“All Europeans smell really bad.” An American girl says this to me late one Saturday night as we’re heading back to our dorm on the Prague tram. It’s obviously a pretty tactless thing to say in the Czech Republic, made even worse by our surroundings: a crowded tram where no one else seems to be saying much. Chances are, someone understood her and isn’t too pleased. But she’s not done.
“I pass all these Czech people on the street and I’m like, ‘Oh my god, take a shower, please! Uh, it’s disgusting.”
I’ve always felt that the Ugly American idea of pushy, arrogant tourists was an unfair stereotype. And much of what I’ve seen in Europe bears out this view. Americans are, by and large, polite, friendly and understanding of differences. Whenever American students actually take the time to meet Czechs and other Europeans in Prague, be it on the tram or in restaurants and shops, the results are generally encouraging. We exchange pleasantries, discuss where we’re from and where we’re going and part with good feelings all around. Unfortunately, there are other times when I feel like we are single-handedly setting American-European relations back at least ten years.
It’s often in trams, like the aforementioned incident, that the Ugly side comes out. It’s late at night, you’ve spent the past five hours telling the bartender “Jedno pivo, prosim,” and your body’s still pumping adrenaline. And why the hell shouldn’t you make a scene? It’s not like back home, here you can yell all you want and nobody’s going to call you out. They (probably) don’t even speak English! Do pull-ups on the metal bar, it’s not like you’re ever going to see these people again. Here’s our stop, later non-anglophones, the loud Americans are leaving…
I am not defending this kind of behavior, in fact, I abhor it. To quote the much maligned Dean Wormer of Animal House fame, “Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life.” We are supposed to be ambassadors for the U.S., and I think most people over here know it and try to live up to a modicum of human decency. What bothers me is how often we fail.
