At a pension in Brussels
a traveling companion complained about having to take baths as he preferred to shower and hoped the next place we stayed at would have showers. I pointed out the door marked "douche" and said he'd find the shower in there.

He got angry at me as I was "clearly taking the piss and he did not want to be subjected to the sight of a room full of feminine hygiene apparatus".

He also thought Europe was crammed full of lesbians due to seeing lots of ladies taking their evening walks arm in arm.

And one more thing, those weren't funny little hidden fountains, they're where men go to pee, so if you're still showing those pictures of "public art" to whatever new group of people you're inflicting your presence upon, I hope they all quickly recognize you for the ignorant cunt you are.

The mind boggles.
( sosumi, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 21:07, Reply)

I am the stupid tourist
Whilst on a little jaunt in Rio de Janeiro with my chums, (hapless English arse that is me) decides that we need directions to the Copacabana beach.
Not speaking word one of the language, I proceed to shout at the local chappy words to the effect of (in a kind of a slow motion style voice) " DOOO - YOO - KN-OW - HOWWW -WEEEE - (here i gesticulated 'my friends and I' with wild arm waving and crazy sign language) - CAN - GET - TO - THE - CO - CA -CA - BA - NA - (more crazy sign language resembling a maraccas v coconut bra type of action) - BEEEACH"?
The fellow looked quite bemused stared wide eyed for a minute and quietly walked on, leaving me to feel utterly embarrassed!
The fact is I knew what I was doing the moment I opened my mouth but was utterly powerless to stop myself!!!!!!!!!!!!
( catweasle neither a cat nor a weasle, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 21:05, Reply)

Mercans
In Las Vegas...got chatting to delightful but immensly thick girl from Wyoming.
ITG "So, where are you from"
M'self "Britain...Northern England actually."
ITG ".......Is that in Utah?"
( The Disappointed Caravanner of the year, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 21:03, Reply)

Coffee liqueur
Whilst working as a cocktail barman with Savoy hotels, two little old Texan ladies dropped in at the end of the night.

"Heyyy, do you have any liqueur's?" One asked.

I said yes and reeled off a quick list that included Kahlua.

"What's Kahlua?" The other lady asked.

I told her, it's a coffee liqueur.

"Okay... I'll have a DECAF KAHLUA"

Dumbass!
(McGeorge, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 21:03, Reply)

Christmas in Australia
As an Aussie living in the deep south of the you-knight-ted states, I often get asked some strange questions. Apart from the insulting ones like "Are you English?"

Approaching Christmas last year, I was in a meeting at work, and one of the more senior people asked me "Do you celebrate Christmas in Australia?"

I replied:

"Yes, we do, but we do it a little bit differently that you do over here. First of all, you have to remember that is in the middle of summer in Australia, so it is pretty hot. Now, what our family would normally do is have a big barbeque out the back of the house. Once the fire was going, my brothers and I would head off down the paddock, and catch us a couple of kangaroos and wombats, and we would skin them, and throw them on the fire to cook. Once night fell, we would put the christmas tree in the middle of the fire, and when it was blazing furiously, we would strip off all our clothes, and smear our naked bodies with mud and clay, and dance around the burning tree, chanting ancient songs..."

About then the realised I was pulling their legs....
(Maclir, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 20:57, Reply)

Spaniards
During Euro '96, in the Duck and Drake in Leeds, we met some Spanish fans ratted on Biddendens Cider ("Seeedar", in their words)with a varied fluency in English.

We managed to persuade the most ratted one, who spoke very little English, that he could'nt fail to make an impression with the local ladies by walking up to them and saying "I am a scabby cocked pisshead." I can't remember what he thought it meant but he delivered his carefully rehearsed line with flair and panache.

Boy were we cruel in 1996...
( The Disappointed Caravanner of the year, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 20:56, Reply)

In Poland, reknowned for it's tough language
asking the woman at the shop "Gdzie jest kochanie?" Kochanie being what my girlfriend calls me, and her telling me it meant "honey." I was looking for something to put on my toast.

