It’s a European thing…

Living in France near the Swiss border, you meet people from all over Europe. Italy is two and a half hours away as is Germany. In the Swiss city of Basle the river forms the northern border. Drive over the bridge and turn left and it is France. Drive over the same bridge and turn right and ‘Guten Morgen’ you’re in Germany! And of course come winter the whole place is full of Brits looking to go skiing.

With so many different nationalities all living in close proximity you get to see your European neighbours ‘up close and personal’, and have to learn to deal with their national oddities. So at the risk of entrenching stereotypes here’s my list of personal amusements!

The Germans are organised hard working people and that continues into their holidays. Go to a beach resort in Italy, France or Spain and there are lots of Goethe’s descendants soaking up the sun. Only problem is their national habit is getting up at the crack of dawn (very solid work ethic!) and putting towels on the beach chairs to ‘reserve’ them. They return for breakfast, get changed and eventually saunter out 2-3 hours later wanting to lay on ‘their’ lounge. In Germany this is perfectly reasonable – ‘I got up early and so bagged a chair – you didn’t’. The early bird catches the worm. This drives Brits crazy though as through their eyes ‘use it or lose it’ is the primordial ‘quasi-legal’ concept. Needless to say there are the odd discussions between Joachim and Henry as each side argues the merits of their case!

The Spanish are easy to spot – just close your eyes and listen for the loudest people around. They are passionate! Alternatively, Spaniards lurvvv to party and although they start later in the evening, anyone still going strong when their EU cousins are tucked up in bed counting sheep is probably from the land of Don Quixote!

The Brits love drinking pints and singing songs and discussing the merits of football (soccer) matches going back years, sometimes decades. These guys can’t remember their wives birthdays or where they put the car keys last night but can tell you Manchester United’s starting line up for the 1955 F.A. cup final like it was yesterday!

The French are the worlds family oriented gourmets. Come lunch time, they stop whatever they are doing (skiing, hiking, sailing), and adjourn to return to base and catch up with the family over something delicious. Afterwards, all is the well with the world and they head back out to jet-ski, bungee jump or hurl down mountain ski slopes.

The Italians on the way to their holiday remind me of George Costanza from a Seinfeld episode where was racing upstate (but had lost the others) yet was ecstatic to be ‘making good time’. It doesn’t matter if you are passing world class scenery, look at the car flashing past you on the auto route and it’s probably Luigi determined to get to Cote D’Azur in 2 hours neat!

The Swiss are outwardly confident but sometimes wonder whether they should be more organised like the Germans, gregarious like the Spanish, or have more ‘joie de vivre’ and ‘panache’ like the French They wonder though why everything isn’t quite as neat as it is back in Switzerland…

But everyone gets along because at the end of the day, the boss is Italian, the wife is Swiss, the mother-in law is German, the company is British and the main market is in France.

It's like the annual family get-together complete with all your weird relatives!