In principal, I've nothing against backpackers but why do they always look so miserable?

Because looking happy around strangers in general, and when in the presence of upper middle class Americans in particular, isn't really cool among most modern day youth cultures. Many backpackers generally consider Fodor's-type travellers to be their mortal enemies on the battlefields of culture, politics, human sensitivity and understanding, good looks and whatever else is important to them. They're happy enough when the situation is one which is to their liking, which rarely includes the presence of what they imagine to be smiling, right-wing, intellectually inane, prudish suburbanites who are the enemy of everything that makes life worth living, unless those people are being exposed for what they are and disgraced so badly that they will never dare set foot in an art museum or open their mouths in public again until they have something substantial to contribute to humanity. That is the dream, I guess, anyway. Perhaps if your own happiness did not strike others as such an empty one, they would not respond to you in such a way.

Perhaps it is because they are gazing upon you!

What's with all the labelling and flaming? <BR> <BR>I think they just look tired, and maybe uncomfortable with being stared at. But how can they all be lumped in one class as "looking miserable?" Duh <BR> <BR>

Come on.....how could anyone look at an English Man with bad teeth and a bad tan be miserable?

this poster hit it on the head, these people always look so miserable, disheveled, and dirty.

Larry, please, "These people"?? Are you the twin brother of that pompous ass, Ed? I have no doubt that the people I know who carry backpacks would put you to shame in the looks department. Rather than "disheveled and dirty" more appropriate adjectives you might use to describe them would be gorgeous, dressed to kill or just plain hot! You wish you looked as good as they do!

I'm not an unhappy traveller, but I dislike those travellers who take up so much space in the overhead bins with their endless luggage. And I am unhappy with people who take too long getting off the train because they have to organize their three mega-wheelies. Maybe the miserable backpackers are glowering at your excessive luggage.