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Foreigners have the saying here in the Netherlands: "You can complain about the fake friendliness of waiters in the USA, but in the Netherlands you know they ge

• SiVal 13y ago
  As an American working in the UK, I was surprised to discover how often Brits and other Europeans assumed that genuine friendliness was "fake friendliness". Their own attitudes toward others were assumed to be universal, so any sign of friendliness that they wouldn't have expected in their own society was assumed to be fake. Yes, sometimes it is fake, but very often it's a case of being unable to imagine a culture where genuine friendliness toward strangers is a lot more common than what they themselves tend to feel toward strangers.