The Sandbox: On the road with Yoav Lurie...

"West Virginia, mountain momma, take me home! Take me home country roads!" cried the thousand lederhosen-clad Germans packed into the Schottenhamel tent at Oktoberfest. They might not have spoken another word of English, but that didn't stop them from crying out to John Denver's home state like it was their own.

I left my CD player at home when I came to Europe. I was hoping to find something new and different, but somewhere between Krakow and Cordoba it hit me that for all the differences between Americans and Europeans, there is one common theme: We all like really horrible music. Next to every duomo and on every calle, there is a bad American song being sung in a worse accent.

She was doing the Harlem shake in front of the belfry in the Markt in Bruges, Belgium. The firm, flat brim of her baby blue Yankees cap was tilted just slightly to the left over rows of tightly knit corn rolls and matched her jersey with true gangsta-steelo. But, an uptown export she was not, for as the flagrantly Flemish feline walked away, she sang the only English words she knew, "Werrr gonna parrtee like its yourrr birfday!"

In a train under the Tuscan sun, two hours after I asked him if he spoke any English, the Italian schoolboy in slick Nike boxing shoes and a Detroit Pistons cap finally found a phrase: "Do jou know Emineeem?" To my approving nod joy captured the whole of his face and he blurted a distinct, "Ain't he da trueph brothah!"

In a world full of such amazing culture, these Europeans choose our pulp fiction and then bastardize it. I have no problem with the spread of the many fine points of American culture; I just have trouble accepting that 50 Cent is one of them.

Maybe it was the Roman street performer singing Michael Jackson or the Budapest teens spittin' Tupac rhymes or the fact that Justin just sold out Paris that pushes me over the edge, but I think it is time that I echo the words of my dear German drunks, "Take me home country roads."