Column: Happy tourists or ugly Americans: You be the judge

The summer before high school, I went to Italy to stay with my expatriate aunt and her Italian husband outside Milan. While my aunt's Italian friends looked with bemusement at my blue nail polish and belief that polyester's comeback would last past middle school, my uncle looked in disbelief at my apparently American vices: picking at my food, trying to cheat the train system and indulging a compulsion to put my feet on seats.

"Maybe that's the way things are in America," he'd say, "but I don't understand."

I've never quite agreed with the international stereotype of the U.S. tourist, dubbed not-so-affectionately the "Ugly American." So when we visit countries we wear matching tracksuits and take rolls of pictures; so what? Being much too hip and ironic, I don't take the tracksuit path myself, but there have been times when my friends and I do "tourist day" in New York, trailing tour groups that actually obey the Walk/Don't Walk signs, snapping photos and wearing fanny packs with glee. Well, we say that we'll wear fanny packs. We never actually do. But the picture-taking and loud marvelling at New York's gray air rings true. I've believed since I began travelling, at around age nine, that as an American I have a right to embrace my culture, however tacky and self-absorbed. Don't like it? Too bad.

What I didn't realize is that the Ugly American is much more than that, the cash-flashing and a propensity to speak at high volumes. This semester I'm living and studying in Sydney, Australia (a popular locale for Chronicle columnists, it seems), and although I've only been here two weeks, I can't count how many times I've stood near an American, looking away and wanting to tell the surrounding Sydneysiders, "We're not all like that, I swear!"

The study abroad program at University of New South Wales isn't particularly conducive to meeting Australians - for instance, I share my apartment with girls from the exotic land of Michigan. Frustrated by this after a few days, some friends and I decided to initiate some cultural exchange. We would prove that we don't all tawk like dis and know nothing about the world outside our borders. Clearly, the best place to do this was a pub, so off to the bars we went. Meeting Australians proved at first challenging. I thought I'd accomplished it several times, only to discover I'd been chatting with British backpackers, and it seemed that UNSW's entire study abroad program had determined to follow us wherever we went. "All I hear is American accents, do we need another round?" seemed a popular phrase.

Determined to talk to natives, we left the safe-zones of the Coogee Bay Hotel, about a block and a half from my apartment, and made it into the city, where we found some true-blue Sydneysiders, all buzzed and ready to talk with their jugs (not pitchers) of Toohey's New. I can't tell you the Aussies' names, but I can tell you that they knew how to have fun, and more pertinently, that they had some choice words about the U.S. and its residents, whom they refer to rather charmingly as "seppos." Septic tanks.

"Restaurants," one said. "Why do Americans have to rewrite the (expletive deleted) menu?" It seems our culture is one of the few that encourages ordering garlic soup, but could you make it without cream, gruyere on the side and light on the garlic? While attempting to explain, I had to think it over. Does it really matter if a barista makes my mocha with the chocolate in before the milk? At home, it seems to. Here, it seems ridiculous.

They moved on to cell phones, to which Australians are as much addicted as Americans, but refrain from chatting on in loud tones in public places, especially about their signficant others and recent . I'd noticed this the first few days in the country, especially on buses as most of the study abroad kids made pilgrimages to Randwick in search of the cheapest possible mobile with the most finicky features. Difficulty in finding them was broadcasted to anyone who cared or didn't care to listen, and once obtained, could not be left unused. We also talked about America's fast-food culture, how we seem allergic to walking and are obsessed with our cars; the ache in my calves from a week without auto transport effectively nulled any of my counterpoints.