mancityvstoke said:
stony said:
Freds Patio said:
I was on holiday near a place called Machynlleth (sorry if my spelling is wrong), when I was 9 with my grandparents. I got chased through a field by a Welsh bloke, with his son and a massive lurcher, whilst shouting in Welsh at me, presumably obscenities. Not a word of a lie, and its something i've never quite forgiven them for as I was just a little kid in a field near our caravan site, I wasn't even trespassing.
I have met some sound leek-munchers, and there is good and bad everywhere of course...but that was one of my worst ever experiences, I was in tears. North Wales is fine, I've never been to the South, but Mid-Wales is by far by the worst for it. All the little mountain villages.
Walking into a pub in Valley on Anglesey and as soon as I opened my mouth they all stopped speaking English and started talking Welsh. The atmosphere of the place changed immediately and if I hadn't have already booked a room, I'd have done one.
Went into a cafe in Portmadoc with the wife and kids a few years later and the same thing happened again. This time it was two little old ladies. The looks they threw in our direction would have turned milk sour.
Anglesey again and I was working on a wind farm for a few days and at the end of the day the lad asked me where I was staying. He then told me where to avoid because "the English aren't liked or tolerated" and he was only telling me because I seemed ok for an Englishman.
His best mate had just been released from prison for burning down English holiday homes in the 80s.
Exactly this happened to me in North Wales, somewhere near Pwllheli.
All started speaking Welsh as soon as they realised I was English. That staring shit too like you'd arrived in Royston Vasey or something.
We''ll have no English here, this is a small country, are you roadmen?
See, its a common thing! I'm glad that many others have experienced it, for a while I thought I was paranoid, but then again my experiences with the "bad" Welsh that i've met that I earlier posted are just a bit too extreme to be coincidental.
Sorry to the OP for bringing up the Welsh in the first place, I didn't mean to send your thread on a tangent mate.
(and in case anyone is interested, its a random point but I've also been on the bad end of xenophobia in Serbia, Russia and Portugal)
I visited Serbia with my best mate, whom I met when I was 8 and he was 7...he was a Bosnian Muslim refugee, and came to our school during the mid '90s as his family were lucky enough to escape Sarajevo. He lost uncles in that war, poor lad, his stories can make a stomach turn inside out. Witnessed allsorts. Anyhow, once we were old enough to earn our own money (16-17ish), his parents agreed to let me go to Bosnia with them for 5 weeks. Great times. One day, we used our provisional licenses and took a quadbike each, and sat in for the ride to Serbia. The first town we came to over the border was called Loznica, just over the River Drina, and even though it was years after the War the hard feeling was still there, (my mate didn't help himself by wearing a green shirt with the Muslim Crescent and Star on it), and they don't really like the English due to how we intervened in the War, along with America...anyhow, we returned to the quads to find the petrol siphoned out, one of the wheels taken off, and "UBIJ BOSANAK/ANGELSKA" (may be spelt incorrectly)keyed into the body of the quad , which means "kill bosnians/english". Had to get the train back as the local garages refused to help, and pay a substantial amount to replace the vehicles we didn't return.
Final edit: couldn't resist adding my other unpleasant experiences.
I joined the official England supporters group back in 2006 when I was 15, and attended a few games, most memorably the games at the Swamp whilst the new Wemberlee was being built...saw the last game before the 2006 World Cup when England beat Jamaica 6-0. There was 2 of us, me and my mate Dec, and we'd joined the OSC and went to these pointless games as we wanted to go to EURO 2008 together if we qualified (as we infamously didn't, thanks Croatia!).
Anyhow, context out of the way, we went to Russia away in 2007? I think. At 17-16 we were a bit fazed at what a pain in the arse it was to get there, having to fill out forms and get treated like shit in the airports. Anyhow, Moscow was fine-ish but definitely had an undertone to it that reeked of shadyness. Got to the game, Shrek scored (I never even clapped his goals) but we lost. After the game, we latched on to some Villa lads and had to walk back to the Metro...we got chased across 4 lanes of motorway by Spartak Moscow fans. Hotel staff were horrible too, and on our last morning we returned from breakfast to find all our last roubles had been stolen. (This wasn't the end of the world, as you aren't allowed to take them out of Russia)
Portugal, just huge racists. My mate, who is half Zimbabwean, came with me and my mum and dad when we were 14, and was reduced to tears when some Portuguese lads gave him vile, disgusting, abuse. You wouldn't want it said to an adult, let alone a child.
