Although there are different “smells” based on food alone, some cultures do indeed seem to bathe less, causing more smell than needed. Hey, I can handle a little garlic. What I can’t hande is three days old unwashed garlic sweat.
Bienvenue a la France. Ugh.
But hey! Look at the bright side. Europe also produces Dutchmen, the cleanest and best-groomed people on the planet! 
Since I’m demanding jokes and anecdotes, I guess I ought to tell one. Fair is fair.
An elderly lady goes to the doctor for her annual examination. The examination goes well, and at the end of it the doctor asks the elderly woman if she’s been having any particular problems that may need attention.
“Well,” says the old woman, “there is one thing, but it’s not really a problem. I break wind constantly, all the time. But, you see, it’s not really a problem because I never make a sound and it never smells. In fact, I broke wind six times during your examination, and you never noticed a thing.”
The doctor nods thoughtfully. He writes out a prescription for some pills, gives it to her, and says, “Take two of these every day for two weeks and come back to see me at the end of that time.”
Two weeks later, the elderly lady returns. “Doctor,” she says, clearly annoyed, “those pills didn’t help at all! In fact, they just made things worse! Now when I break wind, it smells perfectly awful!”
The doctor smiles. “Ah, good,” he says. “Now that we’ve cleared up your sinuses, let’s work on your hearing.”
I used to work with a Smelly Guy. His name was Jesus (I’m not trying to be funny here, his name really was Jesus).
He apparently only bathed over the weekend, he was usually clean and stink-free on Mondays. Sometimes though, he’d skip a weekend bath and on those Mondays, we knew we were in for a fun week. He didn’t seem to wash or comb his hair but once a week either, and we’d see the same huge, crusty piece of dandruff clinging to the same part of his head for days. He also wore the same clothes all week, and by Friday his shirt would be covered in drippings of that week’s meals.
Finally, another coworked and I complained to the branch manager. Jesus wasn’t a very friendly person, and none of us felt comfortable talking to him on our own. Luckily, we all worked for a huge company that actually had an Official Procedure to deal with stinky employees. A few days later Jesus recieved a package in interoffice mail that contained a videotape that he was instructed to go home and watch, as well as a return envelope for the video once he was done with it.
I’m dying to know what exactly was on that tape, I can only imagine.
He did clean up his act for a while afterwards, but old habits die hard and by the time I left there he was back to weekly bathing.
I don’t have a Smelly Guy at my current job, but I do have a Popcorn Guy that is deserving of his very own Pit rant. 
:rolleyes:
I bet you didn’t know that you probably smell funny to them, too. “White” folks are thought to smell “milky” from having too much dairy.
re: deoderant in paris: I went to a pharmacy type place and asked for the stuff and at first the guy didn’t know what I was talking about. After a while he got it and started to show me different choices, but I didn’t want anti-perspirant (with the aluminum stuff in it), and that seemed to be all he had. Even after he understood that I wanted an aluminum free product he kept handing me stuff with alumium compounds in it.
Eventually I went to a bigass supermarket-type place and they had some.
re: smelling funny to them, this doesn’t surprise me, but I don’t eat much dairy.
For the record, I hate to say this, but I noticed that a lot of our foreign exchange students tend to have rather strong BO…I always feel like such a shit saying so.
Nah, it’s butter that we smell like, Ana. You can never have too much butter.
Ha! I knew there was a reason to be proud of my heritage! 
(unless, of course, you were being sarcastic … I can’t tell. Must be a Dutch thing.)
I, too, was in a similar situation a few years ago. I was working for a local retail chain, in the shipping and recieving department. Part of the job responsibilities was to unload the semi-trucks full of merchandise that came to the store daily. Now, these trailers are 53-feet long, and I could smell this freak when he was at the front of the trailer and I was at the rear. The man simply did not bathe or change his clothes. He had yellow and brown teeth, spat when he talked, and had a bad attitude on top of it all. (He was a hard worker, though.) It’s a wonder he still works there, but according to people I have kept in contact with, he does. I talked to my manager about it, and she told me there was pretty much nothing she could do about it, even though in the “Employee Handbook” it said something to the effect of, “Thou shalt not reek like seven-weeks’ worth of dead skunk ass.” So my co-workers and I were forced to grin and bare it. Yeah, it sucked, but we dealt with it.
I’m just glad I don’t have to be confined to that hot, humid semi-trailer with the smelly weirdo anymore.
-Dirty Earthworm
Ha! I knew there was a reason to be proud of my heritage! (unless, of course, you were being sarcastic … I can’t tell. Must be a Dutch thing.)
I, too, was in a similar situation a few years ago. I was working for a local retail chain, in the shipping and recieving department. Part of the job responsibilities was to unload the semi-trucks full of merchandise that came to the store daily. Now, these trailers are 53-feet long, and I could smell this freak when he was at the front of the trailer and I was at the rear. The man simply did not bathe or change his clothes. He had yellow and brown teeth, spat when he talked, and had a bad attitude on top of it all. (He was a hard worker, though.) It’s a wonder he still works there, but according to people I have kept in contact with, he does. I talked to my manager about it, and she told me there was pretty much nothing she could do about it, even though in the “Employee Handbook” it said something to the effect of, “Thou shalt not reek like seven-weeks’ worth of dead skunk ass.” So my co-workers and I were forced to grin and bare it. Yeah, it sucked, but we dealt with it.
I’m just glad I don’t have to be confined to that hot, humid semi-trailer with the smelly weirdo anymore.
-Dirty Earthworm