Understanding the heart of a country

[Issue313]

Its interesting to visit a foreign country and visit the museums and souvenir shops, but what is a good way if you want to meet the people and learn the character of the nation?

[water bottle]

Walk. A lot. Ride public transport. Go to areas that tourists don't generally go. Try to talk with locals. Behave like they do.

[The Pat-Man]

go to the sterotypically blue collar areas, the north of england, the south of america, the east of russia. generally places immigrants try not to move to.

[Struwwelpeter]

Crawl in to the sewers and huff all dat shit

[sheff]

Live in a small city and work there for a couple of months.

[FON]

I guess it would depend on the country? In Asia I found going to remote places where there are hardly any westerners and just smiling and going up to locals to chat and ask questions is a great way to meet people and learn about their culture. Try to get away from tourist areas where they are hustling you to make a dollar.

I just cruise with my guitar strung across my back and they usually call out to get me to hang and jam if they play music. It's good shit. Music is a great way to meet people as it doesn't require words....Just knowledge of a few Bob Marley songs.

[Obbe]

Learn what the most common crimes are and how the community views these crimes.

[CitizenUzi]

Bring a friend in case it sucks.

I wasted money (not much time thankfully) checking out some of the caribbean. Shit sucked. Changed my 14 day ticket on like day 5 to get the fuck out. If I had a friend, we could have just got wasted and fucked around... literally if it was a chick. I tend to be solo out of necessity.

Really though those islands (ExtraBonus fuck you to nassau, and the bahamas + turks/caicos in general) can sink for all I give a fuck. It wasn't skin color I cared about, it was behavior and attitude. My early interactions left a sour taste that wouldn't come out.

I swear everybody there was playing con whitey. Obviously this is common when traveling to the darker and poorer lands... but it was worse than I thought. It was this really smarmy, lazy, fuck you attitude that I swear they all had. They would grin and try to buddy up etc. CONSTANTLY even outside tourist zones. After a few nigs tried to play the long con on me I stopped initiating any friendly contact. At least that cut some out.

Oh and LHD threw me off so hard. Riding a moped LHD and then hitting a LHD rotary, it was unsettling. Especially on a 150 smoker moped. At least the cops don't fuck tourists and cars tend to give you room. They beep ALL the fucking time, like some other countries. Unfortunately I didn't know their fucking code so I'm on a moped and I hear BEEEEP! Does that mean that I'm about to get hit, am being waved in, am being waved off/out, random beep, or just screwing around? Brake squeal was constant and water desalinated. Too cold to swim in the winter.

EDIT: That turned out longer than I thought. For reference I've done a lot of eastern europe and euro RU, frequently solo. I've also been to finland, germany, and france. Oh and Quebec and Montreal. Be careful especially when solo! Europe can be a pretty unsafe place too.

[Tachosomoza]

Bahamians are chill people, they'd be nice even to a Russian asshole like you. Lots of people go down there and aren't ripped off. You probably started off being an arrogant asshole to them judging by your prior posts here. You go to a country with an arrogant, negative, hateful attitude towards the natives, what do you expect ?