Paris - France
Dr. Edmar Bernardes DaSilva (Masters in Geography and Doctor of Geography Education)
Europe the so called Old Continent (even though the cultures are younger than Asian ones) still has a lot to learn from the newer continents like the Americas. Robb and I went to Western Europe for 18 days, and as a geographer I am more critical about the physical and human geography of the region than Robb is. Doing the Dusserdorf to Paris and back trip we saw great landscapes (cultural and natural), but we experiecend great deceptions too.
In Germany (Deutschland) the people are always running in big cities like Frankfurt. The Germans are some how friendly but still have 40-year old views about Brazil and even the USA. The weather plays a lot shaping Germans’ personalities which can be friendly but dark. The summer is not really summer in Germany, because some days it gets cold and wet like the winter in central and southern Florida. Bavaria is a dream land, a land that came out of brothers’ Grim fairy tales. Frankfurt is a big city like any other big city out there. As the financial center of Germany it gets a lot of national attention. The good thing about Frankfurt it has a historical past, a historical old city and a lot to do. Frankfurt is loaded with wonderful German beer gardens. In Germany I tasted the best beer in Europe. Munich is a great city that needs more time than we had to explore. The Bavarian Alps give Germany a unique Germanic southern landscape. The Rhine River valley is a fairy tale dream with castles and vinyeards. The food in Germany reminds me the country home made food from my home state in southeastern Brazil. Trains are great in Germany and France but the people taking them are rude and impolite. When the train arrives in the train depot everybody wants to get in and out at the same time. What a mess! Inside the train things get worse.
The Germans in my point of view are very Americanized: you don’t need to come to the USA to listen to American music, because German radios play it all the time. They still have a colonial view of the USA. They also have a wrong view of Brazil. They must learn that Brazil and the USA are very multi-racial and multi-cultural societies made up of immigrants.
Inside Paris - France
France on the other hand has great cultural and physical landscapes, but the people are rude and unfriendly with tourists. The Louvre, Champ Elysees, and the Eifel Tower are really great post cards from Paris. I found the French very nationalistic about their language and culture, a nationalism with a old fashion Latin attitude (French culture after all is a Latin based culture with French flavor). France is also a multi-cultural and multi-racial society, but its politicians want to make the citizens of France believe that French society is not a multi-cultural and multi-racial society. Paris is a great city but with a lot problems with traffic, too expensive and also loaded with immigrants from the sub-continent (India, Pakistan…) and Arabs from North Africa. In Paris we drank the most expensive water of our life. We paid around $20 American dollars for two small bottles of water (Avoid Le Carrousel near Les Tuileries at all costs! This place is a real rip off!) Strasbourg (Straßburg) on the other hand is better than Paris, because it is much smaller and people are nicer to tourists.
Over all, the trip to Western Europe was a great trip, but with its ups and downs, and deceptions. To use the phone in France to make an international call is almost impossible. Dusseldorf airport gave me one of the worst experiences I had in an international airport. But in the end the trip was a great experience and as a geographer I learned up close and personal that French and German citizens are somehow biased about the world out there.
The Rhine River and Valley - Germany
Copyright © All rights reserved 2010
