Thanks to cultural exchange projects, like Comenius, we are nowadays in touch with other nations and other cultural realities: this shows us how wrong expressing prejudices is, because, after getting to know someone better, we often find out we were completely wrong. 20 years ago, rumors were the only way to know something about those who lived in a far away place.

We asked our teachers and our relatives and we collected the commonest stereotypes from some years ago about German, Polish, Finnish, Portuguese and Greek people:

was fair-skinned, blond- haired and blue-eyed; was serious, very organized, disciplined and efficient; was always punctual and conscientious; hated disorder and loved rules; A German:

loved beer, ate potatoes, sausages and sauerkraut; drove a Volkswagen, a BMW or a Trabant; wasn’t very fashionable

A Polish person: was conservative, strictly catholic and nationalist; lived in the centre of Europe; was hospitable and patriotic;

was lazy and always complaining; used to love Vodka and cucumbers.

A Finnish person: Lived in a freezing isolated place, in contact with a beautiful nature and rare fauna; was very tall, blond and pale; spent the time in the sauna; was introvert, reserved and not very loquacious;

was ecological, practical, well organized and clean; Finnish is considered a very difficult language. How can you tell the difference between a Finnish introvert and a Finnish extrovert? When he's talking to you a Finnish introvert looks at his feet. A Finnish extrovert looks at yours.

A Portuguese: was more or less like Spanish people; was a nostalgic person that sang fado; was very family oriented; was a little bit sparing

A Greek: had traditions of values; were similar to Italy; were dark-haired, had dark eyes and had a peculiar nose; was family oriented, conservative and religious;

were hot-tempered; loved feasting and merriment.