Generalizations of an entire country's behavior based on a small number of tourist contacts can be a fool's errand. So, Annhig has it right, 100%.
A couple of personal stories can illustrate the point.
On one of our trips to France, we needed to fill up our rental car before returning it at the Basel airport. We stopped at a grocery market that also had gas pumps, but it would only allow purchase with a credit card (chip and pin type) which we didn't have at the time. After going inside and finding someone who spoke some English (our French was rudimentary at best), a teenage clerk came outside and used his own credit card to allow us to gas up and we reimbursed him in cash and said our good byes and had a memory for the ages.
On another trip, while in Paris, and seated in a metro train, with the window down, a teenager in a train stopped side by side spit through his window and into our train and laughed at our discomfort.

Generalizations of an entire country's behavior based on a small number of tourist contacts can be a fool's errand. So, Annhig has it right, 100%.>>

music to my ears - thank you dweislaw, [and dickie, and bvl]. if only my family agreed with you!

you are absolutely right - anecdote is no basis for judging the character of the inhabitants of a country, one way or another.

"you are absolutely right - anecdote is no basis for judging the character of the inhabitants of a country, one way or another."

So true. We often forget that although we are on holidays , the locals just go about
their business.

Yesterday I said something very rude to a man blocking the metro door when I was trying to get off the train;
. I was in a hurry, sick with a cold , just wanted to get home ..

Hope he was not a tourist!

Honestly, who is running this board? Perfectly decent posts on other threads get deleted in nano seconds, without any reasonable justification, and this trash is allowed to stay. This was a troll post from the start, and why it wasn't flagged as such from the very first reply is beyond me.

The current state of travel forums is very sad. But when you consider the state of other things, I suppose nobody cares anymore. It's a free for all.

Your deleted post was not perfectly decent Snob.
But if you don't like the forum rules you can complain. Or choose to ignore. Or leave the forum for smaller souls to inhabit it.
What would a gorgeous tall blond worked up business woman accustomed to making quick decision do ?

NYCFoodSnob, lately there has been a growing number of polls that rate locals according to their friendliness, and I wanted to question the validity of such polls.

What's wrong with a little debate every now and then?

I can't contribute to any generalisations about the friendliness of people of different nationalities. I have found plenty of friendliness almost everywhere, some degree of reserve almost everywhere, and a negligible amount of rudeness.

One generalisation I will make is that I find that I experience more friendliness in smaller communities.

But there is one thing that did strike me about Italians: they have great hair.