Will they condescend to use English when they ask where the train station is?

Apropos of Walldon’s post earlier about the dollar and the Swiss franc: with the dollar fast descending towards third world status at half a Euro, it won’t be long before European tourists start flooding this country. We, of course, will be lucky if we can spare a dime for a few days in the mountains, the beach – that’s the Catskills and the Jersey shore, not St. Moritz or Cancun, mind you – or the north woods. I can see pine paneling coming back big time. With two-star hotel rooms in Paris soon going for $500 or more per night, the Grand Tour for Americans will be left strictly to college kids willing to backpack, do their big city splurges in hostels, and subsist on baguettes, cheese and screw-cap wine.

So will the middle and lower middle class Europeans who can see America for next to nothing deign to make an effort at least to say "Hello," "Have a nice day!!!" and "Do you speak (fill in the blank)?" in our language? Or will they stand there and start shouting louder in Catalan or Finnish when we don’t get what they’re asking? OK, so turnabout certainly would be fair play, but at least a few of us tried back in the day. And they actually know it anyway. We were a great power once, and we are very proud of our language. Making the effort is something I, for one, would appreciate. You know, like answer with a smile and stuff.

Was it George Bush the Elder who talked about the “New World Order”? He was right, but I doubt if this is what he imagined, or who would be the most instrumental in making it happen.