Your post reminded me of the time I was visiting a friend in Brussels. We were at a work gathering and an accent, other than U.K. or Latin based, cut through the noise. I approached the woman and said casually, "hey you're from America." She looked at me, half sneered and said. "I'm from Manhattan, the rest of America is dreadful."
My daughter had a similar experience in a German town on the Swiss border. This woman said she was from Georgetown which my 18-year-old didn't recognize as a wealthy neighborhood of Washington DC, so when she said (naively assuming they were having a conversation between two ordinary Americans) she was from Alaska the woman replied "Well, of course you are." When she walked away as if she feared she might get lice, the waiter who was serving my daughter coffee said in a German accent -- "Ugly American, party of one, and I don't mean you, young lady. You have been nothing but polite. And I am not at all surprised that you come from Alaska and not Georgetown." Coming from a very egalitarian place, it had never occurred to her that Germans could pretty much tell which zip codes Americans were from based on their elitist behavior. For the rest of her trip, she paid very close attention to what seperated her behavior from that of some other Americans.
Your post reminded me of the time I was visiting a friend in Brussels. We were at a work gathering and an accent, other than U.K. or Latin based, cut through the noise. I approached the woman and said casually, "hey you're from America." She looked at me, half sneered and said. "I'm from Manhattan, the rest of America is dreadful."
My daughter had a similar experience in a German town on the Swiss border. This woman said she was from Georgetown which my 18-year-old didn't recognize as a wealthy neighborhood of Washington DC, so when she said (naively assuming they were having a conversation between two ordinary Americans) she was from Alaska the woman replied "Well, of course you are." When she walked away as if she feared she might get lice, the waiter who was serving my daughter coffee said in a German accent -- "Ugly American, party of one, and I don't mean you, young lady. You have been nothing but polite. And I am not at all surprised that you come from Alaska and not Georgetown." Coming from a very egalitarian place, it had never occurred to her that Germans could pretty much tell which zip codes Americans were from based on their elitist behavior. For the rest of her trip, she paid very close attention to what seperated her behavior from that of some other Americans.
You would probably like https://alchristie.substack.com/p/the-clash-of-2-fundamentally-different worldviews