[QUOTE=Juggler]
I don’t know if it’s a true misconception or if it’s just something Swedish people reiterate, supposedly polar bears are roaming the streets here but I haven’t seen any yet.
[/QUOTE]
You’re obviously in the wrong place.
Many Americans, even well-educated ones, seem to think that there are only white people in Sweden. White, blond, blue-eyed people, to be precise.
[QUOTE=Priceguy]
Many Americans, even well-educated ones, seem to think that there are only white people in Sweden. White, blond, blue-eyed people, to be precise.
[/QUOTE]
Isn’t it Sweden that’s got a black, Sweden-born dude in the national soccer team? But yeah, I’ve told people more than once that the brunette in ABBA wasn’t a dyejob, d’uh 
[QUOTE=Nava]
Isn’t it Sweden that’s got a black, Sweden-born dude in the national soccer team? But yeah, I’ve told people more than once that the brunette in ABBA wasn’t a dyejob, d’uh
[/QUOTE]
She was Norwegian/German though 
While I was in Germany one guy wanted to know if he could rent a horse to go around in Chicago - he seriously thought that would be normal.
Another German wanted to know how long it would take to fly from Los Angeles to Hollywood.
Another German planned on flying to NYC, in December, drive to Los Angeles and back to NYC, and see all the sights along the way, in a week.
Then again, I had a German friend visit here and an American asked him, “Do you have trucks in Germany?”
I can’t tell you how many Americans want to go to Europe for a seven day trip and ask me what there is to see while they are there…or they want to go to nine countries and see all the sights, or they want to do it on $5.00 a day…
And then there was one of my students who asked how far it was from Europe to Germany.
Britain:
That it rains all the time. The western half of the country gets more rain than the east, but total rainfall in London, in the south-east, is lower than most eastern US cities. There are lots of cloudy days, though.
That nobility and royalty play a significant part in everyday British life. There aren’t lords of the manor in every village. If you walk around London insulting the queen, you won’t be arrested. Very few people live in castles.
I met a Frenchman at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, who thought that Tucson was a wretched hive of violent anti-Semitism. He got this idea from the Ali G Show episode where SBC went into a Tucson country western bar as Borat and sang “throw the Jew down the well”, and had the whole bar singing along. The idea that although Tucson has some racist nutjobs–which comes along with the territory of being in a Southwestern desert state–it’s a pretty tolerant and progressive place, was pretty dubious to him. (I lived in Tucson at the time, BTW–that’s how the topic came up.) He seriously would not believe us that it was safe for a Jew to walk the streets of Tucson at night. Anyway, a Frenchman should be able to understand this concept; Paris is both one of the easiest world cities to be a minority in, and home to a terrible neo-Nazi element in PSG fan clubs.
Having had a roommate from rural Japan, I now know that Japanese food also consists of bomb-ass chocolate and a number of disgusting fish entrees that can make a kitchen smell like a rotting, well, you know, for weeks.
And that some of the Japanese waitresses in Little Tokyo (L.A.) don’t actually speak Japanese. Poseurs!
You’re thinking of Norway, although the guy is significantly American in some way IIRC (lives here, has ancestors here, was born here, or some such thing). Interestingly enough, he reminds me (me being a former basketball player) of a good basketball power forward when he gets close to the goal. The way he boxes out would’ve made my basketball coach cry for joy.
I was once watching some sort of travel show with my then-roommate, where Amsterdam was mentioned in passing, and I said, “Man, I’d love to go to Amsterdam someday!” My roommate said “Yeah, it’s kinda cool. I’ve been there a couple of times; I have some aunts and uncles who live there. It’s hard to understand them though, cause I don’t speak German.” 
“The really cool thing about Amsterdam is it’s just a short train ride from Holland and the Netherlands.” :smack: And this was a stoner.
[QUOTE=Usram]
total rainfall in London, in the south-east, is lower than most eastern US cities
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Even Manchester gets less than New York, which I always find an amusing statistic to counter that misconception.
Warm beer. Seriously, what on earth would we do that for? Cellar temperature, yes, rather than chilling it to death, but certainly not warm nor even room temperature.
One I’ve got from some Irish people is that all Brits have a deep passion for holding onto Ulster. Most people couldn’t care less, and don’t understand what all the fuss is about in the first place.
