When travelling in Europe, Soumya loves playing a game where he spots tourists and guesses their home countries based on their appearances and behaviour. Here are his observations, exclusively for Different Truths.

An entertaining game I play when travelling is spotting tourists and guessing their home base 

Recently, in Europe, I had ample opportunity to do so.

Here are the conclusions:

Parisian is chic. Always in very fashionable clothes, with a stylish coiffure sometimes topped with outlandish headgear. And they’re always svelte and carry themselves with élan. They’re usually accompanied by a small dog, the weirder, the better. As it was summer, they were wearing very little, but they had great style. 

And the designer ware was prominently displayed. The brands were omnipresent. An entire neighbourhood in Paris has the headquarters and showrooms of every brand you’ve heard of and many you haven’t. I believe if a crocodile was spotted in the Rhine, newspapers would say that Lacoste was found swimming.

Italians are similar but better-looking.

The Spanish are less stylish but look like film stars. 

The Germans are sporty looking, usually in outdoorsy clothes and hiking gear, carrying rucksacks, and with short hair, though the women often have ponytails or two braids like little girls.

The Scandinavians have the same, but with blonde hair.

Only the Americans and English have a section that is grossly overweight, and they wear unsuitable casuals with great swagger. They’re constantly drinking, sometimes wear cowboy hats and boots of Yankee and football colours in English, and have a beer can permanently clutched in their fists 

There’s another section of English who are hardened travellers and dress accordingly, often on bicycles, sometimes accompanied by large dogs. 

The Koreans are overdressed and heavily made up, and they spend their time taking selfies and grooming themselves.

The Turks are overdressed but look like Bollywood stars. 

The Arabs are the same in hijab. 

The Japanese travel in groups and photograph everything, politely bowing to everyone and eating only in Japanese restaurants. 

The Indians are the most overdressed, inevitably inappropriate, and grossly overweight. They are the loudest, and except for honeymooning couples, they travel in large groups of families and friends.

The group tours are either geriatric Americans, Chinese or Japanese of indeterminate ages, or Indians, ranging from elderly grandparents to wailing toddlers. If they’re Punjabi, you also have the loud laughter and drunk uncles.

Bangladeshis are equally valuable and travel in families, but they are never from the subcontinent, but immigrants from the USA or UK.

Among Indians from the subcontinent, you can tell who has purchasing power and the travel bug. You can hear Gujarati, Marathi, and Punjabi being spoken. They eat in Indian restaurants, often specially catering to large groups, and the Gujaratis carry their own food.

Then there’s another category, the studious techie showing his parents Europe. The proud and flustered parents are generally middle-class people from small towns who are awestruck by everything and really glad to meet fellow Indians and brag about their offspring. They are usually from the South, or a rare Bong.

Bangladeshis, Sri Lankan Tamils, and Pakistanis abound, but not as tourists, but as waiters and salesmen serving the tourists, and speaking Bangla, Punjabi, or Tamil gets you excellent service. 

Then there are the honeymooning couples from our subcontinent. Carrying unbelievable amounts of luggage, looking lost, desperately trying to impress the partners they’ve barely met but will have to spend a lifetime with, dressed up like dolls, uncomfortably trying to take pictures of intimate moments

My heart went out to the poor souls and the parents who had to foot the bill.

Picture design by Anumita Roy

Soumya Mukherjee

Soumya Mukherjee is an alumnus of St Stephens College and Delhi School of Economics. He earns his daily bread by working for a PSU Insurance company, and lectures for peanuts. His other passions, family, friends, films, travel, food, trekking, wildlife, music, theater, and occasionally, writing. He has been published in many national newspapers of repute. He has published his first novel, Memories, a novella, hopefully, the first of his many books. He blogs as well.

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