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Topic: Dan’s statue, neo-nazis, local government, potholes and Victoria generally (Read 38672 times) previous topic - next topic
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Re: Dan’s statue, neo-nazis, local government, potholes and Victoria generally

Reply #45 –
Quote from: crashlander – on
Quote from: ElwoodBlues1 – on

Yep, my experience with Russians was you dont smile at people you dont know and same with Germans.

It is more that Russian children were trained from the time of the Tsars not to smile in public. Back in those days, they thought smiling would attract the Okrana, the Tsar's secret police. It was more so during the days of the Sovietskiy Soyuz, where first Lavrenti Beria's NKVD was thought to be attracted to anyone who smiled. Considering that one third of the entire Soviet payroll was working for the NKVD, they always knew of such things.
I was there in 1997 and people still didn't smile in public: it had become part of the Russian psyche.

I didn't find the same thing in Deutschland, but I could speak some German. They didn't even pick on me for my nice Australian accent (not in German - they knew I was a foreigner because I didn't speak dialect, rather than from my accent. They wanted to practice their English; that's when they noted my accent. I'm sure I affected a significant number of Germans with my English).
A lot of Germans speak accented good English but there is an expectation that if you work for one of their companies even in Oz you have to learn German to a standard. I was lucky the Engineers I worked with spoke English and I had more problems with the Electrical/Electronic schematic diagrams that were all in German and many of the symbols differ to the USA and English versions yet can look the same.