I noticed some people are riled up, i have no intention of offending anyone.
What if a person went on an Australian website, and read this before going there for a two-week journey;
"The advertisements feature Australians preparing for visitors to their country. It begins in an Outback pub with the barkeeper saying, "We've poured you a beer." Further imagery to a similar effect is then shown, including a young boy on the beach saying, "We've got the sharks out of the pool," and partygoers watching Sydney harbour fireworks saying, "We've turned on the lights". The commercial ends with bikini-clad model Lara Bingle at Fingal Spit stepping out of the ocean and asking, "So where the bloody hell are you?"
The campaign received massive press coverage, but it was soon deemed a failure and withdrawn".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_where_the_bloody_hell_are_you
"'We are much more than a nation of great people and great places,'' Mr Crean will say at today's launch.
''We have won 10 Nobel Prizes and we are a nation bursting with creativity and ingenuity. The Australian way is to underplay our achievements but this kind of
modesty only surrenders the edge to our competitors.''
Oh really, what about "Aussie Sheila" then...if she is "modest", then I don't dare to think about a real Aussie talking...
By the way, Poland has 23 nobel prize winners...(Not that it's a competition...).
pl-nobel.prv.pl
So, what does Australia have to offer, besides having to take a plane to visit any other country, or even any city! 90% of the landmass is unsuitable for living (you can only see so many beaches before longing for something else), poisonous creatures of all sizes and effects..including very deadly, shark infested waters, lebanese gangs that gangrape women and beat up everyone they feel like, including at beaches, restaurants and public streets (youtube it), an appaling treatment on the Aboriginees, skippy the bush cangaroo, crocodile dundee and a dead Steve Irwin (God bless his soul). Nobody bloody(!) cares about Australian rules football, cricket or whatever you play down there. The boomerang? Who the hell came up with that idea? And 100 feet long trucks that treck your desert highways....yeah, compare that to Poland, with it's 1000 year old history, castles, dynasties, old town squares, lakes, the possibility of visiting half a dozen countries with your car within a days drive, including cities like Berlin, Prague, Lviv, Budapest. How about skiing, sunbathing at beautiful beaches that stretch for miles and miles, filled with nightlife and modern hotels, snorkling, canoing in any of the thousands of lakes, visting vast protected wild life parks with fantastic fauna and animal life, nightclubbing, concerts, prime cuisine, all connected by modern highways, with cities with millions of people...how far do you come in Australia in the same time? How many different places, sites, cultures, food and people do you encounter there on a daytrip? What's your thing, besides the Opera and the bridge in the harbour, that occupies 90% of all your postcards?
"Aussie Sheila", shows a typical version of the "western" style of demanding things. My wife, born in Poland, but grew up in the U.S, has the same "problem". Everything has to be "immidiate", wether it's food or shopping. If the tower is not the highest, it's not worth seeing, if the street is not the longest, it's not worth walking. And if something takes more than 10 minutes, the restless leg syndrome kicks in...it has taken her 5 years here in a remote city in Norway to "calm down", and accept that beauty is found everwhere, and is not always like portrayed on TV or in magazines with enhanced colours or music for effect. I suspect "Aussie Sheila", is smitten by this and it has blurred her vision a bit. She needs more than a week or two to really understand a place, its beauty and how things should be seen.
This is NOT an attack on Australia, which I KNOW is a beautiful place, or "Aussie Sheila". But you can find faults in every country, like a poster mentioned earlier, it's how you perceive it that is important. For "Aussie Sheila", to actually log on this site, take the 20 minutes it took her to write the, mostly, negative aspects of her journey, shows that she is not the most tolerant, open-minded or positive person that should be visiting another country.
Dariusz
Who can tell similar "bad" experiences from visiting France (Top of Eiffel Tower is SO overrated), England, (The asphalt jungles they call cities gave me psychological trauma), Germany, (talk about dull landscape while driving), Spain, (Someone ban the mopeds...pleeeease).
