On Sat, 26 Jun 2004 22:35:07 -0400, zzyyxx wrote:

Why do they insist on putting their flags onto their backpacks and whatnot?
I'm an American who's done quite a bit of traveling in Europe in the last
couple years and haven't experienced any problems with people disliking or
being rude to me. So why do they feel the need to proclaim that they're not
American? Like you wouldn't be able to tell from their accents! It's kind of
insulting to me too, because they don't want to be mistaken for an American,
like there's something wrong with being American.

This will probably surprise you, but the rest of the world has ways of
defining their nations other than as "non-American".

Just maybe they're proclaiming a country they're proud of? Rather than
defining which one they aren't from. My green-and-gold cap with the
kangaroo-and-emu coat of arms started lots of conversations last year;
all were about Australia, the US wasn't mentioned. That was at the
height of the Iraq war.

Most of the Europeans knew we were in it and weren't interested in
discussing that.

Incidentally, very few of the Americans, when we travelled there last
March, were even aware we were in Iraq, but then most of them were
confused as to our location; a few complimented us on our english and
asked what it was like to live between Hungary and Germany. I wore my
cap there too:-)


Cheers, Alan
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