Goddamn tourists

I really don't have anything against tourists. OK, I lied. I have a huge problem with tourist groups. Families and a few people here and there, usually can't cause a big problem with their combined ignorance of basic walking rules. It's the big groups that really get on my last nerve. The most prominent of the peoples who can only travel in groups are Asian people.

If you have ever gone anywhere, other than Asia, and maybe even in Asia, you would know exactly how annoying Asian tourists are. They love going to places and visiting historic locations, they just generally don’t like to spend the money to actually go into anything, so they take a bazillion pictures of the outside of every building. The few that do actually pay the money to go into anything, disregard all rules regarding taking photos, and use their cameras inside, despite the fact that there are signs in every room of every palace or museum that specifically have a pictures of a camera with a line going through it. Maybe in Asian countries that means “go ahead and take as many pictures as you want, and please, do use your flash if you are so inclined.” The funniest thing I saw being done by an Asian tourist was a lady in the gift shop of a museum, who did not want to pay 10 euros to go in and see a palace from the inside, so after having taken a picture from every possible angle from the outside, she figured that she did not want to pay for souvenirs either, so she took pictures of every souvenir and book displayed in the gift shop. I was about to go Asian on her and take a picture of her, but I just don’t have it in me to do that, so I decided to just savor the memory in my head and share it in writing with the world.

However, Asian tourists have very fine competition for the most annoying tourists’ award: young Italian tourists. For some reason, everywhere I went there were HUGE groups of Italian teenagers. I think all of Italy decided to send all its teenagers in field trips to Vienna during the week I was there. I can totally see why a country would want to rid itself of its teenage population. They were loud, obnoxious, and disrespectful to other tourists and anyone who is not completely deaf, or who became deaf from having been within 10 feet from these screaming little shits.

The whole idea of orderly lines is lost on most of Europe, which is something I got used to, and the fact that no one says “excuse me” in Germany or Austria. But the Italian kids took it a step further and with their hot headedness, if you even tried to scold them with looking angry at them if they shoved in front of you in line, they mockingly say “prego,” which either meant they were saying “the pregnant American wants to go through” or “please, after you” or maybe “she looks angry, give her some Prego pasta sauce to shut her up!” When I was in line to get into one of the museums, the Italian teenage mob came storming and somehow I went suddenly from being 5 people away from the entrance to last. I must’ve huffed and puffed loudly enough that the lone respectful kid of the group (he was probably retarded) said apologetically “prego” and gestured for me to go. I was shocked, but as soon as I tried to go, some of his friends made fun of him then they started screaming something in Italian, which isn’t really all that different from the way they usually talk, and I am pretty sure they were saying something about not letting the stupid angry American get her way of expecting Italians to act civilized and they shoved in front of me, one of them mockingly saying “hallo, hallo, me go!” Luckily, I know two words in Italian, and while yelling "ICE CREAM" at someone may get some point across, I thought “fuck you” would work better. So I put half of the Italian words I know to good use with the universal hand gesture. And since I am Mediterranean, much like these little shits, I did it with my best "I can be an angry hot-headed brown-haired person too" look.

I have to say, I am not all that shocked with the Italians behavior, after all, of all the European countries, theirs is the only one where a girl feels violated just from the way their men, with greasy hair, dressed in their finest wife-beaters, look at her, whistle, and say things that would probably make truckers blush.