Before studying abroad I generally assumed that most Europeans had a fairly poor opinion of Americans. Last semester when I was studying in London, I got a mix of reactions, but on the whole a great amount (a surprising amount!) of positivity, especially when I said I was from Brooklyn. In Rome the reaction hasn’t been quite the same. It isn’t that people have the poor opinion of Americans, like I initially expected—more that they are completely used to Americans inundating their city. This past week was my spring break and my friends and I traveled to Budapest, Vienna and Prague and I got to see the perception of Americans outside of Italy.
In Budapest we went to a concert in the big Basilica one night and the man selling the tickets asked if we were students and where were studying—we said Rome, and at first he thought we were Italian. When he realized we were American he told us we didn’t need to be ashamed, continued on to swear a bit about President Bush but then said that President Obama was an alright guy and we looked like we had democratic faces.
It had never really occurred to me before how the U.S. president’s international reputation could personally affect me. Whatever your politics though, it is clear that President Obama is much more internationally popular leader than President Bush was. As silly as it sounds, that has probably, in some small way, made my study abroad experience a bit easier.
In Prague we encountered a man who heard us speaking English and bemoaned the lack of Czech being spoken in the country anymore. It’s true that in all of these cities we went to (not knowing a word of Czech or Hungarian and only a few sparse phrases in German) we were perfectly able to get by only speaking English, even in the less touristed areas. The fact that English is considered a common language in Europe also means that French, German, and other European tourists will also speak in English to waiters and salespeople. It must be very sad for so many people to hear more English being spoken in their cities than their national language, but it is a fact of the globalized world we live in today.
I will say though, that despite these somewhat more mixed reactions to our American and English-speaking selves, we also had a very sweet encounter with a woman working at a coffee shop in Prague. She asked us where we were from and when I said New York she smiled and said New York was her dream. It was so sweet and it made me hope that if she ever did make it to New York, the city would welcome her and really would be the city of her dreams.