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Once they burned my car in Rome because I had a Spanish tag..so I understand the Canadian flag sewn in the backpack perfectly...
But that fashion if older...... I remember seeing a lot of backpacks with Canadian flags during the 60's. I always wondered why there were so many Canadians in Spain.
Although people generally figure I'm American, I often get asked if I'm from Tonga, Fiji, or another south Pacific island. I guess it's because I'm half-white/half-black, and a pretty big guy.
I don't want to get totally off-topic here, but I'd like to chime in with one of the most annoying things I have seen while living abroad. Now, I'm no nationalist or great patriot by any stretch, but I find it appalling when I meet Americans who have sewn the Canadian flag on their backpack; I used to run into this all the time back in the Bush era, and a couple of summers back I met a girl who'd done that. I asked her why. She said, "So people won't give me grief." I held my tongue, but I find that to be preposterous. I had always thought one of the central ideas of international travel was to break stereotypes and foster understanding.
That dosen't make any sense. Nobody will know where your from until they ask. And then you could always say whatever. So everybody who doesn't have a Canadian flag on his backpack in American now? lol.
Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
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I've known a very few US citizens who said they were from Canada - don't know if they had Canadian flags on their luggage, but in casual conversations they didn't want to be known as Americans. Everyone abroad seems to like Canadians but are very ambivalent about US citizens, to say the least. Aside from avoiding trouble, they also felt it gave them a better chance of getting a good price at haggling for hotel rooms, gewgaws, and souvenirs.
It seems in my limited experience that naturalized citizens were more prone to do that, for example a Turkish couple.
I am Russian living in the US, but I was asked multiple times if I was from Brazil
Not so strange. Where I lived in California there were both Russian and Brazilian exchange students. It was easy to confuse many people in either group. Especially the girls. They were usually white, some had blond hair, most spoke english with a flat accent which didn't give away nationality, and dressed in the same style, using the same expensive tacky brands such as LV and that crap.
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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I've been in Vietnam for a month now. Everytime when someone asks me where I'm from and I tell them Australia, they seem surprised. 'But you look Asian, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese'. It seems Japanese is the most common one I get, followed by Vietnamese. I don't blame them for associating Australians with a certain look.
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