A couple of weeks ago I went to the East Cantons of Belgium (Eupen etc.) with our college. We went to Trier for 1 day, where we visited the Christmas market. At a certain moment me and my friend wanted to order something to eat from a stand. We just went to the stand and ordered some things. After to have been served we saw a queue of people looking quite mad at us. We did not realise this was the queue for the stand, so in fact we skipped the queue (there were like 7 people in it). The Germans were queuing nicely one after each other at the stand, something we do not really do in Belgium (we just try to get to the saleswoman with least queuing as possible). This reminded me of this stereotype about Germans: they are very disciplined.
During my school period I did an exchange trip to Norway. I went for 1 week to Alesund, a beautiful scenic town at the coast. The first thing I noticed about Norwegians is that they are very quiet. They speak very quietly and with very monotonous voices. It is like if they were not able to express emotion in their voices. This was really strange for me.
As you will have noticed if you have read my previous messages, I met some Spanish people during the past few years. They are very different from Norwegians in the way they speak: they speak a lot, very rapidly and very loud. In fact they show a lot of emotion in the way they speak (Italians do it even more I think). I think Flemish people are somewhere in between of these two ways of speaking; sometimes we put a lot of emotion in our voices, sometimes it can be very monotonous too.
This makes part of the culture I guess: people from southern countries are more hot-tempered and show emotions more easily, people from the north tend to be more distant and cool. Although this may be stereotypes, I think it does make sense.
