[Appearance of people in] Moscow and Paris

I don’t give much thought to that part of the population. The only Eastern European country I’ve been to is Russia, and from what most people have told me, is that their women are the best in the world, but their men are bad.

In that case, heaven seems quite mundane to me :cool:. So… if heaven is here… the UK would be limbo… and the US… hell?

Pretty much. :smiley:

Interesting subject.

Lately I’ve come to the conclusion that I must look at least a little Slavic, or something, because twice in the past year I’ve been mistaken for a Russian, by a native Russian. In both cases a Russian person just came up to me and began speaking to me in Russian, and expressed some surprise when it turned out that I did not actually speak that language. In the first case it was a younger man, about my own age, and in the second it was an elderly gentleman, wearing a heavy coat, with an ushanka even! Each time we had a good laugh about it, but both of them told me that I look Russian.

It’s odd, since as far as I know I haven’t got a drop of Slavic blood in my ancestry. :confused:

I get mistaken for Italian, I do have dark hair and a nose with a bit of a Roman hook in it. I have English and German ancestors, maybe one of the English kin has Roman blood from the times when the Romans had occupied half of Europe.

Just a comment on the French: In general the Parisians were smaller and darker than I had pictured. But this is a great generality. There were all sorts of sizes and looks. But for a woman, think Audrey Tatou ( from the movies Amelie and The Divinci Code). That is the look I remember.

There is really a distinctive Slavic look. I spent two years in Bulgaria, where most people are quite dark, and most anyone fair has a definite Slavic look. I have mixed ancestry, but I take after my mom, who’s of Irish extraction.

No one EVER mistook me for Bulgarian. On several occasions, I walked into a store and before I could even open my mouth, someone addressed me in English. And because Western Europeans are more common than Americans, and I was asked a number of times if I was German, Austrian, Dutch, English, Irish, Scottish, etc.

No. They were skinny.

I don’t know where in Russia you’ve been, it’s quite a large country, but a great majority of the women I saw in Moscow were neither fat nor skinny. Naturally, the lower average means there will be more skinnies, thanks to the bell curve. However, I don’t think they are overrepresented.

This is the absolute truth.

The one wearing a navy and white striped jumper and a beret, with a string of onions round his neck and a long thin loaf of bread under his arm is the Frenchman. He’ll probably be pushing a bicycle and making suggestiv comments to nearby women.

The one with the number-one haircut, hollow cheeks and a shiny tracksuit is from Russia. He’ll be swigging from a bottle of cheap vodka while queuing to buy a potato.

Come on guys, this is basic stuff.