The old woman looked shocked for a good minute before realising silly-Englishman-syndrome, and directing me to the preserves aisle. "Gdzie jest kochanie" means "where is the loving?"

NB: without leaving the Mercans out, one over here complained to a Polish waitress that they'd all be speaking German if it wasnt for the Mercans. I tapped said mercan on the shoulder and asked him what language HE spoke. "Engli.... oh, sorry." he said. Cockface.
( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 20:56, Reply)

stupid american cunts
we was in america and got talking to this particularly stupid american familly they came out with the normal shit like, we have friends in england do you know them, and theres only one city in england. i got angry at this point and stabbed the lot of them one of the cunts was drinking chilli sauce and spilt it on my cock,which burnt for a while but i found this surprisingly pleasnt.
(fwack bang on it, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 20:43, Reply)

This is Cambridge. You're SUPPOSED to be intelligent!!!!
OK, this isn't really about a stupid tourist, more a stupid foreign student.

I did my master's degree at Cambridge University in 2001/02. For those who don't know this, Cambridge as an institution hasn't yet moved into the 20th Century, let alone the 21st.

One of the quaint little traditions Cambridge has are "bedders". Bedders are people who come round your hall of residence and clean your room, collect and replace your bedding and clean your kitchen (since "gentlemen" can't be expected to do such things...)

Anyway, one day the bedder came round to my room, muttering under her breath about one of the students down the hall (an American - oh come on people, at least pretend to be surprised!).

This student (also doing a Masters degree, so already has four years of university life behind her) had asked the bedder "how do you work a match?". The bedder thought she had misheard her, but no, she asked again, how do you work a match!

How the hell do you manage to get to the age of 22 without ever once having witnessed a match being struck, let alone doing it yourself? This girl smoked for feck's sake!
(lawofnations, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 20:41, Reply)

How handy!
A friend of mine overheard an American in Edinburgh commenting on how convenient it was that the castle was built near the shops...
( guplik, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 20:39, Reply)

Sadly this is true
I'm working at my local grocery shop (lets for legal purposes just call it SPRA)at a well known welsh tourist destination which attracts many visitors (as thick as two short planks glued together with stupid glue and nailed together with G.W Bush own brand extra thick nails) over the holiday season. I have many stories i could tell here however the best and most perplexing has to be the little french backpacker lady who came into said store, stood in front of me and asked "Where am I?"
(Absynth&Cheese Have you tasted my Jesus, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 20:38, Reply)

those crazy americans
i was in belgium with my parents a couple years ago when we were on a tourbus, and were just coming upto a very large, grand and obviously old cathederal with scaffolding all over it. everyone was getting snappy with the cameras as we passed (as y'do), and the statues could be made out, and the architecture was very impressive - even with the mould. all of a sudden, the old american bloke sitting behind me who has been talking about his ranch back home exclaims,
"lookee that, martha, its brand new!".
i think he felt abit silly once the tour guide told us it was from the 13th century, and was also older than this fellows country.

Also, i was in scotland last year and after having been there a week, i grew used to the eerieness (sp?) of the outskirts of certain parts of the place i was staying at. one night i walk out to hear singing - along the lines of hanson or some other crappy hip hop/teeniebopper theme. i look and see three blokes not only singing in the streets of scotland - but also dancing. it was obvious that the ferry from america had just pulled into port.
the next day i saw one of them get mugged by a group of chavs (or "neds" as they say up there), and to my shame, i still find it funny and somewhat heartwarming.
(sam ich bin, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 20:28, Reply)

You're from England, huh?
In one two-week visit to the US, crossing Georgia-Texas (not all in one go obviously), we were asked no less than 38 times - I counted, "Did y'all come on a plane?" My favoured response after the first 5 or so (before this I stuck with 'yes' and felt just as dumb) was, "No, we've got one of those new subaquatic Chevy trucks, they're all the rage back home." Far too many people took this seriously and two asked where they could get one and how much we paid.

