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Are the Polish the most suspicious people in Europe? [73]
Suspicion of outsiders, in my experience, is most common among tightly homogeneous communities, scarcely limited to the Poles:-)
An incident which happened to me, oh about fifteen odd years ago, was in a Polish bookstore I happened to be visiting in Greenpoint.
I'd been going to specialty foreign language bookshops for years, for various languages, German, French, Swedish in the New York area, but at this particular book dealer (my first time there), the store owner greeted me, in Polish, and I returned the greeting. The gentleman asked if I was looking for something in particular, at which point I responded that I was simply browsing.
It then occurred to me that, although there were other customers in the store, he began to follow me about, as though checking up on me to make certain I wasn't going to steal something. He then called a co-worker on the store phone, and asked them to please come down to the showroom as there was a customer browsing among the books.
Politely of course, I reiterated in Polish that I was merely looking around. Finally, I did in fact make a purchase of a rather expensive dictionary 'Slownik Polszczyzny' (PFN) and bid the owner farewell.
Even though well-attired that day and clearly able to pay for my purchase, the man remained constantly suspicious of my presence in his shop.
