Attitude Adjustment

People's attitudes towards things such as personal space or how to treat foreigners tends to differ depending on what country you are in. I think for the most part in Vienna the people seemed annoyed that a lot of us as American's did not make any kind of attempt to learn common phrases to try to communicate with them. We relied on them to know English and if they didn't then it made things a lot more difficult. For me personally, when I was on the subway I was talking to someone in the group thinking no one around me spoke English or if at all not much. That wasn't the case though he understood me but said most people probably just don't want to talk to us (as in American's.) Which makes me think that a lot of people don't like American's or again they don't like that we don't even attempt to try to speak their language. In Prague it was not the opposite necessarily, but I feel like the people didn't care if we spoke Czech because they know it is not a commonly used language, so in order to meet us in the middle, most of them learn English early on. In London there wasn't much of a language difference except with some different phrases (for example saying "cheers." I think that for anyone traveling to another country it is probably polite to learn a few simple conversation words. That way the people in that country know you are at least making an attempt even if you butcher the word and then they can meet in the middle by speaking your language.