None of that deterred the 250,000 demonstrators who poured into the streets and squares, upending trash cans and setting up barbed-wire barricades of their own. They burned tires and American flags, threatened patrons at McDonald’s, smashed car windows and threw smoke bombs at police. Amid the chaos, two blond college-age American girls wearing sneakers and low rider denim shorts happened upon the Piazza della Repubblica, the epicenter of it all. After a moment of surprise, enlightenment dawned. “Hey,” one said to the other. “This must be where George Clooney and Brad Pitt are filming!”
It’s official. Anti-Americanism has set new records since the terrorist attacks of 9/11 occasioned one of the worst tourist slumps in recent European memory. Yet those angry sentiments notwithstanding, the dog days are gone. Travel-industry experts are nearly unanimous in their predictions that a major American tourist invasion is in the offing this summer in Europe. What’s less clear is how many of these travelers are aware of the deep and seething hatred most Europeans harbor toward George W. Bush–and to what extent that anger may be directed toward them. One thing is for sure: politics will loom as ubiquitous this season as tour-bus exhaust. And Americans would do well to leave their cowboy boots at home.
Just how big a boom are we talking about? For the month of April, U.S. -led travel to Europe was already up 20 percent over last year–and 5 percent above April 2000, according to the Geneva-based International Air Transport Association. Even with the weak dollar, pent-up demand and cheap airline tickets will continue to drive tourism from America above and beyond the pre-9/11 days. According to a recent study by Yahoo Travel and Harris Interactive, 75 percent of Americans plan to travel this summer, with the average household spending more than $1,700. Of those booking through Yahoo travel, 27 percent plan to visit the United Kingdom, 13 percent will hit Italy, 12 percent will go to France and 10 percent will visit Germany. “We have a double-digit increase in customers going to Europe,” says Dan Garton, executive vice president of marketing for American Airlines. “There will be more flights, and they will be fuller.”
That’s good news for Europe’s stagnant tourist industry. One travel agent likens the last three years to “the four horsemen of the apocalypse.” First came 9/11 and fears of terrorism abroad. Then came a recession, the SARS scare and the war in Iraq. Says Pamela Lassers, spokeswoman for Abercrombie and Kent, a luxury travel agency in Oak Brook, Illinois: “At long last a real recovery is underway.” The recovery of transatlantic relations may take a little longer, however. According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, Europeans draw a clear distinction between the United States as a nation and the American public. Still, there appears to be at least some spillover. The number of Frenchmen who reported a positive opinion of individual Americans has declined significantly, from 71 percent two years ago to 53 percent today. In Turkey, where popular cruise-ship visits will resume for the first time in two years, 59 percent of the population now believes suicide attacks against American civilians are justified. Some young tourists aren’t taking any chances. Many plan to hide their identity, to the extent they can. Some pretend to be Canadians.
The vast majority of American tourists, however, will likely set foot on the old continent just as they always have–loud, largely ignorant of local politics, infused with an almost childlike naivete born of the fluke of geography that has shielded them from the historical carnage and lessons of war woven into the fabric of European society. It is this innocence–many would say ignorance–that is likely to cause trouble.
The stereotype of the ugly American, alas, is alive and well. In London, Americans can already be seen in droves strolling Piccadilly in shorts and sneakers, talking loudly and looking confused with their maps and fanny packs tightly strapped to their expansive waists. In Rome, on the fashionable via Condotti just below the Spanish Steps, a foursome of dashing Italian men posed in immaculate suits at a fashionable coffee bar, their shoes impeccably unscuffed, their neckties loosened oh-so-slightly in the heat of the summer’s day. “It’s not just the loud, boisterous behavior,” says Giovanni Spina. What gives Americans away is their fashion sense. “They wear sneakers on the street!” he said, marvelling at the gauchness of it all. “They slather on sunscreen until they glow,” added a friend. “They ask for ice in their drinks,” said another. “They want their salad before dinner,” gaped a third.
For many Europeans nowadays, the blithe disregard of local customs that American tourists often display, as well as their sometimes aggressive sense of free-spending entitlement, carries an unfortunate echo. Was it not similar attitudes that rang out of the White House in the days preceding the invasion of Iraq, where Bush rammed through his hegemonic policies with utter disregard for Europe? “The other day I heard some unpleasantly loud Americans, and I caught myself immediately thinking of Bush,” says Carsten Meyer, a Berlin media consultant and self-described friend of America. “It’s weird how totally politicized the whole idea of America has become.” Shamoon Zamir, director of American studies at London’s King’s College, says the cliche of the loud American tourist hasn’t changed. What’s changed is how entrenched it’s become and how readily Europeans now apply it to all Americans since the war in Iraq. “It is not really hatred but this half-articulated unease at American stupidity and provincialism.”
