Through the window of my Croatian apartment I watched the sun climb into the sky. It flirted with the sea, as if to say, “I may head for the clouds or I may stay and spend the day with you.”
I breathed in the silence.
“Clive!” yelled an English accent. “Have you got your umbrella? I’ve checked the forecast and it’s supposed to rain.”
Why is it that wherever I travel the English turn up next door?
I tried to ignore the intrusion, but the woman appeared on the patio below me and embarked on her second conversation of the day.
“It’s supposed to rain later,” she informed the apartment owner. “I’ve just told my husband to remember his umbrella.” The owner nodded, probably wondering why English people always insist on talking about the weather.
Through gritted teeth, I watched my neighbour sit down in the garden to make a phone call. “It’s supposed to rain later,” she said, “I’ve just told Clive to remember his umbrella.” From her enthusiasm anyone would’ve thought she was saying it for the first time.
I’m not the only one who feels irritated and ashamed when they meet people from their own country. Just a few days earlier some French guys crossed the road to avoid a group of French people coming the other the way. “French people are awful,” one complained. “They’re so loud and arrogant, it’s really embarrassing.”
If you ask people why they avoid their own nationality, they’ll tell you they haven’t travelled all this way to talk to others like themselves. But it runs deeper than that. We see something of ourselves in these compatriots, and we’re not thrilled about it. We go on holiday to forget our daily lives, the last thing we want is a reminder of the strange creatures that we are.
On the Croatian beaches I realised I possessed a pointless talent: I could identify a person as English before he or she opened his or her mouth. If a person was burnt and splattered with half-rubbed in suntan lotion, they were English. If a person crawled undignified out of the sea because the pebbles hurt their feet, they were English. If a person asked a friend to stand in front of them while they got changed, they were English.
It has always annoyed me that people from other countries seem so much more distinguished.
But are they really?
I spent my final day in Croatia with some Italians on the beach. In the afternoon, a second Italian group turned up. They were talking passionately so I assumed they were debating something serious, but when I asked what they were talking about the Italian next to me rolled her eyes. “They’re annoyed with the guy with the long hair because he just told them he’d pissed in the shower.”
That’s when it dawned on me. We’re only ashamed of our own countries because we know them so well. We view our nationality from the inside-out and others from the outside-in. This is why we praise other nationalities and complain about our own. But enough navel-gazing, here’s what you really want to know: it did rain that day and Clive remembered his umbrella.