I was going to visit Rome, Italy in four weeks and wanted to know what to expect, would I get a lot of bad stares or smiles? Would people look down on me? At the end of the four weeks I was going to take two more trips, one to India and one to France. Would I need to bring any certain type of clothing or necessities? And finally I was going to study in Finland. I've heard that people of both Poland and Finland aren't very tolerant of newcomers or people who look black. I was raised in the UK for eleven years and I'm Palestinian and Panamanian, so how would they treat me knowing that? Thanks for the help.
Answer on Questions for people who have been to/live in Europe?
Hi,
Regarding the special things to pack for your trip, I would advise to but a converter for electricity plugs as in Europe these are completely different than in USA (you can buy these is shops with travelling equipment or if you forget it should be available on the airports in any newsagent). The rest you can easily buy in Europe.
Once visiting Italy (especially) please remember that you will need a long trousers or skirt (below your knees) and some long sleeves blouse or jumper to be able to enter any church - the rest of Europe is similar but they are very strict regarding that especially in Italy and Vatican.
Your question regarding tolerance… well… I am from Poland so I can speak only for my nation. Polish people ARE tolerant. The truth is that we are seen by the world as racists but this is not true. In smaller cities it is very hard to find non-polish however in bigger cities like Warsaw and Cracow or Wroclaw the amount of non-polish citizens is raising. This is the truth that some people could stare at you (mostly older people or little kids who never seen a black person before) however this doesn’t mean that they are racist or intolerant - they are just curious and looking at someone else is NOT considered rude as it is in UK. We just have different culture :) What I can guarantee you is that once they look at you and you would look back they would feel ashamed and turn their eyes away from you and if you were going o visit any pub or bar they would be all around you trying to meet you and make friends - we are very curious nation with a lot of hospitality.
I will tell you my story to show you how friendly we are… my husband is African black and when we were visiting Poland we decided to take a walk. I haven't seen that some of bad and dangerous guys are approaching us (from a certain tattoos I could see that these were released from prison and at the time they came to us they were drunk). I got scared because I wasn’t sure what they would do… and guess what? They didn’t want to let us go as they were explaining to my husband that they do love black people and that all that mystery and gossips are not true including calling my hubby "our black brother" hugging him and inviting for a party.
The reason why we are told to be rasist or so is that we just don’t have many black people living in Poland. The reasons are various: we never had colonies in Africa (like for example France) so we have no migration from there, we are quite poor country so all immigrants prefer to choose UK or France, our language is one of a kind and difficult to learn so that would be much more complicated to adjust yourself and learn (as many African countries speak English of French - historical reasons) and finally we have been under communism for 50 years and nobody wanted even to step into Poland - we are still recovering from that.
I wish you all the best and I hope you will enjoy your trip!
Iza
