Is this the year to cross the pond?

London

American tourists dress badly and talk too loudly. They think the world revolves around them and that every cabdriver and hotel maid should speak perfect English.

Even in the best of times, Americans sometimes fall victim to stereotypes, deserved or not, by Europeans. Now add the war with Iraq and the resulting antiwar demonstrations played out on TV screens and news pages, and it may appear that American tourists are about as welcome in Europe as foot-and-mouth disease.

Has Europe yanked the welcome mat out from under us?

That’s what I wanted to find out earlier this month on a three-city tour of Europe. In travels to London, Paris and Berlin, I wanted to see what life was like for U.S. tourists abroad. I interviewed more than four dozen people to sort out fact from fiction and to gauge how welcome Americans will feel in Europe.

It’s an important question for U.S. tourists, who love to visit Britain and the Continent. In 2000, a record 13.1 million U.S. residents made the trip across the pond. Two years later, the economy and lingering fears about terrorism had depressed that number to 10.7 million, according to early estimates. In light of the war with Iraq and the tensions the conflict has engendered among U.S. allies, those numbers may dip even lower.

The London Tourist Board & Convention Bureau estimates that the conflict with Iraq will result in a 15% decrease compared with last year in inbound tourism for Britain, costing the British economy as much as $3 billion.

To find out whether it is any stranger to be a stranger in a strange land these days, I chatted with Americans in London’s Leicester Square, at Paris’ Arc de Triomphe and in view of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. I talked with taxi drivers, hotel staff, train and plane personnel, waitresses and waiters, war protesters and average residents. And I heard rumors of all sorts, including one that had grown like an urban myth that had Americans being refused a beer at a bar in Paris in a display of anti-U.S. fervor.

Here’s what I found:

London

Leicester Square in central London is in some ways as American as New York’s Times Square, populated as it is by chain eating establishments. It is also the location of the TKTS half-price London theater ticket booth, a tourist magnet.

There I found Jayne Hufschmid of San Pedro, who has lived in London for the last eight years and on and off since 1986. “I’ve experienced no anti-Americanism,” she said. “Every time there is a conflict, Americans run away from Europe. I think Americans often have a tendency to see a difference of opinion and policy as anti-Americanism, and I just don’t think that is true.”

The sidewalk across the street from Westminster, in view of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, has been the scene of some recent large antiwar protests. An array of signs protesting the war on a recent Tuesday was displayed on a fence in Parliament Square. One quintessentially English placard declared, “War is naughty.”

Four protesters from the London Pensioners Assn. were picketing and distributing leaflets urging that pensions be linked to wages. Among these activists stood Patrick Coulton, 76, of Greenwich, who was wearing a vest that said, “No blood for oil.” What would he say to American tourists who were considering a visit to London?

“Oh, they’re most welcome,” he said. “We’ve got nothing against the American people.”

To check his theory, I decided to try the beer test, a little unscientific attempt to measure sentiment about Americans based on that rumor I’d heard about Paris. I visited a couple of pubs in Soho to perform this research. My beers were delivered with no more or no less aplomb or foam than in any of my previous visits to London. Strike one for mean rumors.

Paris

It was April in Paris. Daffodils and tulips raised their colorful heads in gardens across the city as though nature were declaring war on the fears of war and beckoning tourists to the City of Light.

And come we do -- about 20 million tourists a year, the most of any European city, according to the Paris Convention and Visitors Bureau.

For some Americans, the love affair with Paris soured after France split with the U.S. over the war in Iraq. The words between the two countries have been bitter, and I wondered how that would affect Americans in Paris.

I caught up with Christine Kilman of Toledo, Ohio, at the Arc de Triomphe. She acknowledged she had been apprehensive about coming to Paris. (She was here on business, and her husband, Jeff Ruehle, came along.) It was her second visit to Paris, his first.

“Now that we’re here, it’s fine,” she said. “In fact, the first time I was here they weren’t very friendly. This time it is just the opposite. I saw more animosity and protests when I was in San Francisco,” she said of a trip three weeks ago.

There was concern but not one cancellation among a group of landscape architecture students from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, who were spending 10 weeks in France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands and had been in Paris, their first destination, for nearly a week.

“At the beginning I was excited about the trip, but then got worried when we went to war,” said student Brooke Saavedra, 23, of Ventura. “We’ve only met a couple of rude people, but you expect that in Paris.”

Student Casey Morris, 21, of San Carlos, Calif., has been untroubled by his experiences in France. “Everything’s been fine,” he said.

But was it truly? After all, Paris was the origin of the beer rumor, so off I went for more research. In a bar in Les Halles, the service was friendly and there were smiles, despite my lame attempts at French. Strike two for the rumor.

Berlin

It was unseasonably cold here, so I bundled up as best I could and went in search of American accents. A couple of blocks from my hotel I came across an encampment of peace protesters near the American Embassy, just two blocks from the Brandenburg Gate.

The streets leading to the embassy were cordoned off and patrolled that morning by two German officers with semiautomatic weapons slung across their chests. A lone protester carried a placard along the police line while others slept in a makeshift shelter and still others cooked breakfast over an open wood fire. There were probably a dozen.

I wandered freely through their encampment. One sign included an American flag with skulls in place of the stars, the first blatantly anti-American sign I had encountered on this trip.

The cold weather forced me inside a nearby Starbucks to warm my California-boy ears. I listened carefully to customers ordering lattes and cappuccinos but heard no American accents.

I finished my coffee and wandered past a remnant of the Berlin Wall on my way to Checkpoint Charlie, the site of the onetime U.S. Army checkpoint into communist East Berlin. The Checkpoint Charlie museum across the street gets about 600,000 annual visitors. Groups of German high school students crowded into the lobby as bus after bus disgorged its passengers.

Even though Americans are the largest group of foreign visitors to Berlin -- nearly 140,000 of us last year -- I encountered none there.

Later that day, in the Westin Grand Berlin Hotel, I talked with Robert Maresca and Amy Cashwell of Philadelphia. Maresca had been in Berlin several days on business; Cashwell had flown in to join him for some sightseeing.

Were they concerned about being in Europe during a time of war?

“My knee-jerk reaction was yes, this is not a good time to be traveling,” said Maresca, who works as a consultant. “But then I didn’t think twice.”

Cashwell characterized their reception from Germans as cordial. “I wouldn’t call it friendly ... but polite, helpful,” she said. Maresca was more enthusiastic. “After interacting with people for nearly a week,” he said, “I’d go so far as to say friendly.”

All well and good, but how would Germany do in the beer test? The price of beer here was half that of Paris, and it was served with good humor. I was even formally introduced to Daisy, the cocker spaniel mascot of one tavern, who was happily seated on a nearby barstool. Strike three for nasty rumors.

Not one American tourist I met said he or she felt unsafe or any more uncomfortable in Europe than usual. Most said they found the residents friendlier and more helpful than usual -- even in Paris. And with shorter lines at major tourist attractions, low airfares, discounted hotels and spring in the air, there may never have been a better time to visit Europe.

The beer is still flowing -- and it’s even being served to Americans.

James Gilden is a Los Angeles-based writer.