Because it has become an important topic to me recently and I think it is a good time now to discuss it, I am writing a blog about something other than my current life this time. This is about cultures and the importance of cultures and subcultures when dealing with other people. Obviously when you are travelling this topic comes up all the time. I also want to make it very clear from the start that when I talk about different cultures I am talking about them being different, not one being better than the other. However, it is also obvious that your own culture is always the closest to you and the easiest to understand and act in. So every other culture makes life more difficult but that does not mean that the culture is inferior.

That being said, I must also mention that besides the obvious cultures we have (I am Austrian/European) I lately found that subcultures might be much more important: I am a field biologist, I think this is what most closely describes my culture. This means that I don't like cities and I don't mind spiders crawling over me while I am sleeping (if they are not too big anyways). This is very strange to many people but field biologists understand me. I prefer to be woken by the songs of birds than by the noise of cars. I am rather in the middle of nowhere where I have to drive for an hour to have a shower once a week, looking at birds and other animals, cooking on a gas stove and sit by the campfire at night than in a city in an air-conditioned office sitting at the computer and where I can go out at night or sit in front of the TV all day. Where I drive a car and go out for dinner or buy a deep-freeze pizza that I quickly heat up for dinner.

Besides - or in connection with this (I am not sure) - I have a very poor (economically poor) mindset. Not because I am poor. I have enough savings to survive at least a year without a salary so I guess I am perfectly fine money-wise. However because of my life-style I hate buying things. I have the money to buy whatever I need whenever I need it, but I also find it very easy to not buy anything I do not need - which is also why I can afford to buy what I do need even though my income is rather low on average (or non-existent). This means that I found that I can easily relate to poor people in most places in the world. Not the poorest of the poor: they normally don't open up to people like me. But with the lower middle class or upper lower class people I can always get along easily. Low-wage workers all over the world, I always get on very well with them. They do not usually have any education worth mentioning, although there is always some that actually have a higher education and they could get better jobs but for whichever reasons they don't want to. These are actually the best people to talk to but you have to search for them. The rest may or may not be able to read and write (depending on the country). But they do know all the life skills necessary to survive in whichever place they are. And they are interested to hear mine. They are the ones to ask, when you want to know how to get to a place with public transport. They are also really good in fixing things without fancy tools or expensive equipment. And they are very used to help each other out, so as soon as they see you as one of them, you will never be alone if you need help. They also have the idea stuck in their head, that white people are rich and it always takes them a little while to understand that I am not. But when I talk to them, they do understand that I am where I am just like they are where they are and that living in Europe (or America) doesn't automatically mean that you get a lot of money and have an easy life without worries.

Poor people also keep traditions alive, like food and life-styles. On the other hand, I feel like rich people all over the world tend to be very similar. They go to the same chain supermarkets, buy the same imported foods, watch the same television shows and - most importantly - they have no clue how to survive in the "real" world, should they lose their credit card or house. I truly believe that I fit much better into the working class of any country in the world than into any rich place in Austria or anywhere else. So I guess subcultures are more important than cultures in many cases. I assume that this is also the reason why I have never been a target of criminals anywhere (other than in Austria). I have lived in some of the most dangerous places in the world and not felt threatened ever. In the past two months here in Jamaica most of my fellow volunteers from Europe have gotten mugged or have had other bad experiences with violence. Nothing ever seems to happen to me, although I go out on my own all the time and I am not usually very attracted to safe areas so I do wander into not so safe areas often (sometimes without knowing). But apparently my economically poor mindset is quite obvious to potential criminals and they don't target me, either because they know there is not much to gain from me or because they view me more as one of them than regular tourists that they would rob. I must say this is a very convenient fact but I can't say exactly what makes me such a bad target and also I don't think you can really change if you are a target or not. I suppose you can change your style of clothing but your main appearance will still be the same and it will probably show potential criminals if you are rich or not or if you an easy target that's worth it or not.

My cultural mindset also means that when traveling I get on well with some people and not so well with others. Of course everybody has that and of course you can not judge people by their looks but often times it becomes quite obvious to me, when I see how people travel, if I want to hang out with them or not. This became very obvious for example at the guest house I worked at in the Jamaican mountains, where I met some really nice people that I loved to hang out with and some of the guest I just better left alone because we didn't have anything to say to each other. You do not have to call this culture or sub-culture. You can also just call it personality. But the importance of it becomes very obvious in different countries. And it helps to know yourself well to decide how to behave in a foreign country and which people to seek out. I found that working a badly paid job with other badly paid people is the best way for me to get to know a different country and a different culture. Hanging out with the farmers I worked with in the mountains made it much easier for me to understand Jamaican men than living a month in Kingston being called to by almost every man I passed. The same thing was true in Mexico and in South Africa. Only working with poor farmers or the like made me realize how these cultures actually work and what they are based on. I started to understand what was important for poor people in these countries and what their hopes and dreams are. This is why I think it that one can only really get to know a country if one actually works there in a local enterprise of whichever kind. And this is why going to work in the mountains in Jamaica was so important for me because living a rich person's life in Kingston I might just as well have been in any place in America.

Well, I'll not bore you with any more of my musings for now. I hope you are well and not too cold. I certainly am glad that Christmas will not bring any snow for me and beside getting to know all different cultures, that is already reason enough for me to be here instead of Europe.