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TIL that the 2005 film "Hostel" negatively affected Slovakia's and the Czech Republic's reputation. Director Eli Roth was invited on an all-expenses-paid trip to clear up the false allegations made in the film, which portrayed the countries as crime-ridden, lawless, poor, and dangerous places.
Set your sights higher... Fiji.
Fiji is a monstrous place where they used to tie the children of enemy tribes to the masts of their ships and leave them there to die until the motions of the ocean finally killed them off.
Fiji isn’t more luxurious than Hawaii haha
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20d
Your not wrong, I’m Canadian and in my mind all I can see when I think of Eastern Europe is what we are taught in school which is pretty much up until the Cold war then never spoke about again. In my heart I know it’s awesome and know lots of people who go to Eastern Europe on vacation. But my default vision when it comes up is run down communist block housing lol. To many North American 90s movies I assume.
Any time I hear "Bratislava". I think about being murdered by a chainsaw lol.
Bratislava makes me think of the movie Euro Trip.
Here's a fun fact!
You made out with your sister!
It's good you came in summer, winter can be very depressing.
Man: You are Americans? Yeah. I love America. We just get "Miami Vice" on television. "Miami Vice" is number one new show. Yeah.
I buy my own hotel!
Berlin? No where near berlin!
Nowhere. Near. Berlin.
Google "Latvian nature"
This is a B O T
Works the other way around as well.My impressions of Detroit are documentaries about urban flight, abandoned neighbourhoods and (oddly enough) urban farming.
Also a video game in which one becomes human.But that version of detroit looked rather nice.
I will, and don't call me Fiji.
Is it about invasive species Ezra Miller
"The Horror in Bora Bora"
Reading that in a Barbara Walters’ voice is the only way.
Flip side I would never be able to be someone to try and organize the trip to show Eli Roth how nice the country actually was. I would absolutely arrange for his hotel and room to be made up to resemble whatever appears in Hostel.
If I recall correctly the movie, at least partially, involved a dentist chair in a filthy room.
You know, the bad part of Vegas!
I can see him being escorted to a room, open it up and there’s just a dentist chair in there. Then quickly apologize that it was the wrong room. His room is the adjoining room next to it.
A Perfect Getaway (2009)
This would actually help Hawaii because they seriously need less tourists. Tourism is destroying Hawaii.
They also make most of their money off Tourism so I don't really think it would help that much.
Tourism is destroying Hawaii
The how come they have so much land, infrastructure, advertising and personnel dedicated to it? (that's a rhetorical question btw)
The beach didn't help at all in that front.
Sorry best I can do is A Perfect Getaway
The Hawaiian people would probably thank you, a lot of them do not like tourists and want mainlanders to stay on the mainland.
That would be a cool horror film plot, too: A small town in Hawaii becomes infamous for its disappearances, claiming a serial killes is on the loose. Turns out there's no killer, it's a town conspiracy trying to discourage tourists from coming.
The Greater Good
SHUT IT!
So basically the film Hot Fuzz?
Slovakia is a lovely country! I visited a year ago and had a blast. The medieval castles, Carpathians and the of course the people were amazing. Greetings from Finland!
My brother in law in Slovakian so we went out last year, I agree it’s a beautiful country and it’s one of the cleanest places I’ve visited, I was amazed by the lack of rubbish everywhere
As a Slovak it feels nice to read, but to me littering here is crazy. Glad you had a good experience. Slovenia should be much much cleaner is you decide to visit.
I’m from the US and the litter here is absurd. If you ask any stranger they’ll say it’s bad, but if you’re in any neighborhood even remotely close to a road you’ll find a lot of trash. People throw it into other peoples’ yards, on the right of way, anywhere. I work by the road a fair bit and the majority of the litter is alcohol containers. I had no idea how often people actually drink and drive until I started working near roads. I haven’t lived anywhere else so I can’t say if the US is better or worse, but it’s not good.
Virtually any highway onramp in the US is basically a dumping ground for fast food bags/wrappers
There are a lot more functioning alcoholics walking around half in the bag 24/7 than you might think. They consume enough alcohol for the next 5 non drinkers combined and can’t be more than an hour or so from a drink before it starts to make them irritable. People that need to wake up in the middle of night and drink a triple whiskey to sleep through the rest of the night.
