I'm Afraid Of Americans

I think it’s generally well known that most people in other countries hate Americans. I don’t really blame them; if said people are in say Iraq or Afghanistan, to quote Camper Van Beethoven, “shit blows up when we’re around.” There are Americans who get angry over the fact that people in other counties hate us, but this is more than likely because they are the type of people that make Americans look bad.

It seems that many Americans, those with enough money to do some traveling, have a habit of behaving like arrogant pricks who believe that whatever country they’re visiting should be Americanized enough to make them feel comfortable while they’re abroad.

What brings this up? Well, I had a 25 minute, fairly unpleasant conversation with an older and affluent woman from the Palm Springs area of California who had had her purse stolen in Barcelona. She went to this American restaurant because, “it reminded us of home, and Europeans don’t make good coffee.” Already I was fed up. I read this as it’s impossible to get a high fat, coffee flavored Slurpee anywhere in Europe, therefore their coffee is awful.

She was also extremely put out that the people assisting her, assisting her in Barcelona Spain mind you, did not speak English. She began to rant about some more vaguely racist things when I cut her off with, “so that I’m clear, you’re service expectations are that in a store in Spain, employees should be speaking English?” I was told that yes, as “all those people over there” take English in school, and as this is an area frequented by many American tourists and businessmen, they should be speaking English.

There were also the expectations that people would be rude in France, but she was surprised by how rude people were in Spain. There was the assumption her purse was taken by Romanians. There were the constant reminders that she was staying in a very exclusive part of the city, in a very exclusive hotel. It really nailed it in to me how “exclusive” is a form of “to exclude”.

While she was going through her litany of missing and expensive gadgets, she let slide that she had so much shit that she couldn’t lock it all in the hotel safe. And the reason she had to take it with her is that the maids will steal it if she leaves it in the room. She again pointed out the exclusive street the restaurant is on as it has neighbors the likes of Chanel and Gucci and Cartier and blah blah and pretentious talking and who fucking cares. It took every ounce of self control, and I don’t have a lot of it, to not blurt out, “why do you even travel?”

Seriously. If you are made uncomfortable by anything you cannot find in the strip malls that surround your home, why would you go to a foreign country? Isn’t the point of travel to explore a place you’ve never been? To see and hear and taste and live things you’ve never seen, heard, tasted or lived? Isn’t the point of traveling to learn something about other places and peoples, to learn something about yourself?

I remember traveling through sections of Europe a few years back and seeing a lot of Canadian flags on backpacks. It was an easy way to make it known that though they look like us, they’re not Americans – don’t hate us. Not a bad idea at all.

And speaking of Canadians: There are a lot more complaints’ coming from our neighbors to the north since the Canadian currency is now worth more than American. We’re hearing from all sorts of angry Canucks about how that US/Canada pricing is now unfair. One thing that I love about Canadians is that even if they’re livid pissed, they remain polite and fairly rational.

I saw a news report recently of a restaurateur letting the local news folks know that she could no longer accept American dollars in her Canadian establishment as she couldn’t afford it. It seemed a bit silly to me as I highly doubt she was accepting American currency to begin with, so I laughed at the funny little point she was trying to make to a Seattle news team. I laughed at how our oil based economy is sliding into dire straights (not the band), and in knowing that I had nothing to do with letting an ignorant and murderous man into the White House so he could slowly sell off our country to his rich acquaintances.

God bless us…