Sometimes I think I read too many blogs. Before I came to visit friends and relatives here in Sweden, I was a bit afraid that Europe was awash in anti-Americanism. All these blogs told me so! But here's an interesting statistic:

American sportswear observed by a certain American tourist in Sweden:

North Carolina Tar Heels pants: 1
Boston Red Sox caps: 1
Minnesota Twins caps: 1
New York Yankees caps: 8,124,205

OK, maybe I exaggerated that last number a little. But only a little. Here in Sweden's third-largest city, Malmö, I have found it impossible to walk downtown more than a block or two without seeing someone wearing a Yankees cap. Damn Yankees are everywhere!

With so many people advertising on their heads the sporting equivalent of American imperialism, it's hard to say that anti-Americanism is much of a issue. I've noticed much more anti-EU sentiment so far; EU policy is a much bigger factor in their daily lives than what the US is doing in Iraq.

That said, I have found a general anti-Republican sentiment. Or perhaps, I should say anti-Republican bewilderment. Swedes find Bush maddening; Fahrenheit 9/11 hasn't been released here yet, but it's getting a lot of press, and each story seems to be rooting for it to cause so much bad publicity for Bush that he'll lose the election. But what really flabbergasts the Swedes I've talked to is that Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected Governor. Being from California, I try to explain, but Republicans might as well be aliens from the planet Tralfamadore who communicate by dancing and farting, for all that Swedes can understand them.

I think this may go back a long way. Yesterday, I took from my brother's bookshelf a copy of the Hávamál, an ancient Scandinavian poetic book of advice that is probably about 1,200 years old. I found a stanza that seems rather apropos. The translation from the original is mine; the interpretation is yours:

A wisely counseled man
wields his power
with measure;
he perceives
among bold men
that none is superior alone.

Today, my family and I took a day trip across the bridge into Copenhagen, Denmark. On the train back to Sweden, a group of three young women wearing Muslim headdresses sat down just ahead of us and across the aisle. They were probably teenagers or perhaps in their early twenties. One of the women was holding a clear plastic purse with nothing but an Iraqi flag inside. Another woman had a necklace with the word 'Iraq' and small Iraqi flags printed on it.

The American transfer of power to an Iraqi government hit the newspapers just this morning. Were these women celebrating that fact, or were they protesting something? I felt a bit uncomfortable. I'm sure they could hear my family speaking American English, so they must have known we were American. What would they think about these Americans sitting across the aisle from them?

I made eye contact with one of them. I gave a little smile, and she smiled back. She said something to the other women, one of whom turned around to give me a look, and quickly turned back. This second woman said something to the others, too, and then all three women started to giggle.

They giggled the kind of giggle that teenage girls giggle amongst themselves when they're making fun of somebody who just isn't cool, teasing the hopeless dweeb who will never, ever get it.

You know that giggle. In high school, I lived in constant fear of that giggle, the one that lets everybody know that you don't know the One Big Thing (s-e-x) that everyone else seems to know. The giggle both humiliates and confuses you all at once, because no matter how much theory you take in, there's no full understanding without experience, and you don't have it. And so you wonder, what is this mysterious information that you're missing?

I read so many blogs on both sides of the political aisle that I thought I was ready to discuss American politics with my European friends. But then came that giggle from across the train aisle, and now...now I'm just a confused American in Europe, holding an unanswerable question.