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The Ugly American image is largely forgotten. For one thing, though they spend more money and time in Europe than any other non-Continental nationality, Americans today are only a part of the tourist mass. As Atlanta Travel Agent Phil Osborne puts it, "The whole planet earth is traveling." Ten times as many Germans as Americans visit Italy each year; as many vacationers on the Continent come from tight little Britain as from the entire U.S. By contrast with the early days of jet travel, when tourists from the heartland came dressed in Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts or polyester pants, and asked stridently for their bills in "real money," most Americans today are well attuned to European sensibilities. A customer-service official at a Stockholm Nordiska Kompaniet department store says mildly: "We no longer see so many 85-year-old teen-agers with rhinestones on their eyeglasses."
For their part, Americans are finding summertime conditions in Europe less than idyllic. The hassle has to be viewed as part of the fun. Airports, particularly in Spain, Italy and Greece, tend to be chaotic. In Athens or Rome, it can take half a day to cash a traveler's check at a bank. Pickpockets have proliferated in most major cities, particularly in Seville, Madrid and Paris, where organized bands of small boys prey on the unwary in places like the Louvre; there local police have even enlisted American tourists to act as decoys. And travelers protest as bitterly as ever about the all too many Parisian waiters who cling to their historic tradition of rudeness, slovenliness and occasional dishonesty. (But this is a Paris phenomenon. Americans seldom complain of the service in the rest of France.)
Most museums in Italy and Greece close in midafternoon, just when Americans want to visit them. The pubs in Britain seem to be closed most of the time. All the ice cubes in Europe disappear on a hot day. Driving can occasionally resemble either a safari or a Grand Prix race, depending on whether you are in the countryside of Portugal or on the Autobahnen or autostrade of Germany or Italy. Despite such hazards, few Americans appear unhappy enough to talk of packing up and going home. They can, after all, always try another country.