What kind of people are they?

After spending a lifetime in India when I went to US for the first time and called home, my dad asked, "How are the people there?" and I said, "They are very nice. Very helpful, courteous and ...nice!"

From all that we knew of America, not just my dad but I was also expecting people to be more business-like, to-the-point and well, detached! They were not!

And then I said the same thing of Germans.

And more recently the British.

 

I got to thinking, were there no bad people in US? Of course, there were. Not every human interaction was as silver-lined as I'd like it to be. But that was true everywhere. I got to the conclusion that no matter what country you are in, people are everywhere the same. You will find your helpful, going-out-of-their-way nice guys, you'll find your me-first-who-the-hell-cares-about-you assholes, your I-know-it-all-and-you-are-stupid smart-alec's and so on.

But majority of people are nice. Everywhere!

 

I still remember the mobile-salesman who, when I faced him after a 30-minute wait in the queue, and asked, "Do you speak English?", said, "No!" with a curt and cutting tone that made me want to find an ice pick!

But I can never forget the nice lady behind the SubWay counter who tediously pointed to each and every item, just so she could get my burger exactly the way I wanted even though there was no common language between us.

 

It was people like her who made Germany bearable for a foreigner who had crossed the border with a limited vocabulary of one phrase, "Danke Schoen!".