A Pilgrim’s Digression

I had breakfast at Pete’s again today. The $7.35 I was charged last time was no mistake, as it turns out. Looking over the tab, I’d guess the price of a cup of coffee went up to pay for the renovations. A cup of coffee is now $1.75, while the breakfast has remained the same at $4.95.

Ah well, I still left a dollar under the coffee cup as a tip. It’s worth the price once a week to feel like I’ve got a leg up on the tourists. They come here and end up eating in all the expensive restaurants that are in their guide books. I live here and eat in the expensive restaurants that aren’t in the guidebooks.

So I had my coffee and my Great American Breakfast of eggs over easy, bacon, and potatoes, and as I ate I read the book I’ve been carrying around for about two weeks, McCarthy’s Bar: A Journey of Discovery in the West of Ireland by Peter McCarthy. It’s a funny book about an Englishman named McCarthy who travels around western Ireland trying to figure out if he is really English or Irish. What has stood out in his story, however, is the contempt Europeans feel for Americans travelling abroad. Almost every anecdote about American tourists goes to illustrate how lazy, fat, shallow, loud, mean, cheap, and demanding Americans are.

On the one hand, McCarthy slaps around people of every ethnicity. For example, German tourists, who are apparently even more common in Ireland than Americans, are berated for their obsession with punctuality and attention to detail. Male Italian tourists come under fire for always looking like playboys travelling with their super model girlfriends. And he rips the French for always acting like they’re still in Paris, no matter that they’re in some rural village in County Mayo.

But Americans take a good drubbing in every chapter, almost on every other page. In the chapter “Cross in Cong,” McCarthy writes about laying up in a B&B in Mayo, and hearing an American family wake up the landlady for a room late in the evening. McCarthy concludes they have never travelled outside the United States.

The mother of the family says, “Excuse me, I know it’s late, but do you have a room? I’m afraid we’re lost. We just arrived in Dublin today…”

McCarthy writes: “Dublin? God in heaven. It’s the entire width of the country away. how the hell did they manage to end up here?” This anecdote illustrates something about Americans McCarthy has mentioned elsewhere: we travel thousands of miles in order to race off to the next place, as soon as we get there.

The next morning, at breakfast, the mother asks the landlady, “Is this where the sandwich dressing comes from?”

McCarthy writes: “The landlady desperately scans the sauce and mustard cruet for a clue, but Mom’s meaning remains tantalisingly elusive.

“I don’t understand.”

“Mayo. Is this where mayo comes from? Like, tuna mayo?”

Rudeness is a peculiarly American trait, McCarthy suggests, or perhaps we’re just clueless. But fatness and rudeness and cluelessness are the quintessential American qualities.

Earlier in the book, in the town of Killarney, McCarthy relates an incident with a man and wife he describes as Tweedledum and Tweedledee. They are preparing to take a carriage ride around the city when McCarthy’s acid pen catches them.

“Will the horse expect extra oats?” enquires an admirably self-aware American, who, at a guess, has won a trip to Europe as first prize in the Fattest Arse in the Midwest competition. Perched on top of the cart in baseball cap, stripy stretch fabric polo shirt and vast architect-designed shorts, he looks like Tweedledum. It takes two of the assassins [McCarthy's name for the carriage drivers, who have "faces like medieval assassins"] to hoist his wife up there to join him, like Tweedledee in drag. The horse craps ostentatiously in derision, and off they trundle, to provide a bit of comic relief to people stuck in traffic jams.

Midwesterners in particular come under fire for their voices which, to McCarthy’s ear, sound like “a buzz saw drone.”

I report all this in part because I expect some Americans who read this post may want to travel to Europe some day. It’s good to know what the local hostelers and shopkeepers are really thinking when they see an American walk in the door of their establishment. Also, McCarthy imparts, inadvertently, some good advice for Americans travelling abroad: don’t wear baseball caps, and try not to look disgusted at the food you are served in a restaurant. Also, loud talking is a dead giveaway that you’re American and also invites the contempt of locals chatting over their pint in the pub you just wandered into to take a few snapshots.

It’s not very encouraging for Americans to read a travel book written by a European. They really don’t like us, which is odd considering how much of any European country’s tourist industry is geared towards giving American travellers a taste of the local flavor while never taking us too far from a McDonald’s, so we don’t starve and create an international scandal.

It’s almost as if European contempt for America is their prideful way of saying, “We know we have to take your money, since you’re offering, but we don’t like it and it shames us.” Yet it’s ironic that when an Irishman, or an Englishman, or a German or French person travels in America, almost universally the foreigner is greeted with friendliness and curiosity. Americans consider foreigners exotic and fascinating; they consider us common and irritating.