[QUOTE=Juggler]
I don’t know if it’s a true misconception or if it’s just something Swedish people reiterate, supposedly polar bears are roaming the streets here but I haven’t seen any yet.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, we have that in Finland too. Some tourists are also very disappointed at the remarkable lack of reindeer herds and/or reindeer herdsmen in downtown Helsinki. Some very confused-looking just-arrived Korean tourists were walking around downtown last weekend, decked in full wintergear and sweating their faces off. It was 26 degrees Celsius. I was afraid they would collapse from a heat stroke; they were extremely disappointed that they missed the snow. I told them most Finns missed it too; last winter was the least snowy in many years.
I’ve also had people ask me if it’s a long walk from the city center to Santa Claus’ house in Rovaniemi (it’s 815 kilometers from Helsinki, hope you’re wearing comfortable shoes), whether we have electricity in Finland yet (no, we’ve just mastered the concept of walking upright. Next we’ll be taking a crack at this thing they call “fire”.) and whether we’ve adjusted to switching from the Cyrillic alphabet to the Roman alphabet alright (!!!..I don’t even know where that came from).
I’ve heard (from people who’ve never been there) that London is constantly foggy. It’s true that dense fog was once prevalent, but that was when every household burnt smoky coal in their own fireplace and vented it up the chimney. Clean air legislation in the 1950’s ended the London smogs forever. Meteorologically speaking London is no more prone to fog than anywhere else.
[QUOTE=Usram]
She was Norwegian/German though
[/QUOTE]
And while we are at it: Truly blond adult Germans are a lot rarer than many people seem to think. Blonde children are relatively frequent but in most cases their hair turns brownish as they grow up.
Depending on who you ask we are either lockstepping militarist racists/anti-semites/nazis or effeminate socialist treehuggers. I guess it evens out.
Mention the war.
Rammstein does not dominate our music scene and Kraftwerk never did. It has been many years since Techno was a relevant phenomenon.
Surprisingly often Germany is depicted as an especially mountainous country. There are a few half-assed mountain ranges in the center but only a very narrow strip of the alps is German. OTOH large parts of the country are remarkably flat.
Much of the popular image of Germany is based on the southern part. Occasionally people visit Hamburg and realize that lederhosen and cuckoo clocks don’t belong there but otherwise few foreigners seem to have a real concept of northern Germany. I’ve yet to see an American tourist who ignores Munich, Heidelberg, Neuschwanstein and the other usual suspects and spends his vacation on the German North Sea coast.
Germany did not appear out of nowhere in 1871. That’s when it turned into a unified modern nation-state with a degree of centralization comparable to that of its neighbors but it was definitely around before that. Similarly, Prussia did not turn into Germany any more than England turned into the UK.
[QUOTE=T_SQUARE]
5) Lots of French seem to think if you show up to the ER with a gunshot wound but without insurance you will be turned away to die quietly in a ditch.
[/QUOTE]
I must admit this is what I thought. Well, not that the wounded would be turned away, but that they would be billed later and be deeply in debt and in trouble if they couldn’t pay then.
Foregners think that every person in Amsterdam smokes pot. The truth is that over here pot is mainly something for adolescents.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention the “no sense of humour” thing, kellner, or is it only the Brits who believe that? (and we repeat it so often that it infuriates me)
[QUOTE=kellner]
Rammstein does not dominate our music scene and Kraftwerk never did. It has been many years since Techno was a relevant phenomenon.
[/QUOTE]
David Hasselhoff is where it’s at right now, yes? 
[QUOTE=Nava]
Isn’t it Sweden that’s got a black, Sweden-born dude in the national soccer team?
[/QUOTE]
I’m not exactly sure, I’m not into sports. Martin Dahlin was in the national soccer team and he’s certainly not white, blonde or blue-eyed (I think his father is from Venezuela). The most successful Swedish soccer player right now is Zlatan Ibrahimovic, whose father is Bosnian and whose mother is Croatian.
[QUOTE=Usram]
I’m surprised you didn’t mention the “no sense of humour” thing, kellner, or is it only the Brits who believe that? (and we repeat it so often that it infuriates me)
[/QUOTE]
No, it’s not limited to Brits. On an individual level I don’t don’t think it’s true at all but of course that’s hard to judge objectively.
As far as the professional humour output is concerned there might be some truth to it. For a long time it seemed that good domestic comedy was horribly rare. The comedy that existed was either just plain bad or at least shallow and formulaic. There were a few highlights but it seemed that there was no real culture of good humour in the mainstream. In recent years good humour has been more readily available. Unfortunately most of it is still crap but at least there is a forum for more of the good content that exists.
Then there is also the fact that hardly any German humour ever seems to makes it abroad. Of course that is in part a language issue but enough foreign humor survives dubbing/subtitling into German. There is definitely the perception that we are net importers of humour and our own lacks international appeal.
