Essen, beten, lieben

Reflections on the "American abroad" chick flick from an American chick abroad.

DRESDEN, Germany — I went on a first date in Dresden about a month ago. As we greeted each other by the Goldener Reiter, his first words caught me off guard.

“Wow,” he said. “You’re so American. Like, Emily in Paris.”

To be clear, I know I don’t blend in here. Friends, dates, colleagues and near strangers have told me that my teeth, the way I dress and my general demeanor identify me right away as an American. Typisch amerikanisch, as my flatmates taught me to say.

But my date’s comment reminded me of the rich pop culture tradition of beautiful, bumbling American women going abroad. As Carrie Bradshaw (who herself once had a brief stint overseas) might say: I couldn’t help but wonder: Do I fit into these archetypes — and do I want to?

How I come across to Germans, apparently.

I was standing with my mom on an U-Bahn platform in Berlin during my first week in Germany back in September. I told her I was worried about being a stereotypical American living abroad, using a romanticized idea of Europe as a backdrop for my own journey of personal discovery. Her advice — sage as usual — was simply not to act like that.

Diane Negra, a professor of media studies at University College Dublin, analyzes films including “Notting Hill,” “French Kiss” and “Only You” in “Romance and/as tourism: Heritage whiteness and the (inter)national imaginary in the new woman’s film.” (Not a great title in my opinion, but an interesting article you can read here.)

The article, published in 2001, predates the 2010 release of “Eat, Pray, Love,” a film Roger Ebert panned as “shameless wish-fulfillment.” “Eat, Pray, Love” breaks some of the conventions Negra describes, but it’s still relevant in the canon of the so-called “new woman’s film.”

Negra boils down the tropes associated with American women abroad in chick flicks. Beset by relationship problems in the U.S., the protagonist finds a new way of life while traveling abroad. This usually includes a whirlwind romance that challenges her to reevaluate what she really wants. Then, when it seems all but certain she’ll board the plane back to the U.S., she finds a way to stay, resolving her problems at home with a palatably exotic experience that leaves her fundamentally transformed.

Who hasn’t dreamed of being swept off their feet by some handsome, foreign stranger? The “new woman’s film” both responds to and imbues us with that fantasy. Romance abroad is sold to us as a truly immersive form of tourism that can deliver us from our American woes, Negra writes.

Unlike me, though, the heroines of these chick flicks don’t typically find themselves in cities like Dresden, and they certainly don’t fall for Ossi Deutsch guys. In fact, not one of the dozen films Negra references takes place in Germany.

These characters tend to end up — often serendipitously — in France or Italy or maybe even England. There, they meet some tall, dark and handsome guy who teaches them a lesson about slowing down and enjoying the simple things in life.

How I probably looked listening to a German guy explain how he’s fighting with his roommate about heating their apartment.

In “Eat, Pray, Love,” which I rewatched recently for the sake of research, Liz Gilbert has this conversation with her Italian tutor, Giovanni, and his friend, Luca Spaghetti, in a barbershop while she’s staying in Rome.

“You feel guilty because you're American. You don't know how to enjoy yourself!” Luca Spaghetti tells Liz. “Americans know entertainment but don't know pleasure.”

Girls who move to Germany don’t typically learn these lessons. Instead, they learn that long nails aren’t good for bouldering and that it’s “over-the-top” and “indulgent” to run the shower before stepping in. Instead of falling for love interests played by Javier Bardem or Hugh Grant, they go out with guys who stand idly by in the späti, watching them dig around for the kleingeld to cover their own drink. Ach so.

Instead of being told Americans don’t know how to slow down and savor, I’m more often told that Americans don’t know how to do anything at all. (There’s a particular fascination with those street interview videos that show clueless Americans pointing to somewhere in Africa when asked to label France on a map.)

At a party last month, a friend of one of my new flatmates asked me what I think Germans think of Americans.

Die Deutsche glauben, dass die Amerikaner dumm sind, I responded in my usual strained German. Ich denke. “The Germans think that the Americans are stupid. I think.”

We both laughed, and he said that in former East Germany, there’s definitely still anti-American sentiment. He continued, asking me about my life in the U.S. — where I’d lived and where I’d visited. I asked him if he’d ever visited the U.S., or if he planned to.

“No, and I never will,” he replied flatly. “Honestly, I hate America and Americans.”

All I could do was laugh. Certainly no admonition from him to stop and smell the roses. I actually can’t think of a single time I’ve been regaled with such a monologue — in Dresden or elsewhere. In fact, I only ever hear that kind of thing from other Americans. It’s basically a script at this point.

In Brussels, my compatriots made broad pronouncements about how the people and culture and lifestyle in Europe were just better than what we have in the States.

“The food here is just healthier,” they’d say as we sat around dipping fries in mayonnaise and washing it all down with Duvel. “I’m dying to move to Europe.”

Presumably, they meant they were dying to move to Paris or Rome, not to Sarajevo or Bucharest (or Dresden, for that matter).

This vaunted life in Europe my fellow Americans were describing didn’t seem to be much more than a supercut of scenes from movies and memories from vacations. In these conversations, I could see how archetypes and conventions from tourist chick flicks show up in how we think about traveling and living abroad.

Of course, these discussions included the requisite dose of commentary about the virtues of European guys. Supposedly, they’re better looking, more interesting and more romantic. In my experience, I’d say it’s a mixed bag.

Several of my friends living in Europe this year have told me their mothers implored them not to fall in love with anyone abroad. That romance and going abroad seem to be inextricably linked, particularly for women, is both reflected by and encouraged in films like “Eat, Pray, Love.”

I’m spending a year abroad (allegedly) to be a serious journalist. Still, when I tell American friends and acquaintances what I’m doing, they often ask me where I’ve traveled on the weekends and whether I’ve been going out with German guys.

That’s not to say that I’m not doing those things, but I am actively trying to avoid cultivating a Liz Gilbert or Emily Cooper ethos while doing them.

I’m not here to find love, reinvent myself or escape my problems in the U.S. But can I really deny that I enjoy living abroad, at least in part, because it signifies something positive about me?

This quandary reminded me of “The Case Against Travel,” a New Yorker essay by philosopher Agnes Callard published last year.

“Travel gets branded as an achievement: see interesting places, have interesting experiences, become interesting people. Is that what it really is?” Callard writes.

On our quest for self-actualization through travel, she argues, we “locomote” through cities, taking in the prescribed sights and partaking in the prescribed activities. We do what we are told we should do, getting little out of it, but feeling like we’ve become better people for having done it, she writes.

I worry about giving in to this impulse toward completionism — the idea that if I live abroad for long enough, or if I travel to enough new places while living abroad, I’ll check enough boxes to qualify as an interesting person.

While I don’t totally agree with Callard’s argument in the essay, I do think she’s onto something there. And what she’s getting at is reflected in the films Negra analyzes: that there is a set of steps we can take to become fully realized versions of ourselves, and it involves spending time — and if possible, falling in love — abroad.

It all goes back to the idea that a proximity to a certain kind of foreignness will transform us into inherently interesting people. We cast ourselves as world travelers to attach ourselves to something we believe no one can deny is cool.

All that said, living abroad has been incredibly rewarding so far. I’ve learned and grown so much, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say the experience has transformed me. There’s no city or sight or date that has made me into a fundamentally different or better person. And after all this navel-gazing about how I come across and how I should approach life abroad, I think that’s the best conclusion I can reach.

But for all my anxieties about playing the protagonist of a chick flick, I have to accept: when some Germans meet me, they might still say, “Wow! Just like Emily.” ▣