Ljubljana is a gorgeous city
You know, I hate that often in American movies, every country that isn’t a close buddy/ ally like the UK or France gets depicted as some slum where everything is awful. Slovakia sounds nice and I’ve heard nice things.
It's not only an american issue.
Alot of people in western europe aswell still have outdated views of former warsaw pact countries, even more so back in 2005.
These countries struggled for a bit after the fall of communism but quickly went on an amazing economic recovery. But perception was for along time still stuck in the 90s.
It depends where they are. From what I’ve heard the Balkans and post Soviet states are still struggling but Central Europe and the Baltics are doing really well
Coastal Croatia seemed nice to me, and I was last there over 20 years ago. Bosnia-Herzegovina, not as nice, but still not bad. A lot of pickpocketing going on in Sarajevo, usually not by actual Bosnians.
I lived in Slovakia and whenever I would mention that in the US people would gape and ask, "Have you seen the movie 'Hostel?'" I hated that.
I never felt unsafe there, but that's because I'm white. The real crime was violence against Roma and African immigrants. That's another main reason I don't like almost any horror movie, because it shows the world in a way that's both scarier than it actually is while ignoring the actual horrors in the world.
You might be aware of this already but if not it sounds like you’d be interested in it: There is a studied link between the genre of horror popular at the time and what the average population views as the danger of that time. For example, in times when migrants are perceived as a ‘threat’ zombie movies tend to be more popular.
Have a link for that? Genuinely curious.
The original work on this is by Robin Wood, who wrote a bunch of essays on it - I currently don’t have access to them sadly. If you look up “Robin Wood Collective Nightmares” you might be able to find some things.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=nl&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=robin+wood+collective+nightmares&oq=robin+wood+colle#d=gs_qabs&t=1715665234726&u=%23p%3DcysDD-YUUaEJ This leads to a more recent write-up building on Wood’s ideas.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14788810.2022.2125248 This is an article specifically focusing on zombie movies and the way societal perceptions are both used and challenged in them.
No the OP, but here: https://dailydead.com/editorial-politics-and-the-american-horror-film/
There are a lot more out there, and it's pretty interesting stuff.
Heh, I got that response from other americans whenever I mentioned staying in a hostel anywhere, including the US.
Did you see Vigo The Carpathian?
You mean, Vigo, the Scourge of Carpathia, the Sorrow of Moldavia?
Yeah that guy
"Hostel" was released to cinemas at the beginning of 2006, and Slovakia's income from tourism greatly increased from 2004 when the country joined the EU until 2008 when the financial crisis hit. In reality it looks like the film made no impact other than some politicians complaining about it. source
On the other end of the spectrum you have the foreign minister of Kazakhstan thanking the makers of Borat for increasing tourism to his country.
When the sequel released, they even played into the joke
This is excellent marketing
That ad legitimately makes me want to visit Kazakhstan.
It‘s an alright country, at least by the standards of post-soviet dictatorships. It does have the highest human development index in Central Asia. All other countries have inferior HDI.
I mean, reputation != tourism money. Eurotrip and Hostel both happened around roughly the same time and both portrayed Slovakia as a hellhole. When so many Americans don't know that Czechoslovakia isn't a place anymore, those movies hugely affected America's mental image of Slovakia.
Or their image of Slovenia, or Romania, or...
Most Americans aren't great with other countries.
As a Brit Hostel had little impact on me because it matched the impression I already had of what the worst areas would be like, right or wrong.
"Brutal Eastern European criminal gangs" have been a concept here for a long time now.
I remember the scene where with releasing some candies in the street a group of kids become savages.
It was so absurd that it was funny.
Yeah, the movie ended with the bad guys being killed by a gang of street kids bribed with a garbage bag of candy, right? The idea that these super murderers were done in by children throwing bricks was hilarious.
That was the second movie, and it was only one of the killers that was killed. One of the characters that got targeted wanted revenge on the woman who lured her into the torture chambers.
The kids also used said killers head as a football.
Edit: Actually, it wasn't even the kids who did it. They were paid to distract/lure her out and the victim killed her with an axe decapitation.
