Suppose this post is considered racism or any other -cism, that I am unaware of, I then apologize in advance, but working with customers that come from different parts of the world really gives you a great understanding of how environment and culture play a huge role in how we function in this world.
To begin with, I can quite confidently say that if you make any assumptions about Estonians based on me, then you unfortunately are wrong. The reason for that stretches back to both of my grandmothers. One of them was deeply religious and for that was feared by the whole village. Things had to be in order and any god-forbidden act didn’t go unnoticed or unjudged as long as my grandma lived. Despite that, she was the best grandma that I could ever ask for with the little addition that if she could have ruled a country, Hitler himself would have taken a knee. My other grandma could speak four languages, played the accordion, could sing and act, but soviet times were hard and grandma was forced to work her ass off to make a living and provide for her children. At one point she understood that if she pretended to be little nuts, police and other annoying personas would leave her alone if there ever was any trouble. I think it was embarrassing but she was unable to feel shame. Originating from them, I consider myself a somewhat diluted mix of both but by no means your typical Estonian. Enough of me.
Finnish and Swedish
Starting with my neighboring countries, both Finnish and Swedish people like most of the nordic nationalities (including Estonians) are reserved, quite emotionless, and not talkative. They will endure through the small talk and instructions, but if you still keep talking after that they answer your questions and then start to look away hinting that they want to be left alone. Or at least that is what I assumed. Maybe they just haven’t received that much attention in their life before and do not know how to handle it, knowing our typical nordic cold parenting style. Although I always tried to read people and shut up, whenever I saw that my chatting wasn’t met with the same kind of enthusiasm, Finnish and Swedish people left me the most confused especially after reading the reviews. Usually, they didn’t make any effort to keep the conversation going, so I left them alone, but for my surprise I often saw a 3-star reviews from them. If you give me a 1-star review, I can assume that everything was terrible. If you give 5 stars I assume everything was great and these two rankings do not actually need further explanation.
But if you give 3 stars, please help me out by saying what you didn’t like. Was I supposed to talk more and entertain your asses off or was the very minimum talking that I did already too much and I should have hand-signed you the instructions? Just tell me! Ironically there was a 4-star review with no additional comments right next to it from the Swedes. Got to love your neighbors!
Germans
Germans are the kind of people that have set a limit of words per day that they can express. I think this limit is like… three. As I learned from my German colleagues, Germans (especially older ones) are not very confident with their English and if you add their limited amount of words, you get this nodding quiet customer. It is nice to have German customers, if you are in the mood for a nice introverted quiet will-count-all-the-hairs-in-my-horse’s-mane kind of ride. But my god will they create a fuss if something is not as advertised. For example if you happen to come back from the tour 5-minutes before the promised 1,5 hours has passed although the wind was blowing people off the horses and the rain has penetrated through all the layers of clothing - even if the sky starts to fall god forbid you to shorten the promised duration of the ride. The good side - they always tried to follow instructions to the best of their abilities which made them easy to handle.
French
Resign, call in sick, break a leg - all of this is better than going on a ride with the French. Maybe I am exaggerating a little bit, but also luckily we didn’t have a lot of French people coming, but if they did, for heaven’s sake if they did, you sat in the corner after the tour arms around your knees sobbing. First of all, the accent. Axelle was already a little challenging to understand, but luckily she studied English in Ireland before, so we figured it out. But despite bending into a knot, I could not understand the French and they couldn’t understand me. Compared to the Germans, the French were worse in terms of English skills, but they definitely spoke more, which I didn’t see as a bonus. Smile and nod was my tactic.
In addition, they were arrogant as f**k thinking that they can ride the horse…backwards… while eating their croissants…which they couldn’t and I swear even if they ended up faceplanting the ground from a walking horse, they would still consider themselves the best riders. That false confidence meant that they ignored every instruction thinking that rules do not apply to them. Even Axelle said after working for two weeks, that she hates the French and that is a lot coming from Axelle. Good side - some of the guys were quite an eye candy.
Norwegians
Add a little bit more talkativeness and superior hiking clothes to the Swedes/Finnish and you get the Norwegians. The worst case with Norwegians was 14 of them, celebrating a bachelor's party, half of them drunk and the other half severely hungover. Shit went down. NEVER AGAIN.
