Europe has so long been associated with words like “earthy” and “real” (otherwise known as: life outside of America), that it’s difficult to imagine it as a place that can ever truly “recalibrate” toward the post-COVID obsession with “being clean.” The idea that the continent ever truly took pains to “disinfect” to the extent that a country like America—already so predisposed to wiping out all that is natural—did throughout the pandemic is incongruous. Try as places like the Louvre might have done to put on their best airs about extreme measures of sanitary practices, it was never going to meet American “standards” (really, sweetie? You, who shovels meat and fries in all day, who lives in a country filled with nothing but prisons and hospitals, have standards? That’s cute).
The difference now, regarding Europe’s “reputation,” of course, is that it’s more important than ever for the continent to appear as “squeaky” as possible to the khaki shorts-wearing outsiders they once relied on (and still do) for the erstwhile booming industry of tourism.
The Scandinavian bloc, to be sure, has only further built upon its reputation for sterility (therefore, apparently, its “happiness” quotient), so maybe they’ll be “okay”—not that they want any “foreign bodies” infecting their pure white spaces anyway (#KeepSwedenSwedish, etc.). But the other countries—those swarthy ones (you know, Italy, France, Spain, Greece and the like), as the racists note in hushed tones—that once so thrived on American tourism might find they aren’t viewed with such, “Oh, how quaint” or “Oh, how rustic” enthusiasm anymore. They might instead learn that Americans’ once incessant complaints about no air conditioning in Europe were mere child’s play compared to their constant cries of outrage regarding a lack of “sanitariness” at every turn. Where once “earthy” and “real” were all Americans thought they wanted out of an experience abroad, now these will be qualities to thumb one’s nose at. They are not “charming” or “part of the experience,” so much as an added source of anxiety to a population already so easily rattled by the most minor of inconveniences.
Maybe the chief source of the divide lies in the fact that Europeans are more accustomed to “filth” based on their history. No one living in the U.S. ever came from a place of knowing the full extent of the effects of the bubonic plague. That’s called inherited trauma—never quite passed down to the subsequent generations of Americans with all of the European stamped out of them in the “New World” (read: “Pillaged and Plundered World”). No, these Americans gradually diluted of all their Europeanism, couldn’t fathom the conditions of that particular continent in its Middle Ages. Though funnily enough, they seemed to believe little had changed since that period. That’s why, of course, Americans say things like, “It’s great for a visit, but I could never live there.” Even those briefly bamboozled into the “dollar home” scene in Italy were quickly put off by the endless repairs required to make the space livable. Far more repairs than what Diane Lane seemed to have to do in Under the Tuscan Sun.
What’s more, the bureaucracy—the more non-functioning than usual bureaucracy—involved in these types of comuni were simply insufferable to an American used to at least a bare minimum of efficiency. Still, Americans had an idea about themselves “in Europe” (while being decidedly not part of it at all) and what that might look like. At least…once upon a time. Now, it’s unclear if the “general dirtiness” of the culture will seem so appealing to a nation that was all too happy to vaccine-hoard for the sake of its own “cleanliness” while Europe struggled (and continues to struggle) to put together any kind of cohesive vaccine rollout. All in keeping with its supposed “okayness” regarding being “dirty”—“diseased.” Or was it just Great Britain’s evil plan all along to fuck the EU over by securing a better contract with AstraZeneca post-Brexit? Getting that contract precisely because of Brexit and all its trade freedoms (read: ways to further fuck up the environment). Alas, like where the virus really originated, we may never know.
But yes, the problem that will arise from a “reopened for tourism” Europe is that the expectations on the part of Americans will inevitably be higher than before (though that’s hard to imagine, considering how high they are to begin with). Which already sounds like a nightmare in theory before even being put into practice. For just thinking about the past disgust for the continent’s “way of life” is enough to make one wonder if les américains can deal with it ever again. In 2019, otherwise known as the new BC (Before Corona), The Guardian would run an article about Paris’ developing reputation as “the dirty man of Europe” (a year later, that would pale in comparison to all of Italy being called “the sick man of Europe”) being bad for its image—and how that was actually managing to overshadow its cliché reputation for being the most “romantic” city in the world. It was hard for Americans to feel that way among the overflowing trash bins and dog shit. Ah, and human urine. Luckily for a city like Naples, it so rarely gets on the tourism radar (beyond Pompeii) for any Americans to have picked up on a new zenith in the town’s major trash crisis circa 2007. With trash piles spewing through the streets like the vomited-up guts of European stereotypes (and, of course, Neapolitan ones).
The tourists that year were likely warned to steer clear of the Campania region by their Roman tour guides, for even one of the crowning jewels of the area, Sorrento, suffered from a coastline pocked by the garbage the residents paid for in their own health and safety, sold by the Camorra to the highest bidders up north. But Americans didn’t need or care about any backstory regarding the “dirtiness” of Europe’s cities. They wanted their playground the way they wanted it, and if it didn’t fit the bill, they simply wouldn’t buy in, wouldn’t show up. There were other vacation spots in the world—namely resorts that could just as easily be plopped down anywhere in the U.S.
Resorts that will now become contained cauldrons where you can pre-screen people’s entrance based on their vaccination cards or last COVID test (though, unfortunately, not their intelligence level). Who needs Europe anyway? You can bring all the best elements (to U.S. denizens, that would appear to be croissants and pizza) to some simulation-like edifice anyway—one that can be sanitized every five seconds, American-style. Why did people think Mexicans were still allowed in? Not so they could be “allowed” to gain citizenship, no. But to clean. Clean up the shit—decontaminate the disease—of the gringo and gringa cunts everywhere. It’s all just a little bit of history repeating… European history, most especially. For it was during the Middle Ages and beyond that being pale was considered the mark of the affluent (yet even paleness couldn’t save one from the Black Death). While those with the “dark” skin were forced to slave away for the fat arses inside.
In this epoch, those fat arses also happen to hairless, OCD-packing freaks who don’t trust anyone with body hair—which basically makes Europe the antithesis of a safe space. For within the follicles of these endless hairs must surely lie nothing but disease, after all. Just waiting to pounce on the first American it sees. That is, if any American deigns to keep returning to Europe upon rediscovering its perpetually “earthy” state, post-corona cleanliness expectations be damned.