It was in the first one too. A kid bashes a henchman’s skull in with a rock because he wouldn’t give them candy. Then it shows them eating candy from the garbage bag
Exactly, it's an Eli Roth horror movie. Every person and place is a caricature by design, and the humor is incredibly dark. Certainly not for all tastes, but the point is that it was never meant to be an accurate portrayal of... well, anything.
I hate to say it, but thinking about it I can't say I've really liked any of Eli Roth's movies. I mean, I guess they're fine, I can't say anything bad about them, but they never resonated with me as far as horror goes.
I really do like sort of indie horror, a good low budget gore fest is awesome for a bit of fun, but his movies never grabbed me.
I mean. Much like Michael Bay or Roland Emberprick, Eli Roth is the kinda guy that makes the sort of thing that he is the kinda guy to make.
You'll either enjoy it or you won't. The upside to this is that you can wholesale just avoid his movies if you don't, or seek them out if you do.
This is very true. I gotta at least admire him for becoming a semi-household name.
To be fair, I had to get a security briefing because I put those places on a leave request back then. Pretty crime was pretty high 🤷🏿♀️
“Pretty Crime” -
“Do you have a description of the bank robber?”
“6’2, rugged, blonde hair, blue eyes set to stunning.”
"Those sexy Czech bastards.."
“The Czech’s natural enemy in the wild is the interior decorator.”
Stupid Czechy Czechs
"You said your assailant threatened you with 2 guns?"
"No. I said she pulled out a pair of cannons."
Reminds me of an old meme
Judas: Jesus is the man I will kiss. Then you may seize him! Guards: You know you can just point to him, right? Judas: Putting on chapstick I don't tell you how to do your job, don't tell me how to do mine....
I just watched How to Steal a Million and here is a quote
[Nicole describes the burglar to her Papa] Nicole Bonnet: Well, it was pitch dark and there he was. Tall, blue eyes, slim, quite good-looking... in a brutal, mean way, Papa. A terrible man!
Pretty crime
Put on your makeup, darling. We're going shoplifting.
Pretty crime? Did they think you will get featured in Czech hunter ?
😂 😂😂
I put those places on a leave request
You have to get your employer's approval of places you going to visit?
If you're in the military, yes.
Yes, I was wondering about whether it was military/security clearance related.
Anytime someone says they "request leave" I assume it is military. Civilian jobs sometimes use that term but in the military they only use that term
Yeah, it was on a deployment in Europe, so you had to say where you were going/staying on leave and if you went to a country that was known to be shady, you had to sit through a security brief. I didn’t figure either of those places were sketchy enough for one but I was wrong 😑
Meanwhile me as a 16yr old dutch kid got dropped in Prague for a weekend schooltrip. Just roam unattended through the city it will be fine(it was).
Prague is is one of the safest cities. Even in "bad neighborhoods" you will be most likely totally ok.. there aren't any "no go zones" really.
I once got lost in prague.
Found a nice restaurant in a basement, realyl good food and incredibly cheap.
We were three people and had a total tab of (equivalent of) 40€
I think the military just wants to know if you’re going somewhere where there is easy access to drugs and prostitution is legal.
They let one single guy go to Belize and another to Bangkok with no issues 😂
Drugs and prostitution are pretty accessible anywhere in Europe. Heck, we drove by a group of young ladies sitting on empty milk crates every day for six months. They need to know where you are in case something happens to you or you need to be recalled. It’s also to make sure you’re not going somewhere you’re not allowed to
Soldiers soliciting sex workers? Well, I never...
clutches pearls
There's "know where the member is going" which applies to all leave and then there's "sit down and let's plan this out for realsies" which applies only to certain areas.
Amsterdam is probably the most notorious for the drug and prostitution accessibility, but doesn't require the extra briefings. Nor do the other countries that fit one or both of those descriptions.
The security briefing is really about member safety/exposure to espionage and mirrors, to an extend, the State Department's travel advisory.
“Deployment”
Hey, six months living in a villa in Sicily is hard work! Some days I had to make my own bed 😂
Air Force?
Yeah lol. I can say even my “bad” deployments were cushy. Germany had the worst accommodations (condemned building with no hot water or laundry facilities) but was 5 mins from Trier and close to a ton of countries. If you asked my friends on those deployments though, they were terrible because wifi sucked and they had to shower at the gym 😆
sobs in USMC
I once went three months without a shower.