Austrians
Remove some of the strictness from the Germans and add one more word to their daily word limit and there you have the Austrians. The Austrian colleague was heaven to work with. No complaints there. But the customers were like 5/10
Americans
My favorite customers. With their overflowing energy the Americans were the ones that actually TALKED BACK and asked questions. Yes, sometimes they were quite stupid, but hey, then it was my moment to shine and enlight them with the little knowledge that I possessed. Also, they were the ones who were able to also make me laugh, which made work feel less like work. Sometimes they confused me for example when I was telling stories that were supposed to be funny (I guess they weren’t) because instead of laughing as normal people do, some of the Americans just said in a half-excited voice:” OMG, that is so funny!” But in general, I always got along with them. Yeah, they have a lot of emotions and it can get overwhelming. Some of my fellow guides hated Americans because they talk so much but I definitely preferred talking to sitting in awkward silence for 1,5 hours. Super helpful and understanding and yeah, I know that sometimes their sincerity is questionable, but I am not friends with them, they will leave after the ride and I do not mind if we both fake our emotions, because I can’t be honest with customers anyway so that’s how it is. Some lady sitting on a horse asking if there wasn’t a seatbelt was the most brilliant American moment of my summer. One couple also took me out for lunch and sent me hot sauces from Texas which was the loveliest thing. And great tips! Thanks for that.
One of the most memorable Americans. One of them managed to fall off the horse two times - first time while getting on the horse and second time while getting off the horse.
Also I was supposed to be super flattered by their compliment about my blinding beauty because it is a lot coming from a gay man. Supposed I was.
Canadians
Take some of the emotions away and add a little superior feelings over Americans, you get the Canadians. Also nice and polite people that were capable of keeping up a nice conversation but there was this subtle arrogance that I felt coming from them. Other than that I really liked working with Canadians.
Chinese
The f****ing Chinese were the people that made us slam our heads in the hopes of not having to go on a tour when we saw them coming. No matter how little experience other customers had or how much the Chinese assured they had, we always reserved the kid’s horses for them to save ourselves from major headaches (except when Lenny didn’t pay attention and put them on the wrong horses). And this is the moment when you can sue me for racism. It wasn’t only the Chinese, it was Asians altogether. It requires talent to suck that much in something, and goodness gracious, did the Asians have talent at f***ing up almost every tour that they participated in. And it didn’t matter if they had lived the majority of their lives in America or Germany (it helped a little bit tho), they still had zero skills to understand what is happening and how to help themselves to get through this trip. That usually meant that the guides and the horses had to be superstars to bring everybody back alive.
What I assume is the reason behind that observation that shows our lovely co-earthers in a bad light, is that they are taught not to show a lot of initiative and are also quite distant from nature and living beings, that have a mind of their own. Which makes them incapable of giving any commands to the horse without getting a direct order from the guide to do that despite the fact that the command would be necessary to keep the horse from walking into a lava river for example (luckily the horses are smart and usually won’t let that happen). So they need an order to be capable of reacting. Sometimes I felt like they assumed that the horse was like a robot that knows what it’s supposed to do. Sometimes they also lacked the skills of English which resulted in them smiling stupidly on the horse while the guides are trying to tell them to put their heels down. The bigger the smile, the less they understood.
Worst case we had was two Chinese grandmas on the tour (kudos to whoever came up with the plan to bring their nanas to a f***ing horse ride). During tölt they were of course trotting which meant that they were pumping from one side to another falling off every minute and me riding next to them trying to calculate which one should I catch first. There was one Chinese woman, that came on a tour who was able to really ride…one throughout the whole summer…one.
Other nationalities came too seldomly to make any assumptions about their way of making our lives interesting, so I will end my overview here. In the end, it all made our lives as guides very interesting and of course, we are thankful for every nationality. We now know what to expect when we encounter you next time.
Unnecessary addition to this blog: Meet Steven (the horse that I am riding). Steven is capable of behaving very well when forced to walk with two handhorses, but will challenge you to a race the next day while riding with experienced customers. I think I aged like five years with him. Thanks Steven!
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