An Academic Abroad: A Cautionary Tale
As an academic trained in American studies, I’ve always dreaded the thought of being perceived as an Ugly American when traveling overseas. Eager to distance myself from images of the idiot abroad, I’ve learned French, dabbled in Spanish and Italian, and occasionally put in some serious effort, when preparing for a conference trip or a study-abroad excursion, to learn about other nations’ artistic traditions, sports manias, and food fetishes.
My motives, alas, are not always a sincere interest in other peoples and places—I just want to be liked and not judged provincial. In most cases, however, I don’t succeed in impressing my foreign hosts and acquaintances; instead, I just seem to irritate or amuse them. Some examples:
What’s good for the goose. About eight years ago, on a conference trip to southern France, I got myself into an awkward situation while visiting Sarlat, a medieval village famous for its goose-liver paté. Looking for an excuse to display my language ability, and to prove to my American companions—as well as the French locals—that I was savvier than the typical American traveler, I approached a woman at the visitor’s bureau with a question that I felt was simple enough: “Where could one purchase some fresh foie gras?”
In hindsight I can see how that sentence was both naïve and pretentious. (It implied that I was a sophisticated foodie who deserved access to the local, “authentic” stuff rather than the mass-produced tins on display in the tourist shops.)
The woman behind the desk pulled out a map and with withering sarcasm, which I was initially unable to detect, proceeded to give me elaborate directions: “Make your way down this road, arrive at this particular farmer’s house, knock on his door, help him to slaughter a goose on the spot, and then proceed to watch his wife create the delicacy right there—just for you—in her front yard.”
I obediently wrote down those directions until, near the end, I began to register the chuckling of several locals near her desk. Face burning, I realized that my use of French had actually made me even more laughable than the average American tourist. I quickly hustled my colleagues out of the building, assuring them that I’d gotten directions to the prime source—a supermarché just around the corner.
The story gets worse. About an hour later, when we were finally enjoying some paté on baguettes, I made the mistake of casually reading the label on one of the cans I had directed my colleagues to purchase. The main ingredient listed on the back? Le foie du porc (pig liver). I hadn’t even succeeded in buying the right product. Carefully setting the tin back down on the table, I smiled encouragingly at my companions and kept that minor detail to myself.
Walk softly and carry a big kid. When directing a study-abroad program in London a couple years ago, I was worried about irritating the locals because our excursions would include more than 40 college students and two other faculty directors and their families. We prepped our students with lectures about social etiquette in Britain, but it soon became clear that the source of any embarrassment would probably be me and my family (four children, the youngest a 9-year-old daughter).