Stupid Americans.

Honestly, stupid fucking americans. If I were European I'd hate them on principle. Here we are, a group of about sixty parents and siblings, in Rome to see our sons or brothers sing for the Pope, for the Pope. And we get to like, tour Rome and see Pompei and stuff too, this should be a pretty happy group, right? Stupid. Fucking. Americans. I hate 'em.

Now here I am, just me, and I think a certain way. Something like "We're going to a different country on a different continent, I bet the culture and customs will not be the same as they are at home." Now, maybe that's obvious to you, but maybe that's because you're intelligent and open-minded. Not these parents though. Stupid Americans.

We had lunch in a resturant in Pompei, billed as a "traditional italian meal." It started with melted cheese and tomato sauce on flatbread, very similar to what we call pizza, then pasta, wide noodles stuffed with a meat and cheese mixture, then a salad of lettuce, tomato, and mozarella chese doused in oil, finished with a small dish of vanilla ice cream.
As soon as we got back on the bus they started bitching and complaining "Oh, that food was terrible, I couldn't even eat the pasta, what did they put in that?" while on the other side of the bus some pompous jackass was saying "Give me ten minutes in the kitchen I'll whip up something better than that, they'll lock the doors to keep me inside and keep cooking for them!"

What the hell? It seems that to you stupid Americans if something is different it's automatically bad. It occurs to me though, that they've beens serving food here in Italy for something like three thousand years, don't you think that if it was bad they would have changed it? Yeah.

Stupid parents in the group alternating between mocking the tour guide's accent and calling out italian phrases for no reason. Parents pestering the hotel staff with questions and not waiting for answers because they've already started asking the question again, louder and much more slowly. Hey, I'm not saying you have to be fluent in the native language of the country you're visiting, I'm saying remeber you're a visitor, a guest in that country. How about treating people with some respect and not your American "you're obviously here to make my stay easier and if everything isn't exactly as I expected it to be it's your fault" attitude. These are adults. We had dinner with the kids one night, it looked like they didn't like the food either (I half forgive them, kids are picky eaters anyway) but you know how they handled it? They pushed the food to the edge of their plate and waited for the next course. They said "please" and "thank you" to the waiters, in english. They were polite, quiet, courteous and respectful. I spent most of the time looking around trying to figure out how the hell these kids were raised by this obnoxious rude and disrespectful bunch of parents. Stupid Americans.

This entry would have been two pages longer if I'd written it last week. This is just the leftover frustration.

-Tom