European Culture

European Culture

To discover the world is to submerge one’s self into the diverse cultures that breathe beyond our territorial borders. Consequently, traveling is not a luxury but a need for the soul to find itself with the world and truly understand how oblivious we can be to perception and judgment towards societies that are worthy of admiration. Being shaped by the “American Dream,” society in the United States has a compulsion to want and desire more beyond achievement. This entails long hours at work that even overlap to second shifts creating sixteen hour working days for many American families. Between work, school, and chores, the moment to appreciate life and its special moments seem to be eradicated from our materialistic culture. The craving for a better financial future and strong competition from overseas has pushed the average American family to produce more for less creating an unbalanced structure that forms a trend through society: lack of time.

Pertaining to the American social background, I thought that society in Europe would be the same as here. A preconception I had about Spanish culture was that they would be as consistent and punctual as in the American business place. I thought the Spanish to be very materialistic and dominant when conducting transactions since they have a long history of economic dominance dating as far back as the discovery of the Americas. My thought of Spanish society was that they would be a masculine culture with individualistic principles. Likewise, I also thought the Italians to be the same when conducting business since they’ve been known as one of the world’s most powerful banking economies that developed since the Renaissance with the Medici family, a dominant mercantile family attributed for lending large sums of money to other nations. As for France, my preconception was that they would be a lay-back culture due to their rich appreciation to heritage and high pride for having Paris as the number one...