Heard on bus heading down Charing Cross Road, "How do we get to Lee Chester Square?"

And the American son of my flatmate, visiting one summer, asked if I had any War Chester Shyer sauce. And didn't believe me when I told him the county in which I grew up is actually pronounced Wusstersher.

And my favourite, asked with a completely straight face, 'What does Mind The Gap mean?' It means don't fall down the bloody great hole between the train and the platform, dear. The same man also now believes 'wanker' is a term of endearment.
(cisco, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 20:21, Reply)

Does writing count?
It should, since the guy couldn't talk much at that moment. 5 colleagues on a working trip in France, one of them a newbie. One evening our customers invited us for dinner, at which the newbie got rather drunk. 2 bottles of wine. Next morning we were waiting for him to turn up for breakfast. He finally turns up, obviously completely wasted, asking us whether we could translate a little note into French for the chambermaid. The note read (and I kid you not):

"I felt sick"
"I vomited"
"The sink is clogged"

We nearly died laughing. We translated it (hopeless):

"Ca va mal"
"Je vomit"
"L'ecoulement est obstrue"

Then we left him alone to sort things out with the chambermaid.
( RedWine President of the S.C.U.M., Thu 7 Jul 2005, 20:10, Reply)

Not me, but my gran.
She lives in a nice place called Bradford-on-Avon. She once had a bus load full of German tourists saying "Is this Bradford then?"

They must have got a bit lost on the way. Bradford-on-Avon is near Trowbridge.

The bradford they were looking for and The one they arrived at.

Go there. See the Tithe Barn and Saxon church. Go. I command thee.
( Rev. Cleo still alive, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 20:01, Reply)

They didn't say much, but they did do a brilliant trick.
3 colleagues from Corea went for a weekend trip to Paris (one way a 12 hour journey from our place) using the rental car the company had provided for their 4 week long stay in Germany. Some way into France they need to fill up the car and turn into the next petrol station. "Gazol" it says on the petrol pump, gasoline they think. Quite wrong, since Gazol is actually Diesel fuel. Their car stopped dead after another kilometer. Took them the best part of their weekend (and the best part of what little money they had) to get the car fixed just to get back to work on Monday. They didn't even get close to Paris.
( RedWine President of the S.C.U.M., Thu 7 Jul 2005, 19:52, Reply)

I went to Italy with 2 friends
and the shower in our ensuite bathroom got clogged up. We decided to leave a note for the cleaner so s/he could unblock it and save us from the perils of standing in gakky tepid water.

Unfortunately, none of us speak Italian, so we had to muddle our way through with the help of the pocket dictionary one of them had brought.

It was only later that we realised we had written, "Please clean my drain. I am blocked."
( Pachey, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 19:48, Reply)

"Stupid Tourists III" entry
About a year before I was born, my parents went on their first (and thus far only) trip to Japan. Now, my mom barely knows enough Japanese to talk to her own mom, and I've never determined how much of it she can read, which probably isn't very much.

One day my mom was in a train searching for a restroom, and she asked a staff person (in Japanese) if there was one nearby. Apparently, while she had asked correctly she spoke very slowly, comparatively. That, coupled with the fact that the restroom was right next to her probably made the staff person think she was merely mentally retarded and not a tourist.

My mom's advice for future travels? "Just speak English!"

All of my mom's trips abroad have been very pleasant, although it is funny when people discover that a gaggle of Asian women are Americans and speak English, not Chinese/Japanese. As for the girth of America, the tonnage never fails to astound me...
(Kitsune-chan I'm not a bunny I'm a grownup girl, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 19:41, Reply)

while in new zealand..
..stupid tourists asked my friends how far it is to swim to austrailia.

For those who didn't know;
east coast oz is at least 3 hours by plane from nz.
(Gargh, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 19:35, Reply)

Used to be an usher, got asked a lot of stupid questions
But these Americans were pretty bad
"Is there a starbucks on this block?"
"No, there is a few other coffee places though, and a starbucks on the corner of Bread Street"
"We should probably get a taxi then, I'm exhausted from that walk up the Scotch monument. They didn't even have any whisky at the top."