They finally drag you in or set a trap in the stall with some Rip Its and a log of dip?
Trust me homie, I would have sucked three miles of dick for a shower after the first couple weeks lol.
It got really bad after running out of baby wipes about a month in.
Sorry for your choices 😂 Thanks for your service though! You guys actually deserve the respect, we just deserve the travel points and heckling
RCAF here but if it helps any, I use to send quotes of the day to my buddies in Afghanistan of the complaints when we deployed. I’ll put a few of my favourites below:
“I had to use the same towel 3 times this week”
“The cleaners are my candy that I left on the table”
“It smells like shit at this resort”
“We don’t have enough hot water for my showers”
“Why do I have to pay for laundry! The resort should be paying for it”
“Does anyone have the keys to the BMW? I don’t want to be seen driving around in the Fiat anymore”
“Are the caterers going to get more steak and ice cream? I’m getting tired of the menu”
“Do we get PT time? I’m getting bored of just sitting around while the jets are gone”
RCN here. Kraken came on board when we were overseas and during our hands fall in, asked what the best trade in the navy was. I said AES OP. He goes "that's airforce!" I yelled back "exactly!".
That was the end of my ability to say anything during hands fall in on that ship. On another we had the admiral come to speak to the MS and below mess. He asked what we wanted to see in regards to policies or anything. I said "union!". He remarked to the CRCN to take my name and speak to me after...and that was the end of my ability to speak during these things on that ship.
I'm sure your seeing the pattern now.
Probably a DoD employee
I had one of those security briefings going to my home city of Amsterdam. It was kind of hilarious that they made me do that, and they made it seem like Amsterdam is dangerous.
The hostel industry as a whole, I feel, suffered from this movie. I tell friends I stay at hostels and to this day they will reference this movie as why they will never stay in one.
No one's gonna convince me that it's a safe practice to sleep in the same room with a bunch of strangers.
The good thing about hostels is that they're usually the cheapest accommodation around, the bad thing is that they're usually the cheapest accommodation around.
"Miscusi"
I’ve slept in a hostel/dorm in multiple countries with people I’ve never met, it’s fine for me.
If I’m feeling it I sometimes have a quick chat with them, otherwise most people just keep to themselves and do their own thing.
It sounds like hostels just aren't for you.
If you're okay with travelling with just a backpack, a modest amount of clothes, and a good attitude they're amazing. Hostels are usually full of people who fit that description-- namely seasoned travelers and students.
I'd never book a hostel if I'm planning a honeymoon, or bringing family and kids. I will book a hostel if I'm just by myself and want some company. Hell, my SO and I love them too.
It's basically like a collage dorm or a military barrack. That's essentially the experience. Shared room, shared bathroom, lots of drinking!
I've lived in Europe and North America
I always find it funny how Americans think Eastern Europe is some lawless and poor and crime-ridden backwater. I've been to Detroit and trust me, it's worse than Eastern Europe exponentially.
I think it comes from the 90’s. When the Soviet Union was dissolved and all these Eastern European countries were in “transition” they were all perceived to have a sort of “anything goes if you’ve got the cash” type of system whether that was true or not. American movies certainly leaned into this hard.
90s Slovakia, right after the fall of iron curtain, was a wild west. Crime skyrocketed, drugs flooded the streets, protection rackets, drive by shootings, car bombs, lethal beatings and stabbings during full daylight, all of the nasty stuff was daily thing. Police and SIS (Slovak intelligence agency) were operating more like organized crime families and less like a law enforcement.
My most favourite event from that era was when prime minister got into dispute with president, so he hired SIS agents (SIS director was his friend, and the agency operated basically like his personal spy aparatus, doing black ops together with mafia thugs and collectig dirt on his political opponents), who kidnapped president's son to use him as a leverage.
When I research about stuff that happened at that time, I can't believe I live in the same country. Luckily, lot of things changed over the years.
How did it change?
