I remember an Canadian Isuzu-commercial, I've seen during my school-exchange in summer 1988.

A typical caricaturic car-dealer stood besides an Isuzu Pick-up and besides that stood a British "Royal Guard".
The dealer told, that recently he has sold such a pick up to Queen Elizabeth.
"It has a nice loud stereo, so she cannot hear the chorus of the striking steel-workers" and "Very strong engine to escape from the demonstrating coal-mine-workers"
(during that you see, that the Royal Guard -who isn't allowed to move anyways- was getting more and more angry)
At least, when the guy has said "Unbelievable, how poor Britain is! As payment the Queen gave me this old hat" and has shown the Queen's Crown - and has thrown it thoughtless on the car's back, the Guard took his lance and hunted the car-dealer.

Hey, that's the same car as our 2004-06 Pontiac GTO, in fact the GTO was actually built in Australia. It was discontinued due to poor sales.
The car is simply a two-door Commodore, am I right?



I always thought those comercials were kind of rascist. They sort of generalize the stero-type of how the rest of the world views Australia

But that is not being racist at all, it is just the "topics" of how foreigners see certain countries, its like when people always think that in Spain we just have Sevillanas, Bulls, Toreros and Paella, when that, specially to go to the bulls is not what everybody likes... and Sevillanas is a dance only popular in the south...

Well "racist" isn't the right word. "Stero-typing" a better definiton. I mean, there's more to Australia than just kangaroos and meat pies (whatevr those are), as there is more to Spain than just bulls. It'd be like if someone said that America is just Hummers and cheeseburgers, which is not at all true...

I don't know, don't mind me, I suppose I'm just blabbering on about nothing

No no, now youve said it right, it not racism at all, as i said, but the typical stereotypes foreigners put to other countries, like what you say of america being only fast food ( well, a bit of this is actually true, in america you eat very bad comparing it to countries like Spain or Italy ) i guess that the most known things are the ones to always come to foreing people's mind, but of course, inside Spain, every region has its typical stuff as logical, but anyway i guess there must be more typical well known things to know aside from bulls and the others that i quoted above

@taxiguy: I cannot see any racistic items. The Aussies have made self-ironic fun. This is something different.


A few weeks ago this German spot has made Italians upset:
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ2MFE-Y6gE
The actor (a popular German comedian) has played a very sterotypic Italian with bad manners and so on.
The main thing, why Italians were getting angry, was "Germans are buying laptops -"lappetoppe"- , Italians are buying referees" (a sidekick to the actual European soccer cup).

A bit off topic (cars only at 1.00 and 2.18), but i like that video very much - and I'm very very jealous.
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=bNF_P281Uu4

The first one is quite funny, the Italian guy seems quite obnoxious. As a matter of fact, I am part Italian I always find it interesting to see how Italians are portrayed in TV and movies, as I do not know much about European culture and the stero-typical cultural differences between the countries, regions etc...
I guess you could say, the commercial really helps me get in touch with my heritage

Speaking of typical Spanish things! watch this Max please

http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=yL2Tr8UNGpU

I love it very much, to play and joke around with these sterotypes and prejudices - I do it in over here, too.

By the way: very recommended movie about the US/Canadian relation:
http://imcdb.org/movie.php?id=109370

It's too much to list just a few examples about the relations, jokes and stereotypes between the several European people.

Perhaps our webmaster Antoine can tell us more - the people from Holland and France are loving to make jokes about Belgians.

Surely, sometimes still today we Germans are bad Nazis, but this is not very common any more, except in some British and sometimes Polish magazines - often before events like the actual soccer-euro-cup.

But usual the most people don't care about that or loughing about it. Even if some magazines are making upset headlines, the common people have other disputes.

For example the German-British "Mallorca-towel-war"

People from Holland don't like it, if Germans are talking about the soccer-world-cup 1974.

A propos the German-Italian-relations: in summer 1977 a title of the German new-magazine "Spiegel" has caused a real scandal in Italy. It was shown a spaghetti-meal, where a revolver was lying on top. The title-story was about the Mafia.

And one or two years ago, Polish people were angry, when a German newspaper wrote about the Polish Kacynski-brothers (one was president, the other prime minister): "The new Polish potatoes are arrived"

So there's always the discussion "Which people have the most ugliest behaviour in their vacations abroad". It goes mainly around Germans, British and Dutch people (drinking, loudness, fat, ugly guys and so on).
I must say, that often British guys (and girls not less) have the "pole position"

Annother stereotype: "Outside their countries Scandinavian people are always drunk" - over there alcohol is very expensive.

Swedish friends have told me "A Finnish guy is easy to recognize. He is just sitting around and is heavly drinking until he falls from the chair - but he never says any word."
Otherwise i've heard from Estonian guy, that Finnish one-day-tourists to Estonia (for drinking) are noisy and loud.

Always a point of view.

I tried to find a video like that about the US, but I couldn't find anything good.
Something like... oh maybe an obese woman ordering a triple bacon cheeseburger at the McDonalds drive thru in her Ford Excursion SUV while talking on a cell phone and yelling at her children in the backseat

@Max: a main thing, where foreigners are making the US-people down, is (except actual politcal things) their weak knowledge about other countries.

A Canadian friend (he grew up only 200 meters away from the US-border South of Vancouver) was really asked by some US-guys "Does all Canadian living in igloos or do you know houses?"

Well Ingo that's more a sarcasm than an ignorant question, they can be ignorant but not as much

I think Americans beat all Europeans in that category with their utter cluelessness about everything foreign to them. Just watch "National Lampoon's European Vacation" to see what I mean

You will be hear immediately "You are a German!" in US-fast-food-restaurants, when you just say one sentence: "No ice, please", when you are ordering a Coke.
No joke, this had happen to me several times.

@Max: US-Americans are playing in this league, too - when they make "Spring Break" in Mexico.

Being French-speaking, jokes are more about and from French people than with Dutch people. And anyway French-speaking Belgium (south) has still lots in common with North of France.



Someone told me about some a French from Paris who thought that in Belgium there was only farmland

If rpcm is a soccer-fan, perhaps in 7 minutes he will not like Germans any more

@Antoine: I was teached by an Dutch guy, that, when I'm asking French dealers (trying it in my very weak French) on oldtimer-markets for K 70-stuff, I shall always say "K-soixante-dix" and not "K-septante" - with "septante" the French guy would think "Ough, a Belgian guy" - and his prices will go up.

The British reputation for bad behaviour on holiday is, I'm afraid, well deserved. Cheap liquor and sunshine are both strange to them ...
When my mother and I went abroad with the car (Mini) for the first time in 1964, we stayed in a bed-&-breakfast in Rotterdam (we had relations-by-marriage there). Mother asked the man of the house about how the Dutch liked their visitors.
'We like the British very much,' he replied. 'We like the French too. The Germans ... we don't like very much. But we are Dutch: we take their money.'
At that time the Germans had a habit of digging little forts on the beaches at Zandvoort and Noordwijk-aan-Zee, and decorating them with pebbles spelling out besetzt bis zum 1. September.

Sorry, ingo ...

I have to admit we tended to avoid Brits when we travelled abroad on holiday, even when they weren't badly behaved. French, Germans, even Iraqis, fine: Brits, never!