Once Again Mark Twain Right About A Thing
It's always encouraging to find a line from a favorite writer being borne out by Science. (SCIENCE!) For instance, a recent social science study was inspired in part by a Mark Twain quote, from The Innocents Abroad:
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime."
Sounds reasonable enough, and we'd all like to believe the story that before he was President, George W. Bush had never traveled outside the U.S. (unfortunately, it's not true -- which maybe just proves that Dubya was resistant even to the applied wisdom of Sam Clemens.) But does travel actually make you a more open-minded person? Some research from a team at Northwestern University suggests that it may, although of course, individual mileage (not to mention frequent-flyer points) may vary.
Checking into a hotel in Lund, Sweden, the desk clerk was blond (of course) and had a Texas twang. Turned out she'd been an au pair for a couple years.
And on this side of the pond, it's Parisians in particular. There's more similar than different about these two nationalities.