Society eventually stabilized from that transition period. General wealth of population and economy went up, which lowered the crime. Turns out cops are less likely to take a bribe and look the other way when they are properly paid for their job, and people are less likely to turn to crime when they are financially stable. Also, new generation of politicians went into power, and they wanted to improve the overall image of country in order to attract foreign investments.
Drug use also went down. Drugs were basically non-existent here during communism, so people then were not informed about their dangers like they are now. I heard stories about some normal folks casually trying heroin because they had no idea what that even is.
Not even a comparison. And the ratio has skewed towards Eastern Europe now like never before
I went on a hiking trip to Slovenia a few years ago. When I mentioned it to most people, you’d have thought I’d told them I was going to Sarajevo in 1995 based on the way they reacted. If they didn’t react that way, it was usually because they had no idea Slovenia was a country.
Hands down one of the safest, most gorgeous places I’ve ever seen and people thought it was some war torn, concrete dystopian hell hole.
I was talking about wanting to visit Split, Croatia in front of my mother-in-law and she looked at me like the Bosnian War was still going on.
Comparing half a continent to a single city
Detroit has gotten a lot better and is continuing to improve. Detroit vs everybody 😤
Growing up in the 80's, my small prairie town in Saskatchewan had 3 Detroit channels as affiliates (CBS, NBC, ABC) and the local 6pm news stations (Carmen Harlen, Bernie Smilovitz etc) might as well shown a different planet. Every day it was "only 19 murders today a drop from 37 yesterday, meanwhile let's cut to a story of a woman who just microwaved her baby and talk to the neighbors!" I vowed to never visit Detroit in my life.
TIL that the 2024 comment from r/todayilearned negatively affected Detroit’s reputation. Comment author u/YUGIOH-KINGOFGAMES was invited on an all-expenses-paid trip to clear up the false allegations made in the comment, which portrayed the city as crime-ridden, lawless, poor, and dangerous places.
It's getting better but only within the campus martius area and the surrounding blocks. Anywhere outside of the ring of highways surrounding downtown and you'll still see abandoned buildings and lots
No one does PR like Americans
I mean, just look at how other countries and people like Eastern Europeans are being portrayed in American movies and series.
When were you in Detroit? I was there 4 years ago and found it very safe!
He’s never been to Detroit. This is something Europeans enjoy doing.
Detroit is a place holder for any of your large crime/gang ridden cities cause it’s internationally famous for that
Lmao what? it has a population of like 400k. There are no major gangs, cartels, or mafias located there.
Lmao what? it has a population of like 400k.
Detroit? There's like 4 million people in the Detroit urban area.
You're 100% right, but these people are still in a USSR era mindset.
It was getting close to two million before the crash. The mass exodus of people caused exponential increases in crime, and it took decades to provide stability. Nowadays it's one of the nicer Midwestern cities, but these people are stuck in a headspace that hasn't reflected reality since Yugoslavia was around.
Because even though crime is trending downwards, it's still listed as one of the most dangerous cities in America. Before you try to say it's some bs forbes article or something, two other sources.
Idk if it's wilful ignorance or just feeling like you have to defend Detroit because those spooky Europeans insulted your city, but Detroit is definitely still a dangerous place overall; consistently in the top 10, if not top 5, most dangerous cities in America.
When people talk about Detroit improving they're mainly referring to several blocks in the city center. Outside of that is still generally impoverished with abandoned homes and buildings
When we're you in Detroit? The 80's?
Eastern European crime is cleaner than American crime.
Eastern Europe I can have coffee and pastry in a beautiful countryside cafe and order 100 gallons of GBL to produce GHB from some warehouse 15 minutes away. (But the GBL is actually quasi-legal)
In America I can buy a brick of fentanyl behind a dilapidated Carl's Junior overrun with Kudzu vine in the middle of a major city that looks like a bombed out warzone.
Context: my mother is from the former Yugoslavia and moved to a major US metro
In America I can buy a brick of fentanyl behind a dilapidated Carl's Junior overrun with Kudzu vine in the middle of a major city that looks like a bombed out warzone.
So unrealistic. If you're seeing kudzu then chances are you're in Hardee's territory, not CJrs.
So unrealistic. If you're seeing kudzu then chances are you're in Hardee's territory, not CJrs.
