going to ask you if you were born around there! I find it fascinating that Americans become all consumed with this concept of blending in while traveling in Europe. Immersion, not camouflage, I say!

By: Kinsey

Kinsey — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 01:11:48 +0000

You most certainly don’t want to be taken for a local. Unless you speak the language like a native and always know where you’re going…
In my travels in Spain I was occasionally mistaken for a local…until I started to speak. In Germany, a shop girl kept addressing all sorts of questions to me, oblivious of the fact that my friend was doing all the talking. Cause for confusion.
But at other times, when my foreignness was obvious, people were quick to come to my aid. And if you blend in you’ll never have the great cross-cultural encounters that being a foreigner will bring you.

By: alana

alana — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 22:05:03 +0000

Ken - That's pretty much spot on. It is amazing how much digital space on travel boards and sites is taken up with people concerned about how they look or, how other Americans look. And I agree with you 100%. I have been mistaken for French in Paris three times -- all by other tourists! So, maybe our goal should be to fool each other -- "You're on vacation? I never knew!" "Shh! Don't tell anyone I am enjoying myself in a foreign country!"

By: Ken

Ken — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:18:01 +0000

You say: “Americans … absolutely obsessed with how to dress when traveling to Europe so that no one will mistake them for a visitor” — but they are visitors, aren’t they? Americans need to get used to the idea that they will be spotted as Americans 99% of the time in Paris and even elsewhere in France. There’s nothing wrong with being spotted as an American.