The grumpiest country in the world, according to 10 of our writers

Our most well-travelled writers reveal the places they found least welcoming

Grumpiness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. One person’s land of cold shoulders and surliness is – in a different place and a different time – someone else’s realm of red carpets and raucous laughter. So it goes without saying that the selection below, featuring destinations that our most well-travelled writers found less than welcoming, is entirely subjective – and not indicative of those nations as a whole. (Indeed, one of the nations featured will also appear on our round-up of the world’s happiest countries, coming next week.)  
Nevertheless, their experiences will no doubt ring bells with some of you. If so, please add your anecdotes to the comments, at the bottom of the article, or else nominate your own suggestions for the planet’s most petulant place. 
By Anthony Peregrine
Greece, eh? Tavernas, bouzouki and fancy dancing? Walking with donkeys, smashing plates and living to 150 on a diet of barbecued fish, sun and fresh air? Happy as Larry, then? No. This isn’t the Greece I know. It isn’t really the Greece the Greeks know. A survey earlier this year – by some UN agency with time on its hands – placed Greece at number 64 in the world happiness league, barely ahead of Libya. (The UK was at 20; number one was, as usual, Finland.) Another survey claimed only one Greek in 10 was happy with life, while 60 per cent wanted to leave. It doesn’t surprise me. Granted, I’m talking about Athens only, but what a disconsolate lot they seem to be in the cradle of democracy.
I’ve been a few times and not yet made it from the airport to the city centre without tangling with taxi drivers desperate to rip me off. Hotel receptionists snarl and, in the allegedly warm-hearted Plaka district, joy has always proved distinctly confined. An “English-speaking” guide hired for the day at great expense failed to crack a smile. He spoke English about as well as the average labradoodle, so I had to guess when he indicated that he’d rather not take me to the Parthenon because it was a long walk. I was cold-shouldered in shops in Kolonaki, and charged so much for a half-bottle of unspeakable white wine (no wine list, just the barman’s recommendation) that I had to replenish stocks at the nearest cash machine. A bouncer accompanied me. 
And, as I stood on the bema on Pynx Hill, from where Pericles had addressed his fellow citizens, a pack of stray dogs circled. Crikey. Even the dogs. This city truly wanted rid of me.
By Sarah Marshall
Forced to share traffic-clogged streets and smoggy, stained air with 1.4 billion people, Chinese citizens understandably get a bit grumpy every now and then. I’d been assured, however, that Chengdu would be different. It is, after all, home to the giant panda – a creature so benign its fight for survival is largely spent spinning on Pirelli tyres.
Soon after arriving, I set off to find a local restaurant. Amused by my clumsy ordering, the waitress giggled as she delivered a mismatch of side dishes. It was as if the table had gotten dressed in the dark. But all smiles disappeared when I realised I’d forgotten my purse. Within minutes, sour-faced staff were calling the police.
Taking pity, a young university student stepped in. My get out of jail card was a Post-It note explaining I was just a jet-lagged idiot and not a thief. Still unconvinced, the matronly owner frog-marched me all the way back to my luxury suite at the Shangri-La. Fifty minutes of stress for the grand sum of 50 Renminbi (about £5). In China, hospitality comes at a price.
By Sean Thomas
It has to be Indonesia, but not the entirety of their ginormous archipelago, I mean very specifically the island of Java. I was on a press trip and nothing we could do was right. For the organisers, the journalists were either late, scruffy, drunk (we weren’t), disobedient, or, on one occasion, “chuckling too much” during a visit to the zoo, thereby showing a disrespectful attitude. To what? The sensitive lizards in the reptile house?
This sense of surliness extended beyond our press gang (which soon became rebellious) and outside our itinerary. Taxi drivers in Jakarta seemed permanently huffy (to be fair, the traffic in Jakarta would drive anyone mad). Shopkeepers shrugged with practised rudeness, like old-style French waiters.
This reached a peak when I went into a Jakarta chemist with a mild ailment and they simply refused to serve me. Point blank. Nothing to do with language. Just go away. No idea why. Good job I wasn’t having a heart attack.
By Hazel Plush
Mexico is fabulously warm and overwhelmingly friendly – as long as you’re crossing someone’s palm with pesos. But after a week of life as a walking ATM, I was done. We’d hired Miguel, a local guide, for a tour from Mexico City to Oaxaca – but he wasn’t interested in revealing the mysteries of the Mayans, nor the achievements of the Aztecs. No, he simply wanted to line his pockets, and those of his mates too. 
Everywhere we went, he introduced his associates: tequila-makers, rug-weavers, dodgy “antique” dealers, all selling their wares. It was very amiable, until halfway through the trip we decided that our bank accounts – and bulging suitcases – couldn’t take any more. The mood soured instantly. As we stopped spending, Miguel became surly and dismissive, and at every stop (i.e. shopping opportunity) his pals pestered so hard that even my 6’4 rugby-build boyfriend was spooked. 
Along with the inevitable food poisoning, Mexico felt increasingly hostile each day – and when our taxi to Oaxaca Airport (at last!) was blocked by a bogus police cordon, I thought Miguel had finally found a way to turn the screw. Although one man and his cronies can’t represent all of Mexico, a guide is the conduit between traveller and nation, an ambassador for their country. Miguel was greedy, unfriendly – and that’s an impression of Mexico I simply can’t shake. 
By Paul Bloomfield
“What’s the purpose of your visit, sir?
I’d heard rumours of grim-faced American immigration officials, but the guy at JFK was something else.
“Do you have a criminal record?” he continued. “Are you carrying lethal weapons? Do you plan to carry out acts of terror on US soil?”
Nonplussed, I uttered my denials, each seeming more hollow and less plausible than the one before. Then: “Did you know that you’re losing your hair?”