They then proceeded to pay a rather bemused taxi driver to drive them 150 yards.

5 minutes later a 4 foot indian gent asked me in the thickest most stereotypical indian accent ever where the nearest strip club was.

Ahh good times.
( PopePollo defloculating the soup of the surreal, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 19:33, Reply)

"Oh Jesus, take the money, just don't hurt me"
What the fuck did he think the knife was *for*?
(Wong Fei-Hung - now with added flickr.com (see profile), Thu 7 Jul 2005, 19:20, Reply)

Bloody Americans
I was strolling merrily through Bath, when a young american tourist comes up to me and says "Watch out for that pigeon, dude, it has a real narly attitude." Bemused, I respond by saying "Yeah, you want to look out for those bloody pigeons." The yanks immediatley start laughing and doing fake mocking english accents. I fail to see how they can talk, they were from the south (and probably inbred.)
(The-paranoid-android, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 19:15, Reply)

I hope that this is a true story...
...because it made me chuckle mightily.

A friend of mine claims he overheard some tourists (of unknown origin) while walking between the old Cathedral and the new one at Coventry.

And one tourist did quoth to the other: "How did they manage to bomb that one, and miss the one over there?"
(Captain Skippy pooed in a bag and left it on your doorstep, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 19:13, Reply)

Versailles
Me and my chum went to visit the Palace of Versailles last time we were in Paris. We heard all about Louis XVI and everything, and even saw the corridor that Marie Antoinnette ran down to escape the revolting peasants.

We overheard an American tourist say to a guide, "Do the family still live here?"
( Pachey, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 19:13, Reply)

Another stupid American..
..was overheard by my friend requesting a ticket to 'Looger-Berooger' at the rail station, Being utterly bemused by such a request, the quick thinking clerk produced a map, at which point the stupid American pointed to 'Loughborough'. Stupid Americans!
(mcnelson, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 19:06, Reply)

Not stupid tourists, but foolish natives
If you run into a stupid tourist, please, just let them get away with mispronouncing your local names and places. If they learn how to say everything properly, then they come back from a two-week jaunt to England with a permanent accent. This leads to our equivalent of chavs falling in love with them for it, breeding with them, and creating future stupid tourists. Why make it worse for yourself?
(Mrs_Talbot, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 18:52, Reply)

Saucy!
Standing in the queue at Burger King in Magaluf after a refreshing evening, a pretty but non-too-bright lass from Blighty asked us what 'excuse me' was in Spanish. Straight-faced, we told her that it was 'Bastardo', figuring she would get the joke.

She only edged her way to the front of the queue politely asking "Bastardo! Bastardo! Can I have some more sauce please?". The look of utter disgust on the Burgersmith behind the counter still makes me laugh to this day!
(Green-Alsatian, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 18:45, Reply)

Standing on the roof of St Paul's Cathedral
watching the RAF flypast for the Queen's birthday back in June. An AWACS 707 flies overhead (slate-grey with a huge rotating radar dome), escorted by a Tornado on each wingtip.

A voice with a broad American accent pipes up behind me:
"Look! Terrorists!"
( wheresthefish Partly filled with wrong, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 18:45, Reply)

Some Fat Americans
asked me for directions to G.T.R. Mouth.

Imagining some mechanic dentist, I said I didn't know. G.T.R. Mouth?

They showed me a map and pointed to Great Yarmouth.
(Ol' Bertie Dastard, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 18:41, Reply)

Prague
Heard in prague last summer.

Was visiting the Petrin View Tower. Was wandering around the base looking for a friend before climbing the stairs to the top.

Walked past 4 fat english women, talking about taking the elevator to the top. One of them asks, after they got up there how where they going to get back down again. Takes about half a minute for one of them to realise that elevators go up and down.

I felt like saying to use the stairs as they could all do with the exercise
(loquis, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 18:38, Reply)