What's with glum northern Europeans?

I go to Spain just about every year. Southern Spain, which is kind of like the Florida of Europe. Lots of northern European and Brits also make the trip to the Costa del Sol also sometimes known as the Costa del Golf, it’s so popular with the swinging stick set. All well and good. Expect, well, northern Europeans are not the sunniest lot, defying the fact they are on the “sun coast.” I walk every day across a bridge to a commercial area and am constantly “running into” pedestrians walking the opposite direction. I knew immediately something was different. In North America, there would at least be attempts at smiles or in fact “Good mornings” or “Hellos.” Not so with most of my fellow walkers. They turn their heads away or down, and it looks like it would take a crowbar to break them into smiles. One time, on a beach bench, I sat for the longest time trying to decide to engage my fellow bench sitter in conversation. This individual never paid me notice, supposedly caught up in his book with occasional stares out to the sea. I screwed up my courage and engaged. Yes, he did speak, this Norwegian, and we eventually got a – halting – conversation going. Then last month, while walking out of parking garage, a passing motorist shouted out, “Hey, friendly Americans!” assuming we were. He was from Atlanta. Part of me wondered if his greeting reflected the glum responses of Europeans. I asked a good friend of mine, a German, why northerners were so reluctant to engage, at least in small talk. “They think small talk is bullshit,” he said. Yes, I said, “but if it wasn’t for small talk, I never would have met you in that bar in East Berlin so many years ago.”

You must hand it to European when it comes to being inventive. Their restaurants, coffee shops, stores, are often more creative than what we find in North America. And so too are their street hustlers! Driving out of Malaga last month and stopped for a red light, beggars dispensed with the tired and cliched squeegees common in North America, or simply holding out their hands for money. This pair entertained us as acrobats.

I have found a great website on Facebook that has video of what it’s like in the cockpit of passenger airliners during takeoffs and landings, Just Planes (photo). I spent lots of moments on the weekend watching them, flight crews in the moments just before landings and takeoffs. "Just amazing” I said over and over.

- Ron Stang, a frequent traveller, Windsor Ontario Canada