DAYTON, OH—After a whirlwind six-day trip to Paris that his coworkers have already heard about four separate times, local accountant Greg Tilson returned home this week having absorbed none of the French language, history, or culture, but having mastered an encyclopedic knowledge of how small the food portions were.
“The croissants were, like, half the size of what I’m used to,” Tilson told anyone within earshot at Monday’s staff meeting, unprompted. “And don’t even get me started on the steak frites. I had to order dessert just to feel normal again.” Tilson reportedly visited the Louvre for eleven minutes, spending the remaining five hours and forty-nine minutes of his museum day searching for a restaurant that served, in his words, ‘a reasonable amount of food.’
Travel psychologist Dr. Elaine Figueroa says Tilson’s experience is disturbingly common among American tourists. “We see this pattern constantly,” Figueroa explained. “People spend thousands of dollars to stand in front of the Mona Lisa for nine seconds, then dedicate the rest of their vacation to aggressively Yelp-reviewing bakeries for not understanding the concept of a snack.” Figueroa noted that 68% of tourists she’s studied can’t name a single French historical figure but can describe, in painstaking detail, the exact moment they realized a ‘large’ soda in Europe is what Americans would call a ‘sad joke.’
Tilson has since purchased a beret, which he wears exclusively to Panera, and has begun ending sentences with ‘oui’ in a way that makes his wife visibly wince. He is already planning a trip to Rome, where he intends to form strong, loudly-voiced opinions about pizza slice-to-topping ratios. “I didn’t go all the way to Europe to leave hungry,” Tilson said, gesturing at a photo of the Eiffel Tower he took while actively complaining to his wife about bread. “Next time I’m bringing snacks. Real ones. American-sized.”