Excuse me?
“Sure. This passport photo is terrible, but you’re definitely thinning at the front.”
And that’s relevant to your national security how, exactly?
I didn’t say that, of course – it was clearly a ruse to rile me. In common with other such staff at US airports, I was fairly sure he’d last smiled sometime before Nixon was impeached. Eventually, his fun over, he let me through with a final dismissive grunt and stamp. 
That’s the paradox of the States, at least in my experience. Out in the wild, it’s all smiles. Between check-in and airstairs, nobody in uniform even pretends they want you to have a nice day.
By Chris Moss
Among a handful of key words of vocabulary shared by all Argentinians, the word bronca is uppermost. Of Italian origin, it is just about translatable as annoying, furious, ill-tempered and anguished, all at once. It’s used in various parts of speech, most typically in the expression me da bronca – meaning “it makes me livid”. It carries with it a sense of fate being against the individual and – since everybody seethes with bronca – the entire nation. Economic and social decline, a nefarious political class, massive wealth inequalities, hyperinflation and all the other woes that have dogged the nation for a century have made people very very angry. 
Add in a Latin temperament, oversized ego and envy of more stable and successful countries and you have a lot of ire and bile. From taxi drivers to football players, journalists to janitors, waiters to well-travelled members of the middle classes, bronca is everywhere. Fortunately it comes in fits and starts, and wit and charm usually come with it to make Argentinians good company and a lot of fun.
By Kerry Walker
Masters of the Gallic shrug and eye roll, the French have a habit of living up to the stereotype of being one of the world’s grumpiest nations. If you want to avoid being dismissed as just another irritating touriste, you’d better learn the cultural cues, avoid small talk (too shallow), and brush up on your grammar and pronunciation tout de suite – or else expect a withering look and dispiriting reply in English. Does geography matter? Absolutely. As much as I want to love Paris, I find the Parisians positively chilly – the barging on the metro, the disapproving tutting in boulangerie queues, the rude taxi drivers, the surly waiters that look straight through you as if you’re wearing an invisibility cloak when all you want is steak-frites. Don’t take it personally, it’s just the way things are done here. If you want a friendlier welcome, go south where things get warmer on every level.
By Amanda Hyde
My husband, who could pass for an American tourist, looked slightly incongruous in Brazil’s northeastern state of Bahia. It meant he was mobbed by unexpectedly surly souvenir sellers in the main square of its capital Salvador. I fitted in a little better, which could explain why the local drug dealer tried to sell me his wares in a sleepy resort on Bahia’s coast, waving a tiny spoon frantically in my eyeline while wearing the intense expression of a movie serial killer. Our tour guide sighed and huffed her way through every interaction; a group of beach football players jeered at our pronunciation as we tried to find the local farmácia to deal with infected mosquito bites. So rare were smiles that, when we finally met some friendly locals at a hole-in-the-wall beach bar, my guard went up along with my British reserve. As they bumped and grinded to a bit of bossanova, I made our excuses and fled.
By Robert Jackman
There’s a famous story about Jerry Sadowitz, the sweary comedian, gigging in Montreal in the 1990s. After opening with a gag about Quebec’s French-speaking status, he was punched to the ground by an outraged audience member.
By that benchmark, my reception in Montreal, the largest city in Quebec, was positively glowing. Yet it still stands out as one of the surliest places I’ve ever visited, with Quebecers revelling in their stereotype for haughtiness. 
Take service, for example. While local law dictates that diners should be handed a French menu, restaurants should give an English one to anyone who asks. In practice, such requests can trigger the kind of sulk you might expect if you asked to remove a service charge in Las Vegas.
For non-French speakers, Quebec is full of such pitfalls, many stemming from the province’s history of separatism. Perhaps the most useful tip came from a Canadian friend who advised me to always ask Quebecers if it was okay to speak English beforehand.
Sure, almost all of them are fully bilingual, he explained, but that isn’t the point. You’re not checking their competence – you’re requesting their permission.
By Rob Crossan
There’s a common greeting-and-response used by citizens of Vienna. Roughly translated from German into English it takes the following form: 
“How are you?”
“Well I can’t complain – but I’d like to.”
This sums up Austria, and particularly its capital, perfectly. If you think central Paris has a tendency to believe that peak civilisation was achieved in around 1909, you should see Vienna. Here, the clock stopped somewhere around the time that Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch wrote Venus in Furs and gave the entire nation a taste for sadomasochism. That ethos translates today into a city that isn’t tourist-friendly, dog-friendly or child-friendly. In fact, it’s not friendly to anyone, including the locals. 
Perhaps all those years of being on the frontline in the battle against Communists and Ottomans has taken its toll. My tour guide refused to smile, seemed grossly offended by every question I asked and told me my (actually rather smart) cherry red boots were “too scruffy” to be seen in her favourite Viennese cafe.
Perhaps their tight-lipped rage stems from their awareness that the most famous Austrian these days isn’t Gustav Klimt, Sigmund Freud or Mozart. It’s Arnold Schwarzenegger. How else to explain the reaction of a café owner who saw me taking a photo of the entrance to his premises. Storming outside to where I stood on the pavement, he yelled: “Do you want me to call the police?” I retorted by asking what crime I was supposed to have committed. The proprietor stormed back inside his (deserted) cafe muttering expletives. 
The pomposity of the buildings, the surliness of the shopkeepers, the larcenous prices of everything from coffee to cabbages conspired to send me back to my hotel room on my last evening in Vienna, hiding with a bottle of (awful) Grüner Veltliner. Austria’s sourness had broken me. Watching Terminator 2 in my horrible hotel room did very little to lift the gloom.