New Zealand:
There are, apparently, no European people in New Zealand. (I’ve had people say “But you’re white!” when I tell them I’m from New Zealand)
Everyone in New Zealand was in one of the Lord Of The Rings movies. I’m still waiting for my royalty cheques.
No, I don’t know Tim and Sandra from New Zealand. There’s 4,000,000 people there, spread across two large islands.
The Moa died out centuries ago, sightings by West Coast hunters notwithstanding. It is, therefore, both impractical and impossible for us to ride them.
Sorry, I don’t speak Maori. Do you speak Iroquois? You don’t? Well, there you go.
Australia:
The entire country is not, amazingly, desert. Much of the country outside the inhabited areas on the East Coast is bush, scrub, and so on, and whilst there’s a lot of desert here, it’s a long way from anywhere that anyone on holiday is likely to be, unless you go out of your way to see it.
You can’t drive around the country in four days, I’m afraid.
We don’t barbecue shrimps (prawns) here. It just doesn’t happen.
Very few Australians have convict ancestors.
No-one wears hats with corks on them, except in an ironic or deliberately humorous sense. Similarly, Fosters is not a popular drink here.
Sydney is not the only city in Australia.
Kangaroos are not, as a general rule, kept as pets, despite what you may vaguely recall seeing in Skippy The Bush Kangaroo. Pursuant to that, we do not use Kangaroos for transport, either.
Yes, we have electricity and running water here*.
*Not in Hobart 
[QUOTE=Noone Special]
Israel: There’s shooting on the streets of Tel-Aviv. And we get around on camels, too. While far less wide-spread than in the past, these misconceptions still do exists to some extent.
Um… Tel-Aviv is a thoroughly “Western” city, complete with 50-60 story buildings, A/C everywhere and traffic jams 
And your chances of dying a violent death here are lower than in NYC.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, but we could go on and on.
- That the entire country is a desert
Nope. While true about the southern half, the north of the country is actually quite fertile, similar in appearence to Greece or southern Italy. And while we have our occasional heat wave (it hit 36C yesterday here in Tel Aviv), most of the year the weather is actually pretty temperate.
- That every Israeli has an assult rife in his closet
That’s Switzerland, morons. Only active duty soldiers are issued weapons. And while Israel may have a higher rate of gun ownership than most European nations, it’s no-where near that of the U.S.
- That people here speak Yiddish.
Not people under 70 (except for some hard-core Haredi enclaves).
- That you can’t buy a cheeseburger in Tel Aviv.
I’d say a good third of the eateries in the country aren’t kosher, including about 90% of all upscale restaurants; the rule of thumb is, the more expensive the place is, the less of a chance it’ll be kosher. I can’t think of a single food you won’t find served somewhere in the country.
*- That Israelis like to wear those round floppy tembel * hats and dance around in circles like extras in Exodus
I’m not going to dignify that with an answer.
“So you’re from Korea? You guys eat dog, right?”
I mean, Koreans do eat dog, but it’s not nearly as common as people think it is. I lived in Korea for 11 years and never even saw a dish of dog stew, much less eat one.
Canada: Being as I lived in the NWT, I was asked many times if I rode to work by dogsled or snowmobile, and lived in an iglu. While I’ve done both of these things, it’s not a regular occurrence. I do know people who run dogsled as a job, does that count? And people who go out hunting and build igluuin for the night, also counts I suppose. My sister drives a ski-doo across her lake to her truck sometimes in the winter before the ice is strong enough to support the truck. And yes, I do know some ‘Eskimos’ but they really prefer the word ‘Inuit’ and they’re just like you and me, but maybe a bit shorter and darker. Also, our ‘Indians’ prefer to be referred to as ‘Native’ and they probably aren’t going to scalp you or shoot you full of arrows. They also, surprisingly, are just like you and me.
Also, we all drink a lot of beer and eat nothing but back bacon (Canadian bacon) with maple syrup after our hockey games. That’s ridiculous - I haven’t played hockey in years.
In America, I have been asked if I’m a ‘foreigner’, since Canada is just another State. And that I speak English very well for a Canadian, because apparently we all speak either French or some Aboriginal language.
Oh, and the diamonds. No, they aren’t laying on the ground. Yes, we really do drive on ice, including long-haul truckers who drive up into the barrens (And the History Channel is doing a piece on some of the drivers, starting June 17, one of whom I know quite well). No, the ice isn’t here year-round. It melts. We get summers which will get up to 30c in Yellowknife but much hotter in the South. 40c (100F) is ok for me, as long as it isn’t humid).