Speaking of the American image in Europe, I'm an American guy living here in Europe, and a few years back my Irish friends and I had some problems with da POlice here in poland, basically being drunk and disorderly. Well after they let us go, and we were about 200 yards from them, my two Irish friends turned to face them and they shouted, "Ireland! IRA!" And the cops just stood there with blank looks in their eyes, and then I shouted, "USA!!!" and you could see that the cops were clearly irate and highly aggitated when they heard "USA" LOL