Sterotypes
(ED NOTE: A thread about sterotypes was started after a listeroo posted a newspaper clipping. "Ah stereotypes: never been to a Scottish wedding where anything was hit other than the bottle ;-) If the bride is less drunk than the groom ... What was I saying about stereotypes ..." Doug responded that sometimes sterotypes were true.)
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In 1952, I think it was, maybe '53, soon after the Russians had given up trying to starve the Allies out of Berlin because our Berlin Airlift had made them look silly all over the world, I was carousing one night along the Ku'damm (Kurfürstendam, the Champs-Élysées of Germany) with a friendly British Military Policeman I had chanced to meet. We had found a nice Gasthause and were talking over beer.
After awhile, some guys wearing kilts came in, sat at our table, and began conversing in a strange language. I asked my MP acquaintance if they were speaking Gaelic. He replied, "No, its just the way they speak English, and we don't want to stay here because a great crowd of them just walked in the other door."
I thought he was joking, but had enough sense to know I was in foreign waters and should heed advice from the natives, so I got up and walked with him out onto the street. Just as we turned down the Ku'damm, there came a tremendous racket from inside the Gasthaus we had just left. He smiled and said, "They think bashing people is great fun."