You mother ducker you got me.
order 100 gallons of GBL to produce GHB from some warehouse 15 minutes away
This is such an oddly specific crime
You can buy crack behind a crumbling building in Europe too. I swear Reddit thinks every problem in the fucking world is exclusive to America because they personally haven’t witnessed it elsewhere.
On reddit you cannot talk about any country without someone making it about how America is worse. It's pathological.
Except Germany.
Then it's all "I did Nazi that coming" and other Nazi and Hitler jokes 🙄
a lot of the top posts on /r/germany are dunking on the US and whenever there's a post criticizing any aspect of germany, one of the top comments will invariably be a comparison to the US. /r/europe is similar.
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20d
The blue lights in the bathroom happen in America.
Canada too, hardly just a European thing. I've seen them in supermarkets.
If you walk around Amsterdam, people actually become angry when you decline their offers of hard drugs, even insofar as insulting you.
Lol the only time something like that happened to me was when I was on Times Square and refused to buy mixtapes, and it happened more than once. It also happened when I said no after someone approached me and asked me to buy them a burger. That was in Boston.
Also just to get back to the point, drugs are in every country. It depends more on what part of the country (or rather city) you're in than which country you're in.
Can you explain what GHB and GBL are for boring squares like me?
GHB is a drug that'll remove your inhibitions and make you completely forget what you do after taking it. Known as the rapist's drug in my country
It’s a date rape drug?
GHB is THE date rape drug. And terrible people will always have access to it because other people use it recreationally.
GHB is THE date rape drug.
Eh... Arguable.
Flunitrazepam, aka, Rohypnol really has cornered the branding. So much so that slipping anything in someone's drink is referred to as "Roophie-ing".
It's also popular with meth users
Nope, you don't even need to take them out to dinner. Just straight to the rapin'.
As others have stated, it is known for being a date rape drug. If it is combined with alcohol, then it lowers the persons inhibitions greatly.
I am familiar with it because I was in the rave scene for a short while, back in the late 90's. Only done it a few times but we would take a cap from a 1-liter soda and do a shot or maybe 2 from that. You really want to be careful with the stuff.
I would describe the feeling as similar to ecstasy. It is also sometimes referred to as being "liquid X". Often times, we would combine it with X and acid.
GHB is pretty similar to alcohol in terms of subjective effects, you’d use it in similar circumstances. It’s used medically sometimes for sleep disorders.
lol at the degree of projection. Yugoslavia definitely has no places that look like bombed out war zones
Most of that has been repaired by now, really.
I had my employee come to Ukraine in 2000.
He was amazed, like, wow, it’s cleaner than Mexico! Wow, look at all the expensive cars!
Wow, people can drink beer outside and they don’t fight each other!
He also asked me which areas of Kyiv are safe and I didn’t understand the question. I am like - it’s all the same, but he insisted that there must be areas that are less safe (I understood him a lot better after coming to US where you could see a very prosperous neighborhood right next to a super poor and sketchy one).
You should’ve offered him to visit Hydropark on Friday night)
Depends on what you mean
Crime surely is lower, but in terms of income and development a lot of Eastern Europe or the Balkans is very very poor not just for EU/USA standards but like, Mexico and Brazil standards
Good. Let them think that way so those places remain vacant of them.
I don't think you know what exponentially means.
Never saw it, but was in Prague for my studies then. Only lawlessness I saw was that it was criminal how good that horseradish marinated steak, and goulash were, still miss it 20 years on.
It seems strange now but only about 20 years ago the world was still a much bigger place than it is today. Europe was still a foreign, mysterious, and often unknown place over there to most people. The internet existed in the 2000s but a lot of the most accessible features we take for granted weren't really available or well-developed yet so no one was watching YouTube videos to see what Czechia was really like. Maybe you watched a Rick Steve's video on PBS one night, maybe you read a book about it, or maybe you found yourself on some strange corner of that internet on someone's livejournal/fireangel/globemedia/BBS Forum that talked about that place and had lots of pictures.
This was before most people had access to, or knew they had access too, BBC and BBC content. This was back when Netflix still delivered a DVD a week or two after you returned your last one. Eurotrip came out in 2004, 20 years ago, and many very common American stereotypes about Europeans (including Eastern Europeans) are on full display there. Interestingly, it was filmed in Czechia!
