Culture Clash: My Fellow Americans, You Are Assholes. Kind Spaniards, Stop Lying and Get Yo Shit Together.

I seriously cannot fathom how this culture managed to conquer like, a quarter to a third of the landmass on this planet with this mode of operations. I'm pretty laid back; if something's not going to happen in the time frame I'd hoped, I can work it out and deal with it. But for the love of Christ, don't tell me it's going to happen in ten minutes if it's not going to happen for four hours. Perfect example of the Spanish/American culture clash; on the way back from the Dali Museum yesterday, a tire on the bus that brought us all there blew out. I don't know about everybody else on that bus, but I had a pretty good idea that it was going to be more than a minute before they could handle the situation. But what does a good Spanish tour guide do? He tells everybody we'll be back on the road in half an hour.

Oh, nelly.

Obviously, this is not what happened. We were seriously ten kilometers (I don't know, roughly five miles, maybe? I dunno) out of Barcelona. We broke down in front of a sign that said so. But sometimes shit takes longer than we want it to, obviously, and the Spanish inclination seems to always be to give the best case scenario (or I think, in many cases, "when in doubt, bullshit!"). But half an hour came and went; then an hour came and went.

Now this is one of those moments when my American brethren exhibited the reason the rest of the world thinks we're such assholes. (No, it's not just because of Bush - Bush was just the epitome of everything that the rest of the world thinks is wrong with America, and Americans.) It's because we go out into other countries, and act like we have no fucking home training or sense of politeness whatsoever. Something doesn't go our way, and the immediate assumption is that somebody's trying to fuck with us, or get over on us, and ZOMG GOD BABY JESUS IN HEAVEN FORBID somebody EVER try to FUCK WIF AN AMURRRKAN, BECAUSE DON'T MESS WIF THE USA.

Or something.

Now, I don't know where these people were from - I couldn't place their accents (isn't it always the way that the worst offenders won't have identifiable accents so that the rest of the Americans can be like, "Oh, we're not from THERE"). But as soon as the tire blew out, one of them grabbed the guide as he was trying to give out water to the people on the bus and demanded in a really shitty, smarmy tone, "Hey, tell us what's going on! You should make an announcement!"

(Actually, he already had, but it hadn't been over the loudspeaker, for whatever reason.)

I heard their rumblings at the back of the bus almost exactly thirty minutes after the guide's announcement, it seems like. Not another thirty minutes later, this rather angry, aggressive, and ill-mannered couple stood up (FREEDOM FIGHTERS AGINST THE AXIS OF VACASHUN RUINING EVIL) and started shouting (no, seriously, shouting) across the bus to the tour guide, demanding answers, asking when we were going to get back, and essentially waving their dicks around.

Now let's take a pause.

It's not like the bus driver pulled over to chug sangría, or masturbate, or even to barf from partying too hard the night before. The goddamn tire blew out. You could see the damn thing in little chunks all over the road right out of the back window of the bus, which they were all gawking out of anyway. I know that you've probably planned a very exact and demanding itinerary for OPTIMUM FUNTIMES on your vacation, but maybe you could take a fucking pill, since it's nobody's fault!

Anyway, the guide at this point was no less agitated himself, but told them there was nothing he could do, that they were all waiting for the bus.

Now here's where the tour company needs to take a lesson.

Recognizing that it wasn't just Americans on this tour, it did seem like at least half of the people were, indeed, from the States. I don´t know how anybody else was handling it; everybody else seemed to be pretty chill. But while in this instance, it really wasn't anybody's fault, a company dealing with Americans probably needs to recognize that Americans are often a lot better behaved dealt with in a direct way. I think things would have gone more smoothly if they'd said, "Hey, we're very sorry, but it's going to take about an hour for them to get a bus out to us." That at least would have kept the bitching to a dull roar until the bus had gotten there.

And I'll be honest - it's not always in innocuous contexts like this. For example, the situation with the air conditioning in my apartment. I was told on Saturday it would be handled Saturday. Then it was Monday. On Monday, they didn't have the damn key to the roof of the apartment, so the check-in manager said he'd go get it from his office; he never came back, so the repair guys couldn't get to the roof when they came back. So then it was supposed to be Tuesday. Nobody came. The guy says Wednesday. Wednesday, nobody came, and the check-in manager was waffling, soI told the him if he didn't fix the situation by the time I got back on Thursday, I'd be talking to the landlady/big boss. Oooooh, all of a sudden, his panties are in a twist, and when I get back on Thursday, my AC is working.

But see what I'm saying? The situation could have been handled on Tuesday, and he'd had no intention of handling it on Saturday or Wednesday, but just kept telling me shit I wanted to hear to shut me up, which in turn only pissed me off more.

I kind of felt like an asshole American in a few of these instances, but at the same time, I don't know how they get shit done here; I only know how we get it done back home. And I wasn't trying to sweat my cojojos off until mid-July out of politeness, fo' sho!