As a traveler, making friends and building connections are essential and oftentimes makes or breaks your travel experience. Travel affords the great opportunity to build a world-wide network as well as make interesting love connections. If you feel you're not getting love in your hometown or home country, get a plane ticket and the possibilities are endless. I have established connections romantic and platonice in all the places I've traveled. I've also come to discover that depending on your "look" you WILL be a novelty depending on your locale. I've gotten so many concerns about how an individual would be received in certain countries and it truly does depend on the country and the pervasive look of the locals as to how you will be treated. If the country is homogenous, if you are opposite the popular look, be prepared to be loved up and down. In some places, people get their perceptions of a particular group of people from the media and you may be their only encounter. As I always say, everyone is exotic somewhere. Here are my observations:
1. Blondes and Whites in Latin America
Depending on the locale of a specific country, for example, Bogota, where the look is brunette with olive skin, blondes stick out like a sore thumb and as one Bogota resident described it, fawned over. You are instantly targeted as a 'gringo' or foreigner and consequently harassed to buy something or the target of panhandlers.
2. Black Women in Italy
Oh Italy. The borderline fetishsizing of Black bodies is unreal. I was followed, stalked and praised while there as any girlfriend of color of mine said the same when they visited the country. My fellow Caucasian travelmates were ignored as shouts of "Chocolate, chocolate" were thrown my way. I didn't like it, it was too much and objectification was an understatement of how I felt. I asked one man from Milan who moved to New York what was the obsession because he loved Black and Latino women. He said "all Italian girls look alike, it's something different, I lke the skin, I like the bodies, it's just something that we are not used to seeing." Black women will find love(s) here. Oh, they will.
3. Black people in Eastern Europe
Novelty or specimen will do in this case. As I got a taste of the fascination Eastern Europeans have with Black people when visiting Greece, London and even just in U.S. cities. I was asked to take pictures with them, had my picture taken randomly without my permission, my skin stroked in wide-eyed wonderment because they had never seen a Black person in real life.
4. "Morena"/Voluptuous women in Latin America
Skin color categorizations are rampant and an ingrained fact in Latino culture. Moracha, morena, morenita, negra or negrita is used to refer to someone with dark hair and dark skin. Moreso, morena or negra is used to describe a brown woman with ample assets. One woman in the Dominican Republic said she wished she was a morena because "they have the best bodies." Another Dominican man said among his male friends when they are chatting about their lady-friends, when one says "Ella es una morena." (she is a morena)There is no more question, assumptions, or speculations about her looks, that statement seals the deal. Be prepared to be stared at in Latin American locales with predominant European ancestry as the aforementioned Bogota as well as Barcelona.
5. Voluptuous women anywhere
The hips don't lie and be prepared for them to be gawked at no matter where you go.
6. Curly Hair in the Dominican Republic
My host for the Dominican Republic said her neighbors always asked where I was from because I wore my hair curly and wore a lot of flowers. She said most assumed I was Curacao because that's how most Curacaons wore their hair and dressed when they came to the Dominican Republic. She said Dominicans don't wear bright colors, are more conservative and wear their hair straight, permanent relaxers and blow dryers are the Dominican way. In my time there, I counted only 3 women who wore their hair curly or natural.
7. Americans of immigrant background that travel
This is such a confusing concept to most of the locals I encounter. They always pause and say wait, you're American but your family is from another country and you know other languages and travel? It was unfathomable! I am never assumed to be American anywhere that I go, then I am taken for a liar, then when realization sets in that I am telling the truth about my citizenship, the local is absolutely floored. I don't know why people outside of America don't understand the concept that America is a land of immigrants and there is no true American besides the native indigenous people. I don't know if they think Americans sprang from the mountains versus the fact that people who call themselves Americans were brought to this country, either in shackles, oppportunity, seeking a better life or via their own free decision. Whenever a local recommended a place to eat their first thought was a fast food place or pizza. I don't travel to eat American food that I don't even eat IN America is always my response. Remember that you are an American ambassador wherever you go, whether you like it or not and sometimes it may take you to open up the eyes of individuals of different countries.
8. Americans in Europe
Contrary to popular belief, Europeans seem to like Americans, except in France. If I had a dollar for every time I heard a European say "You're American? I LOVE Americans." I would have exactly 1 million dollars.
9. Americans in Latin America
You are a money having gringo. People will act ccordingly. Keep the English talking to a minimum.
10. When in Brazil
I was a Brazilian as far as the locals were concerned. If you are brown, you passed the test to be Brazilian. And don't even try to refute or deny, it will only make things worse.
The most friendly, free love, doesn't matter what you look like places I've been to:
Ireland
Germany
London
Brazil
Amsterdam
Greece
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