I am a Canadian living and working in Barcelona and I agree that absence does make the heart grow fonder. I find myself longing for the weirdest things (Tim Horton’s donuts)… as well as the really big stuff: family, friends and country.

I have travelled a great deal in Latin America and in Europe but I have never, in ten years, seen a Canadian sporting a maple leaf pin or Canadian flag badge. I rarely, however, stay in hostels so perhaps I am missing some of these maple leaf sporting travelers.

When my mother travelled to Great Britain for the first time in the 1950’s, she said that some Canadian people (herself included) wore a small Canadian pin or flag because WW II had only been over for a few years and many Canadians were proud of the role that our country played. She said that she was well taken care of by strangers who saw her little pin.

I, myself, have never felt the need to wear my citizenship on my knapsack or my sleeve. I AM Canadian and I know what that means for me.

While we are asking tricky questions about nationalism, I wonder why a few Americans who are traveling or living aborad respond that they are Canadian when asked where they are from. I actually saw an American acquaintance do this here in Barcelona. A guy from Boston approached our group and asked where we were from. The man in my group said “Toronto” and then they chatted about sports in Canada and the USA. After the young packpacker went on his way, I turned to the man and said, “I didn’t know you were from Toronto.” “I’m not” he responded. “You never say that you are from the USA!” I was astonished. Recently, two Canadian friends were visiting and a guy on the beach heard us speaking English and asked where we were from. We named our three respective Canadian cities and he said “You are pathetic. Why don’t you just have the courage to say that you are from the Unite States.”

These are difficult waters to navigate.

Telling me what to say, think, feel, or believe is un-American.

Waving a flag doesn’t make you a true American. I don’t know exactly what does, exact perhaps standing up for the poor and the weak, advocating for equality for all people, allowing people the freedom to say, do, and feel things that you disagree with, participating in the democratic process, etc. It’s something we should all aspire to, but I doubt there are too many of us who have achieved this.

Anyhow, as an American, I respect your right to believe that flag-waving correlates to pride for one’s country. I just respectfully submit that you are wrong.

On a side note, I can also say this, because it’s my blog, and I can say whatever I want. Woohoo! But what I say now is enough. The point of this post was to state how fortunate I am to be American, and how that can be too often overlooked by travelers. You can agree with that idea. You can disagree with that idea. But I highly encourage you not to make leaps in logic or make wrong claims about how I feel about my country. Because, you know what, this blog isn’t a democracy; it’s a dictatorship. (Insert evil laugh.)

I agree though. I’m especially annoyed by American ex-pats and travellers who have nothing good or positive to say about the US. There was a guy like that in the group that was studying abroad with us and I think everyone ended up hating him.