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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

about campsite? i think iam but feel like crying

113 replies

heraldgerald · 09/07/2014 17:13

I know I need to get a grip, so please be kind! We have driven to northern Italy and are camping in a deserted campsite. I think it's expensive at 40 euros a night, but that's another aibu. A family have arrived with their baby and have camped directly facing our tent with their entrance facing ours. I just don't understand why they wouldn't want privacy too which they could easily have. I'm pregnant which might be fuelling this. O feel like crying and leaving. I'm being an idiot aren't I.

OP posts:

HeartsTrumpDiamonds · 10/07/2014 09:40

Oi Ujjayi stop showing off. Ik kan ook een beetje Nederlands.

Dutch people never think that they can be understood in their own language and can be staggeringly rude and scathing. It's very satisfying to answer them back in Dutch.

Ujjayi · 10/07/2014 10:10

Hearts I completely agree! DH is dutch and has been caught out a few times (making rather lewd comments to me rather than being rude about other people ). I have also enjoyed giving a sharp retort in the face of extreme bitching from a group of dutch girls systematically picking apart every woman in a bar in Skiathos.

The stereotypes listed here are exactly why DH refuses to camp...he is embarrassed by his fellow countrymen & their pre-holiday meat & potato buying ways!

For myself, I love the exuberance of the dutch - their ability to be carefree & happy as their default mood. The Loud Parenting thing in my experience is a cultural difference - it's just the way many dutch people parent & shouldn't be interpreted as competitive parenting.

Ujjayi · 10/07/2014 10:10

OP how are you feeling about it all this morning?

marmitelover · 10/07/2014 10:12

All I could think reading this was 'camping when pregnant?!' You deserve a medal for that alone so throw all your toys out of the pram and get someone else to move your tent.

limitedperiodonly · 10/07/2014 10:16

Dutch people never think that they can be understood in their own language and can be staggeringly rude and scathing. It's very satisfying to answer them back in Dutch

hearts An Afrikaans friend told me that. I don't know much about it, but the languages are similar, aren't they?

He and his English mate were chatting up two Dutch girls. Everyone spoke English to each other and the women must have assumed the men were English.

At the end of the evening the women discussed the men in Dutch - really rude, personal comments.

It's to my friend's credit that he told me exactly what they said and was able to laugh about it.

He ordered a bottle of champagne and told the girls to have it on him and added a few personal comments of his own - I believe Afrikaans people can be quite direct, too .

CrispyFB · 10/07/2014 11:10

Hearts - yep, I posted it over on Camping a few weeks back! I have since calmed down but not forgotten!!

gertiegusset · 10/07/2014 11:38

A German (I think) woman walked into our tent at 9pm and turned our radio off, we were sitting outside with friends we were with, the campsite is quiet after 10pm and the radio was not loud.
They had been out for most of the day, they had arrived after us and weren't terribly close but she had been moaning about it since about 8.30, summer time, still daylight etc.
The teenage children were already tucked up in bed.
We were pretty and DH raced in after her and shoved her back out, she was laughing, her DH stayed right out of it.
They had a washing line tied up to a big stack of fire beaters and you had to remember to watch out if you went to the lav in the night.

LadyCelia · 10/07/2014 11:52

We went camping on our honeymoon (blame DH. I only lasted 3 nights before stomping off to a 5* hotel with pool), and pitched our tent in a lovely spot between the Dutchie camper vans & tents & cars. They all came to watch & laugh at DH trying to put up the tent, especially when they realised he'd forgotten the mallet and didn't have a clue what he was doing. Luckily they then offered the use of their mallet and some beers and cheers for when he finally got it up!

ObfusKate · 10/07/2014 11:53

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

LadyCelia · 10/07/2014 11:54

Pressed send too soon - OP, I would sod the tent & go & find a nice cheap hotel in the area, it sounds like you deserve it!

Did your DH move the tent in the end?

Roussette · 10/07/2014 12:06

We went camping on our honeymoon (blame DH. I only lasted 3 nights before stomping off to a 5 hotel with pool), and pitched our tent in a lovely spot between the Dutchie camper vans & tents & cars. They all came to watch & laugh at DH trying to put up the tent, especially when they realised he'd forgotten the mallet and didn't have a clue what he was doing.Luckily they then offered the use of their mallet and some beers and cheers for when he finally got it up*!

Gosh, the Dutch are OTT aren't they?! Just ignore me LadyCelia I've just got a dirty mind

limitedperiodonly · 10/07/2014 12:32

I'm sure it's anecdotal but I have nothing but fond memories of Germans on holiday.

As a child we went touring. My dad, who was otherwise a very handy person, had brought wooden tent pegs and at the Brenner Pass was trying in vain to bash them into what was basically rock while we all watched him gloomily from the car.

A German sauntered over and we thought Dad was going to be humiliated even more than the Germans humiliated Brazil the other night. My mum was bristling and ready to go on the attack.

Anyway, he chucked a bag of steel pegs on the ground and they pitched the tent together .