Already, Americans traveling to Europe this year complain of being singled out for long, patronizing lectures and unpleasant political re-education campaigns–despite their best efforts to steer clear of politics. “A lot of the Germans I run into these days act like they feel sorry for me for being American,” says Trent zum Mallen, a Web site editor from California who works in Berlin. “They think I’m a victim of some horrible government and want to teach me about democracy.” Andrea, a student from California studying at the London School of Economics, was recently at the theater in London when a precocious 10-year-old accosted her. “Your president is a bad, bad man,” the little girl informed her. “He should know better!”
Sometimes such interactions turn downright hostile, especially after a few pints. Patrick, a grad student who withheld his last name, was standing at the bar of a London pub enjoying a beer and catching up with friends. A former Clinton administration staffer who has just completed a degree at the LSE, the 34-year-old Pennsylvania native had made an unfortunate fashion choice: on his feet he wore a broken-in pair of black cowboy boots. “Are you American?” asked a twentysomething British man, spying Patrick’s offending footwear. “Yes,” he replied, a bit confused. “I hate you,” the man then said, sauntering back to his friends and giving them high-fives. On her first night in London, Emily Begnaud, a student from University of Georgia, went to a pub that happened to be playing a roster of songs including Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA.” “The bartenders behind the bar cut the song off right after the lyrics ‘USA’ and they were jeering at us and giving us weird looks,” says Begnaud. “I can see why others around the world might be frustrated with America right now but it is a shame that their bad feelings fall on us.”
Of course, some Americans have only themselves to blame. Just days after the Rome protests, retired dentist Robert Pernell of Orange County, California, and his wife were accosted on the Spanish Steps by a young Italian man who asked them to sign an antiwar petition. “I told him I wouldn’t sign the petition and explained that we were from out of town, and he just started yelling at me,” Pernell told NEWSWEEK. “I said, ‘You should be so lucky to live in a place like America!’ I just don’t appreciate it when what we’re doing is trying to save the world,” he went on to say. “They should thank us.” An Italian man sitting nearby rolled his eyes. “That’s what is wrong with the Americans,” he said, then left in a huff.
Such incidents are unusual. Indeed, many Europeans seem to take a smug pride in their ability to forgive ordinary Americans for the transgressions of a leader they view as maniacal and out of control. For the savvy tourist, the current state of tension can even have its advantages. In France and Germany, condemnations of Bush made by American tourists are liable to be met with warm expressions of sympathy, free drinks and even, on occasion, telephone numbers and dates. In Germany, John Kerry would win 85 percent of the vote–a statistic that has not been lost on Jeremy Minsberg, an Internet consultant from Minneapolis living in Berlin. “Every time I go walk my dog I wear my Kerry button,” he says. “People stop me all the time to strike up a conversation. It’s a great experience.”
In fact, some Americans have come to Europe precisely because they share the Continent’s disdain for Bush and his administration. Destination No. 1: Paris. “I had to go on antidepressants after the 2000 election,” says a retired doctor from Tucson, Arizona, who’s lived in France for the past three years and participated along with “Americans Against the War” in the June 5th anti-Bush protest. “I only started to feel better when I left and came here.” Now she is urging her friends to move abroad, too, should “the unthinkable happen in November.”
Actor Johnny Depp is perhaps the best-known American to flee across the Atlantic. Living in the south of France with French singer Vanessa Paradis, Depp earned himself a good old-fashioned U.S. press whipping when he lambasted America not long ago, comparing his country to “something like a dumb puppy that has big teeth–that can bite and hurt you.”
For these Americans, there’s nothing but love and good will. Many French recall their country’s traditional ties to America, from Lafayette and the Statue of Liberty to the revolutionary ideals of 1789 enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. Perhaps subliminally, this bond seems to draw centrist and leftist Americans to France in larger numbers than conservatives, who often seem put off by liberal French attitudes toward everything from sexuality to health care and taxes. (The always-defiant neocon Richard Perle is an notable exception. An architect of the plans to invade Iraq, Perle keeps a home in the French countryside. Whether he’ll be back this summer, though, is anyone’s guess.)
Yet even in these times of cultural confusion, the cliches often break down. In Istanbul, not far from where the cruise ships disgorge their passengers, a NEWSWEEK reporter approached the most heavily bearded, baggy-trousered Taliban look-alikes he could find and announced he was American. The response each time: “Hos geldiniz”–“Welcome.” “The more your people come here, the more you will understand Islam,” said Ibrahim Ahmetoglu, 44, before making a pitch to convert the reporter. “We have nothing against the American people, just your crazy president,” added Ilter Dondurmaci, 24. For the record his name means Mr. Ice Cream.
