The Ugly American
. This is the moniker that US tourists have earned overseas. Some of the common traits you would attribute to such people are rudeness, over-aggressiveness, being too demanding, or not making any effort to understand or accept the culture of where you are. Conversely, you can try to be a good guest in other countries by being polite, patient, trying to speak the local language (as much as you can), and accepting the local culture for what it is (meaning, different from home, not better or worse).
For a large part I think this stereotype is undeserved. Not because there aren't a lot of Ugly Americans
, but because there are an equal number of Ugly Insert_Nationality_Here
. While we were in Italy, we saw close to equal numbers of Americans, French, Germans, Japanese, and Chinese that would fit the definition of Ugly
. There was nothing special about the Americans, other than the language they spoke. About the only group of people we didn't see an Ugly
category for was the British.
In general most foreign visitors tried to be polite, speak as much of the language as they could (and learn more), and try to go along with the culture.