Poor Stacia Datskovska. The student at New York University recently wrote a piece about why she hated studying in Florence for her semester abroad. Before arriving, Datskovska imagined “summer flings with people who called me ‘bella’”. What she experienced was different. “I grew to despise the sights, hated the people”, who she describes as “hostile, inconsiderate, and preposterous”.
The column is hardly a significant contribution to the literature of travel writing. Nor is it the most offensive account of an American in a foreign country ever written. But that it was met with such deep hostility speaks to a profound contemporary anxiety with what Datskovska did: dare to write unselfconsciously about a foreign country.
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