“Turn off your Gameboy and look at the rock!” the grossly overweight, loud American tourist yelled at her son, her voice drowning out that of the tour guide on our bus. That moment, more than anything else from my first trip to Europe in 2002, remains burned into my memory. I remember the heads of European tourists turning away from the astonishing view of the Zugspitze, Germany’s highest mountain, to look at us, at the Americans, and wishing that I could just disappear, that I could shout out, “I’m not with that group! My family isn’t like that!” My eyes weren’t always opened to how the rest of the world saw me: much like when an adolescent first begins to go through puberty and care about their reflection for the first time, spending time in Europe and seeing how other Americans were viewed made me look at my own behavior in a larger sense.
In Munich, it became immediately clear that I was in a foreign and alien environment. As I walked past the flight attendants and into the body of the terminal, it took me a moment to place just what it was that made me feel so uneasy. Then it hit me: everyone was well groomed and of a healthy weight- there were no fat Americans forcing their sausage thighs into spanks or hiding them beneath the bulk of sweatpants to be seen, here. Less apparent but just as strange was the lack of conversation to be heard, save for soft, church-like murmurs that constituted chitchat. The only time I overheard a conversation enough to understand it was when it was in English.
In Paris, if one smiled at a random passerby as was the American tendency to do, they would be looked at as though they were crazy: there were no false displays of niceness and affection to be had, here. That was reserved for people that you actually knew, people who were you friends.
In Italy, this same European focus on how one comported oneself was present. In Rome, with my Italian uncle-by- marriage, he jokingly told me that Americans were often referred to as, “brutto figura,” literally meaning bad shape. During the rest of my time exploring Procida, Venice, Florence, and Naples I heard shop owners mutter the disparaging remark under my breath more than once as they encountered Americans.
Back in America, if one comports oneself like a European would, they will often be thought of as snobbish and introverted. The importance of how one holds oneself, though, and what it means will never be lost on me. Looking back, I feel bad for the loud, overweight mom in Germany- it took me numerous trips to Europe before I finally began to get the feel for how I should act, before I could pull on a demeanor as one would a set of clothes. It goes without saying that such that such a skill is critical to blending into varying cultures.
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