What more does an American on average know about Czechia than they did 20 years ago?
It’s the same as it was 20 years ago. Americans still think Eastern Europe is a poor shitthole, maybe one step up from Kazakhstan’s portrayal in Borat.
Part of this misunderstanding is that none of these countries’ culture have broken into American culture. A bigger part of this is that Stalin intentionally framed Eastern Europe as this unimportant region of Europe that was simply there to be conquered. Same with “The Ukraine.” He and the Soviets went to great lengths to create propaganda that stripped satellite Soviet states of their cultural identify. Then followed that up with violent repression
He did it again to Chile with Aftershock (2012)
Where does the source say it negatively affected Slovakia's reputation?
Officials complained, and they did invite him to come visit for real (the part about "all expenses paid" appears to be made-up), but did the movie affect Slovakia's reputation? Did tourism go down? Did any surveys say people were scared of Bratislava?
Meanwhile Serbia is mad someone else is getting their reputation
They have their own film...
As a Los Angeles Kings fan, we had a stretch in the 2000's where it seemed almost every Slovak player in the NHL played for us at some point. I was annoyed on Slovakia's behalf that the country got a bad rap from my dumber countrymen. The idea of a country being filled with a bunch of Michel Handzuses seems like a lovely place.
Fun fact, we also had the world's first (and still best) Slovenian NHL player, and I never understood how people could confuse Slovakia and Slovenia. Like the similar Austria and Australia confusion, do people just read the first half of a word and guess how it ends?
Anže appreciation.
Hostel is a real rotten movie. I don’t think I enjoyed a single minute of it.
It had nice titties in it
It introduced me to the kickass 80s song Držím Ti Miesto by Team. It's played in the background during the night club scene.
It didn't help that when I stayed in a Prague-area hostel a few years after the original release of Hostel, they were playing Hostel II in the reception area
Imagine how much more tourism America would have without all the bad things happening in their movies
It's still nuts that they used a "Based on a true story" or "Based on real events" tagline for this movie.
They saw a website somewhere that was allegedly offering a murder vacation, end of "real events".
N then they made a part 2
"All-expenses-paid" kind of removes the possibility of running into the stuff portrayed in the film, since it was about backpackers at a hostel - a flop house, the cheapest of the cheap places to stay when you don't have a friend's couch to crash on instead.
Sounds like an elaborate to get a free vacation
I saw this wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too young and it terrified me. International travel still makes me nervous. While torture clubs may or may not exist. Tourists can be targets for a lot of craziness in some places.
Czesky Krumlov where a lot of it is filmed is such a beautiful town
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=czesky+krumlov&form=HDRSC3&pc=EMMX04&first=1
What’s should Serbia do about the Serbian movie than??
Eli Roth is the Bear Jew in Inglorious Basterds BTW
A week as any kind of minority in the Bible Belt would be way worse.
The Czech Republic is scary as hell... you go into most any bar, and they are mixing Pepsi and Cabernet Sauvignon wine! It's blood curdling.
I watched a table of four younger people get served one bottle of Cab Sauv and four cans of Pepsi and they just went to town.
I was horrified...
Though, it doesn't taste half bad.
I went to Slovakia for a week in high school and stayed with a Slovak family. They were incredibly kind and accommodating, smart and warm people. Bratislava is a gorgeous place.
My hosts were very understandably upset that the two depictions of Slovakia in American media are Hostel, where tourists get kidnapped and sold into torture, and Eurotrip, where the characters accidentally take a train to Slovakia and it is shown as a dirty, crumbling hellscape. They go to a hotel and tip the porter 5 cents and he turns around and slaps his boss in the face and quits, presumably good to never work again with those 5 cents.
Prague was one of the most beautiful cities I had ever been to. Very clean, gorgeous buildings, and I felt safe the entire time. From what I've heard, there are a lot of scams in the city but that's mostly just money related, and can be avoided if you keep your wits about you.
lol I remember being extremely wary of visiting Bratislava because of its depiction in this blasted movie. When I finally ended up going several years later I was pleasantly surprised to see Bratislava was a charming little town with a pretty touristy center :) extremely anticlimactic
Time to start working on my violent horror movie about Hawaii.