Reasons to be ashamed of being British (the edited version)

Having dared to criticise Czech culture in my last post, I feel compelled to counter-act it with all the things I hate or feel ashamed about in British culture.  But that could take more than one blog post to do.  Thus, I shall compile a little list:

1) There is no tradition of good quality cuisine.  We just steal everyone else's.

2) We claim to be ever so polite but we merely moan and curse inwardly or pass comment, passive-aggressively while waiting in queues.

3) We don't applaud other people's success.  We merely go about finding as many ways in which that success was flawed, unmerited, the result of nepotism or outside help in order to undervalue the achievement in question.  In essence, we don't believe hanging out with successful people means that success will rub off on us, but rather that their success will deny us any chance of our own.

4) We have the worst public transport system imaginable.  It is overpriced and consistently so bad that we use the example of 'a long wait and then two buses coming at once' as a common metaphor for similar such agonising waiting in our careers / love lives etc.  We also brag about having a 'good service' by writing it next to a tube line when that tube line is, for a rare moment in time, not experiencing any delays or service limitations such as half the line not running for the whole weekend.

5) Our appalling record at speaking foreign languages.  Made worse by a government who now thinks it's ok to abandon learning languages at the age of 14.

6) Our despicable habit of referring to 'Europe' as though it's got nothing to do with us and is some entity 'out there somewhere' rather than a continent we are actually a part of.

7) Our abysmal recognition of the advantages of being a part of the EU and the consequent moaning about 'people coming over here and stealing our jobs'.  (If you bothered to learn another language, you could 'go over there and "steal" their jobs' if you wanted to.  That's the point.  We're able to share.  If you make the effort to open your mind to another culture, language and way of life.)

8) Our relationship with alcohol.  Everywhere we go in the world, the British reputation for drinking too much and consequently behaving atrociously precedes us.  The attitude that this is normal, is even worse.  Our language is full of expressions that are acceptable in social circles, even though they are all about being so drunk, you no longer had control of your own body.  Saying things like, "yeah I got so rat-arsed / wasted / pi**ed / wan**red / paralytic / slaughtered / plastered / s**t - faced" in a mock-embarrassed but really quite tickled by the idea way, shows just how acceptable it is in British society.

Don't even get me started on those who come to Prague for stag nights.  I would purposely cross the road to avoid walking alongside people like that.  I should be spending every minute of my day apologising to Czech people for this fact alone.  How dare such an ignorant nation as us Brits use a country for its cheap beer?

9) The British attitude to sport and music in schools.  It costs too much to teach properly and make enjoyable, so we just don't bother and leave it up to rich kids' parents to pay extra for these areas of education instead.  

10) I've saved the best till last: 

The British inability to say something directly.  Such as, "I'm not sure that's a good idea", when they mean, "Hell no!"  Or, "We really appreciate your application for this job but on this occasion we're unable to offer you anything", when what they mean is: "You are totally wrong for this job."  Or else, "I think I might have to cut back on our meetings for a while", when they mean, "I want to stop our meetings for good".  

Worse still is the extreme self-deprecation, ingrained from birth, that dictates you must override any compliment regarding your achievements with an explanation of how you're normally not that good, had help or copied someone else, or it was a total fluke, which really translates as, "Gosh, did you really think I was good?  That's amazing!  Tell me more..."  (If you seriously are that desperate for approval, for god's sake own up to it, show some maturity and say, "Thanks very much for the compliment.  I've been feeling really quite unsure of how much I could manage, so I'm pleased it went so well.")

With all of that off my chest, I can feel a little bit better about daring to criticise an aspect of Czech culture and assure you that I have been, and always will be, rather ashamed to be British.

'Clueless-ness', coffee and communism

I realised today that maybe you don't really get to know a new place that you inhabit until one of your friends from your old territory comes to visit.  I met up with some friends at lunchtime, who are in Prague for just a couple of days and the first thing that they encountered was a general 'clueless-ness' from Czech cafes about skimmed or semi-skimmed milk.  I suppose it hadn't occurred to me to ask about it before because I so rarely go for a coffee that when I do, it's like a special 'treat' so I go the whole hog and get a coffee with cream, as if I were on holiday.

I must admit, I've never seen skimmed milk even in the supermarkets, but semi-skimmed is readily available, where whole milk is less so in my little Tesco.  Mind you, lots of foreigners shop in that one, so they have to cater to their tastes a little bit.  But it's funny how these little things suddenly say so much about the culture.  Where in Prague can you buy coffee and retain the choice of skimmed, semi-skimmed or whole milk?  The American coffee chains, of course.  

Ah, America, land of the fee.  If you can pay for it, you can have anything.  The immense freedom of such vast choice seems so enticing.  But the price tag will stand in your way some of the time, and it's that kind of poverty, either of the lowest classes or of a Communist background, that restricts you to the point of altering your own identity.  I perhaps feel more at ease with Czech culture because I'm not from a comfortable, middle class background, so I'm used to things like people 'tutting' if you seem to be developing delusions of grandeur.  Such as expecting to have a choice of three different types of milk as well as the choice of coffee or tea.  Hell, these days, the choice of flavours of coffee and varieties of tea are necessary options to provide people, but something my Nan would have a field day complaining about having missed out on.

Back in my Nan's day, people were "ever so grateful" for a cup of horrid instant coffee with coffeemate instead of milk at a church coffee morning.  They would fall over themselves if you offered them a rich tea biscuit as well.  (Quite frankly, I think they might have achieved a higher number of converts to Christianity if they'd served Irish coffees and chocolate biscuits, but they didn't go in for bribery then.  At least, not with adults.  Sunday school was quite another matter.  Kids are still young enough to be 'conditioned'...)

Somehow, years of Communism has meant many Czechs have never quite shaken off the attitude of having to put up with very little choice and that you shouldn't make too much fuss about that.  But worse still, is the issue of anything that is ,zadarma', as most Czechs would inaccurately translate it, "for free".  Whatever you do, don't get Czechs together in a room and tell them something is free.  Even if it's something virtually worthless, almost every single one of them will take it, just because there's no charge.  (Note that the president, Václav Klaus demonstrated this instinct perfectly, when he decided to take a PEN that had been provided at a conference.  It's just a pen, for god's sake!)

Nonetheless, despite the lack of choice with milk (and a whole host of other things here that you'll only notice once you've lived here a while) my friends were still wooed by the architecture.  As everyone is.  That row of buildings, known as 'Prague Castle' were the only things keeping me going on very early, very cold mornings when I first got here and had to travel by tram across the river to my meetings at a particular institution.  I would look at those buildings and inwardly tell myself, that that's what being in Prague is all about.  I may have been travelling around like the waged poor who clean government buildings for a living, but there was that beautiful array, just across the river on the hill, staring back at me.  And it thankfully never went away.  It was my equivalent of the Chrysler building for New Yorkers.  (Prague could not be more different of course.  But that would require a whole other blog post to cover.)

Suffice it to say, my friends were pleased to have had a chance to see me and see the cafe I recommended, and they left saying they'd definitely want to come back another time.  They liked the fact that so many well-known places are within walking distance and that there are so many interesting buildings.  But one winning thing that grips the hearts of many a traveller from more expensive worlds, won out:  the price of beer.  Alas, I'm not much of a beer drinker, so it means nothing to me, but, hey, each to their own.  As far as I'm concerned, I would be very happy living in a country where good quality red wine were easily affordable.  But alas, Paris was too expensive to find a flat in, so I had to settle for the Paris of Central Europe instead.  Heigh-ho.