Originally Posted by exbayern

It's actually really sad to see little American children conditioned to shoe removal in Europe. Last year at LHR a little boy was almost frantic because his mother didn't remove her shoes. (She didn't need to)

In Germany last week there was a mother with five children in front of me; the oldest was about 8-9 and asked 'Mommy, do we need to take our shoes off again?' and Mommy said 'Yes'. I piped up with 'actually, here you do not' but Mommy ignored me. The little girl turned around and I pointed out several people going through the WTMD without removing their shoes.

Just then Bob and his wife cut the line in front of Mommy, and Bob promptly removed his lace ups and ordered his wife to do the same, even though security told him it wasn't necessary. This caused a chain reaction of shoe removal and Mommy had the child help remove four other pairs of shoes.

I felt really bad, but I walked through as I do every time without taking off my shoes.