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Please read again OP's second post: "[...]Why not the USA instead? "
I also mentioned U.S. simply to bring broader terms of comparison (and having the opportunity to see and live for quite a considerable time in Europe, Canada and US).
Uh, you need to bone up on what constitutes the rhetorical. Especially when he answered his own question not once, but twice, thereby making it obviously rhetorical. You do understand he wasn't seeking debate or verification.
I suspect however, the poster knew he would get it regardless. It's inevitable.
There will be some Canadians friendlier than some Europeans and some less so.
A lot of stuff seems to be mixed up in this thread.
Friendly
Chatty
Helpful
...are three pretty different things.
Of the three, Canadians west of the Ottawa River (Ontario and Western Canada) are probably most "helpful" than anything else. They are not especially "chatty" by most people's standards and are only average IMO in terms of "friendliness".
People in Quebec are more "chatty" and "friendly" but not as "helpful" in my observation.
In Atlantic Canada you will probably find the group of Canadians that correspond the most to all three qualities.
eriko88 - Canadians can be friendly and helpful and Canada as a whole is a family-friendly nation. But I don't find Canadians to be overly upbeat, cheery, chatty, extroverted with strangers and newcomers. It takes a while to get to know new people before establishing really friendly sociable terms. You can make good friends with people but you have to be patient about it until they get over their reservations about you and if you are pushy about it then they won't get over their reservations.
If you need shop keepers, service and sales people to be social butterflies and be all chatty, cheery, upbeat and hail fellow well met and getting all personal with customers and trying to make customers' personal business their business then Canada is not going to fit the bill for you. It isn't going to happen. They are working and being paid to take care of business efficiently and quickly with each customer and then move along to serve the next customer, they are not there to socialize and get personal with customers.
On the whole yes. I can only speak for a few countries in central/western Europe, but the attitude in places such as Germany can be anywhere between cool politeness to downright rudeness. This kind of indifferent attitude is especially pronounced in the German service industry (also applicable to a few other European countries), where warm/friendly service is rare to find. As much as I love taking the Deutsche Bahn high speed rail services, the attitudes of rail attendants even in First Class cabins can be down right indifferent/cold/rude in the best of circumstances, almost as if it's a privilege for passengers to speak to them. Canada is much more similar to the U.S. in this regard: casual friendliness and approachability, even if it may appear/seem fake or shallow at times (in Europe you won't even be granted the pleasure of "shallow" friendliness).
So far I've been to London, Paris, Prague, Berlin, Bratislava and found the locals from polite but a bit aloof without alcohol involved (London) to outright unfriendly.
Now I am a kind of person that values closeness and people being extroverted and interested in me. I prefer upbeat, cheery types. Small talk is nice to me.
I've heard Canadians are friendly, so I was thinking maybe this could be a future possible place to relocate. How would you describe Canadians, compared to say Germans, the Czech etc.?
Canadians are humans and as humans run the full gamut.
Happy people are friendly.
People with high amounts of income and assets relative to their lifestyle tend to be among the happiest.
Canadians with money to burn are going to be happy. If not, Canadians can be just as unfriendly as many non-Canadians.
Uh, you need to bone up on what constitutes the rhetorical. Especially when he answered his own question not once, but twice, thereby making it obviously rhetorical. You do understand he wasn't seeking debate or verification.
I suspect however, the poster knew he would get it regardless. It's inevitable.
There will be some Canadians friendlier than some Europeans and some less so.
WTF do you want? Are you trying to teach literature lessons now? Leave me alone. I was trying to be helpful by broadening up the terms of comparison. For example, if one wants to gauge the level of friendliness of nation X, perhaps it's better to compare it against more than 1 nation. It is verbotten now to mention US at all in this thread?
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