You’re born Italian. They’re relentlessly infantile and mother-obsessed. In childhood, we’re English: chronically shy, tongue-tied, cliquey, and only happy kicking balls, pulling the legs off things, or sending someone to Coventry. Teenagers are French: pretentiously philosophical, embarrassingly vain, ridiculously romantic and insincere. Then, in middle age, we become either Swiss or Irish. Old age is German: ponderous, pompous and pedantic. Then finally we regress into being Belgian, with no idea who we are at all.
Excerpted from the Times Online
Thanks to Vic Schuster
Travels and more from a European family 