Kurt Lykke Lindved Ph.D
Culture and Development – UN
Lecturer and Writer
Honored Dutch Counsel
Former CEO in EAC
Entertainer and Event Management

“When in France, if you do as the French do you will probably have a much more enjoyable experience. A few lessons in French culture will help you understand why things are a certain way in France, and how to stand out less as a tourist.

Besides, is it really so bad to enjoy a long lunch? Or have your coffee in the cafe instead of rushing around with a to-go cup. Don’t fight the French system, embrace the culture and you will look far less like a tourist“.

I have lived and traveled in many different countries in my lifetime and have always enjoyed sitting at a cafe studying people’s behavior. Cultural differences are a natural part of the observations, but the behavior and attitudes are quite different and tells more about the character, adaptability and selfish level with which people behaves as a guest in other countries.

It is not uncommon for tourists to use the motto “attack is the best defense” only by purely fear to disclose their identity. The result is often being a form of dissociation from the local population who obviously cherish their own habits, rituals and language. In the Mediterranean, it is rare to see intoxicated or affected people in the urban image, but when people with origins in the Anglo-Saxon race arrives on the sunny coastline is the brain apparently short-circuited in a mixture of alcohol or drugs in the absence of self-criticism, self-knowledge and self-confidence. The unintelligent flying squad usually end up at a bar – perhaps in fear and lack of understanding how to deal with the locals.

Everyone has an inner strength that lives and is used for any occasion.

A 14 days holiday in a foreign country is obviously too short a period to adopt or have insight into a foreign culture, but with a bit of humility, it would be easier to get in touch with local people wherever in the world it may be. Culture can not be exported or imported but accepted that any compromise could be the start of a wider range of knowledge and horizontal extensions of people’s own wisdom. Some people have a congenital ability to absorb a lot in a short time while others need longer time and at worst some who would never dare to jump into the deep water.

Today we often hear words like evolution and awareness as it was the answer to

You can train your senses to the edge of insanity.

everything in the future. Well, it is part of a wider context that includes people’s behavior, parenting, and not least ability to adapt to a different ego if it is otherwise possible. Our ego is part of the congenital ability to defend our own little territory, and I have not to this day encountered people without an ego including myself.

With this in the memory must all the humanity on this planet convert to a human race we do not know yet. We can learn, train and through experience obtain some changes towards a better enlightenment and subsequent acceptance of other people, but the lurking and unconscious ego will always be ready to chop the shock-teeth in the soul itself whenever it is necessary and without self-control of the mind.

The shadow of this perhaps vicious circle can always be subdued in the bar, the café or in

Everything is culture, according to many perceptions …… The definition is invisible, but the mentality like it was night and day from country to country.

the sun’s rays, which automatically is cheating the psyche’s pain, but it does not disappear before the man’s ego can be cut away as an unnecessary part of the mental senses.

And until then I will continue to enjoy the cafe with the peculiar atmosphere inside as outside, where people meet in a part of life’s reality and if a person would venture to arouse my ego will the response time be guided by my ego though my mind wants something else.

@ K.L.L.