Anti-Americanism
Friday morning I was on the metro going to the film festival office when I had my first encounter with blatent anti-americanism. Thankfully it wasn't directed at me, but it was still disturbing. The train was almost empty, just me and a group of six or eight American girls (I think they must have been college students). They were chattering and laughing, not loudly, but in an empty train it was easy to hear them. We were about halfway to my stop when two men got on and stood between me and the group of girls. I noticed the men because they looked sort of intense (for lack of a better word) and were speaking to each other in hushed french. I think they were from France, not Belgium, because their French sounded a little different and their clothes were a slighty different style than what we normally see men wearing here. One of them also had a pony tail and that's definitely not popular in our conservative city. Anyway, the girls' stop came first and they stood up, walked to the doors and started getting off the train when the pony-tailed man said to them "What's next guys?." They looked confused at this question and I didn't understand why he would be asking them this. They continued to leave the train and he yelled after them "What country is next? Who are you going to carpet bomb next?" They looked shocked and I'm sure I did too. The man then turned to his friend and continued his conversation like nothing had happened. I'm not sure what he was trying to accomplish, but I'm fairly sure the girls aren't responisble for the war in Iraq and most likely they didn't even vote for Bush. It just seemed mean.
~K