Last night, June 5th, Kevin, myself, and a few of the girls from another program headed down to the Spanish Steps around 11:00pm or so, just to see what was going on. It was a really breezy evening, and rather cool. We arrived at the steps and picked out our spot among the young Italians who had been planted there for hours playing guitar, drinking wine, and socializing as if they had never seen these people before in their lives. A while passed and a group of about 8 students came and sat on the ledge behind us. They were all speaking German and couldn't have been any older than 18. They heard us talking in English and so they began to speak in rather broken, but coherent, English. This would be the start of a rather long conversation dealing with the perception of Americans from a European viewpoint. I won't go into huge detail about the evening, because that could take hours, but they made a few points which I feel are worth sharing. They began by saying how rude Americans were. The one girl said she had studied for 6 months in The United States and had lived in Washington state with a "religious" family who wouldn't even tell her what their "religion" was. She had also traveled the east coast to cities like Philadelphia (which she thought was hilarious that we call it "Philly"), New York, Boston, D.C., and Baltimore. She said she was treated rude in every city and the only place she loved in the U.S. was San Antonio, to which we told her Texas wasn't really a part of the U.S. but it's own country (just kidding Texas).
She also thought our politics were awful and asked: If Bush is so unpopular then how did he get into office? Our answer: The younger generations were not able to vote in the past two elections, which would have allowed for a fresh of breath air in the States. She said Obama is the best candidate and that Hilary "stinks". She also said our gun laws are absurd and she doesn't understand how we can just go around "shooting each other, bang bang". We explained to her that what she's seeing about crime in the U.S. is happening in large cities, and that it is, sadly, just how it is in the cities.
As our conversation ended we said our goodbyes and parted ways. As she was walking away she looked back and told the five of us to make a change in America. We said we would, and that was our encounter with the German students in Rome. It was a real eye opener because Europeans do really have negative views of us. It's sad. A few rotten people ruined it all for us.
*The picture above at the Spanish Steps was taken previously.
