JAYanthem blog

We’ve got half the Europe pics online now and Shannon created a small little homepage for our Europe trip that we will build and add-on to as we get more things accomplished. In it you will see a link to our tabblos, we’ve now finished London, Paris, Beaune, Switzerland, and Austria.

Jason & Shannon – Europe 2007

Now for some more comments…these are about how we were treated while over there.

Many have asked us if we experienced any anti-American sentiments and I’m happy to say we received none of that. We didn’t encounter one person who was rude to us. We did have one man in a bar in Austria that talked about how he doesn’t like George Bush (and he did so only after he was asked), but he followed that immediately with how much he likes America and Americans. It’s possible we were lucky or maybe it’s like the saying you get what you give and we usually had a big fat smile on our face the entire trip so that may have helped.

Another surprising thing is that we felt the French were absolutely the nicest people of all countries. I’ll always remember the French waiter we had at a very nice restaurant in the small town of Beaune. We barely understood a word on the menu, and our waiter knew very little English but spent time with us to explain our choices as best he could- and did it the entire time with a smile. He wouldn’t let us feel bad for taking up his time and it all ended well as it was a great meal- filled with foods we’ve never had before but thoroughly enjoyed. On the opposite end if I had to pick the country that was least hospitable I would have to go with England. Again we had no rudeness, but the Brits just didn’t seem to open up as much- less overall warmth.