Europe

Bertha believed passionately that an individual could indeed change the course of history and, for a brief shining moment, it seemed as if she actually might. In his book, Professor Dolmetsch describes a massive peace rally that Bertha staged in Vienna in 1898. She managed to secure Mark Twain as a speaker on this occasion, but the principal address was given by one Lt. Col. Manfred von Egidy, a Prussian officer who had been dismissed from the army for writing and circulating an antiwar pamphlet.

I don’t know what I’d expected – all roads and recommendations had led us to Chez Gladines, a Basque-style restaurant in the 13th arrondissement of Paris. We’d gotten there early and still had to wait an hour outside for a table. After days of sightseeing fueled by crepe stands and baguette sandwiches on the go, a sit-down meal out of the tourist’s path was a welcome change. I carried a post-it note in my wallet, written on it the most important French phrase I hadn’t thought to learn before we came here: Je suis végétarienne. Que conseillez-vous?

I frame this story about my three-week getaway to Europe last summer by asking what it means for Americans to venture across the pond at this juncture in our history. How do we navigate foreign cultures during a moment when our own national obsessions, with everything from rape biology scandals to “Honey Boo Boo’s” Southern familial dysfunction, are more insular than ever? How can Americans abroad serve as global ambassadors when our own national discourse is emblematized by a Hollywood cowboy ranting at an empty chair while apostrophizing the President? 

To anyone who grew up in the Cold War, the rhetoric of the Republican Party’s 2012 presidential candidates is strangely familiar. The United States, they warn, is threatened by an alien ideology. What’s startling is that the bogeyman this time around is not resurgent and increasingly hostile Russia, but Western Europe – Washington’s closest and most steadfast ally since the end of World War II.