Europe’s declining rates of new COVID-19 infections, paired with the macabre fiasco unfolding in the United States, has had an unexpected side benefit for Europeans: the absence of brash, tubby, monolingual, “I’m with Stupid” t-shirt-wearing American tourists.
The European Union’s travel ban on the United States, which leads the world by far in the number of coronavirus cases and deaths, has left tourist attractions around Europe free of pesky, ignorant Americans who have historically been an international embarrassment. American tourists’ potential for bringing a deadly pestilence to the recovering nations of Europe has not endeared them any more to the already wary denizens of the old world.
Salvatore DiGennaro, the owner of a trattoria in La Spezia, a picturesque seaside town on the west coast of Italy, has been enjoying a summer free of American tourists. “They yell at you for bringing the insalata after the primi and secondi piatti, they demand you speak English, they tell you about their great great grandfather who maybe was from Italia, ask you about the ‘Godfather’…they ask why you don’t have garlic bread, and now they can kill you with the COVID. No, I don’t miss the schifosi!”