And then there was that crowded bar in Majorca where DH and I shared our table with a big group of Germans. They asked nicely but it wasn't as if we were going to refuse. It got very raucous. The sweetest thing was that DH and I are Trial Size whereas our new friends were more Giant Economy and were a bit worried about us matching them drink for drink at first.

There was also a beach in Ibiza where a German man and I repelled some annoying Spanish teenagers using English - which all of us understood.

It's still not the international language of war though: that's French. I'm in awe at the number of words for killing people and methods for doing so that are French in origin.

plecofjustice · 10/07/2014 12:39

Are you sure they haven't just been assigned that pitch? Very common in European campsites - if the site's empty, it's less work for the site caretaker to have you all together using the same facilities and bins than spread out all over the place.

LadyCelia · 10/07/2014 12:47

Must learn to read before posting

RonSwansonsLushMoustache · 10/07/2014 12:49

I love campsites with lots of Dutch and German campers, they often have fabulous tents and motorhomes and I like staring at their stuff.

My normally antisocial reticent DH seems to have an affinity with the Dutch. Every time we go camping abroad he befriends Dutch people. One night in Provence last year I came back to our tent from the toilet to find DH and a Dutch fella playing guitar and drinking beer together.

DS is the same, at 3yo he practically moved in with a Dutch family on holiday two years ago. He got into the habit of falling out of our tent each morning, toddling up the hill to the Dutch neighbours and staying with them for breakfast. The family also looked after him while DH and I had dinner together one night.

limitedperiodonly · 10/07/2014 13:03

The German was very complimentary about our tent btw. But it was very nice for the standards of the time and he might have just wanted to have a nose round.

This was the early '70s and it had a large sleeping area - not divided off, because obviously my parents didn't do that kind of thing - a large living area and a generous outdoor canopy for sitting under on your fold-out stools. Plastic windows covered by canvas roller blinds everywhere.

Separate groundsheets - it wasn't built in then. But as my dad was very competent, we didn't get wet. He could also fold everything up small enough to fit on the roof rack of an averagely sized '70s car. I don't know how he did it.

We did always get earwigs at the bottom of the sleeping bags though. Maybe he put them there to keep us on our toes

MollyMaDurga · 10/07/2014 13:15

It isn't 'culture' as in foreigners that do this though. I've had it a few times now with Brits camping on our doorstep as it were.
Horrible behaviour.

footballagain · 10/07/2014 13:38

I bloody love the Dutch. They have such a dry sense of humour (stereotypes wildly, probably).

On a camping related note, I gave it up a few years ago now when I went to the shower block only to find someone had shit in them. The cubicles were opposite ffs. No, no more camping for me.

Original poster

heraldgerald · 10/07/2014 13:46

Oh you've all made me laugh such a lot now I've been able to read the thread, as obvs there isn't an electricity point at the 40 Euro campsite ????

Dh and I unclenched after reading him a few of your posts- and decided to escape the campsite into the Cinque terra national park and its now pissing with rain, which has been going on intermittently since Sunday, prob explaining deserted campsite.

The baby slept till 8 so I forgave the incomers enough to crack a smile as I got out of the tent to see them having breakfast, literally a foot from our tent entrance

We are leaving tomorrow and staying out late today - any recommends for anywhere decent in Europe where it isn't tipping it down gratefully received.

Thank you for pregs props- I am rather impressed with myself

OP posts:

limitedperiodonly · 10/07/2014 13:51

MollyMaDurga You can't just leave it there. What do the Brits camping on your doorstep do that's such horrible behaviour? Or have I misunderstood it and you're the misunderstood camping Brit?

I hate the term 'Brit' btw. I realise that millions of people use it with no malice but because of my cultural identity it gets my hackles up.

There's a rich Mumsnet seam that still hasn't been mined out with British people horrified by the behaviour of other British people abroad - like pointing to pictures on menus while on holiday in Spain.

MollyMaDurga · 10/07/2014 13:58

It's the camping right up close by that is horrible behaviour. Didn't mean the term Brits as an offensive one btw, sorry if that was taken that way.
I just agreed with the need for space, especially when there is plenty of room and have been unpleasantly surprised with British people doing this as I thought they wouldn't!
Gobsmacked, I was.
But, as been said above, rudeness is universal.

ViviPru · 10/07/2014 13:59

YAallBU as this thread is giving me the camping twitch and I'm not going again till the 8th of August

TheBogQueen · 10/07/2014 14:05

My normally antisocial reticent DH seems to have an affinity with the Dutch

My DP is similar with Germans he loves how practical and direct they are, no subtle social signs to be read, everything out in the open, everything dealt with in a good humoured orderly fashion.

I go camping with German folk and they are bloody brilliant at it.

IamSlave · 10/07/2014 14:38

hi op we had this TOO, HUGE camping field, part of larger site in cornwall, NO ONE IN OUR FIELD BUT US....we had two tents in our party... my sister and her husband and us - mum and dad etc.

we pitched opp each other.

A camper parked directly facing our little alley if you like. so when we came out of tent camper van right there .

good luck with you next move =, wishing you sun and a peaceful spot.

IamSlave · 10/07/2014 14:39

BTW after two hours trying to picth a tent in florence I was very grateful to two germans who put it up in a jiffy.

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