Having been spat at for being American (which I'm notably not), and having enough Canadian friends pissed off at the pretenders to the Maple, I figured it was a long time thing, for many reasons, to avoid being IDed as American when travelling.

having enough Canadian friends pissed off at the pretenders to the Maple

At first I thought it was cool, but it got widespread enough that people started going "hey, they're going to mess with us too, just in case we're incognito Yanks".

Also, the time I ran into a bunch of Canadians in York Minister. My mellow was harshed when they told us they were from "Vancoozer".

I was like "Dude, you're letting down the side. There's even a Vancouver in Washington." I was kinda miffed at being a flag of convenience for people that dense.

I remember once while I was studying abroad in Cape Town, I was talking to another UCT student, who asked where I was from. When I told her I was from the U.S., she said, "Oh, I haven't met any other Americans yet! I've met a lot of Canadians, though." Note that the study abroad program was overwhelmingly American, and I do not recall a single Canadian student who was there at the same time as me.

I've heard that there are cetain European countries that are more favourable to Americans than Canadians. Germany, I think might have been one.

However,there was a just a Canadian worker in Gaza taken hostage and released in the past week. He said his captors thought he was American at first, and treated him roughly. When they found his Canadian passport, their attitude totally changed.

When they were certain I was Canadian, they were very disappointed. Then, they told me, 'We love Canada.' That's wonderful to hear when you have guns pointed at you," an exhausted Mr. Budzanowski said yesterday in a telephone interview shortly after he was released after almost 30 hours as a hostage.

...

His former captors had taken a liking to him toward the end of the hostage-taking and one — the one who kept asking him to say hello to Canada — even gave him a phone number to call if he ever needed the help of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

[link]

The funny thing is this guy totally had a foreign accent to me. It sound liek English wasn't maybe his first language, so I wouldn't have pegged him as Canadian or American at all. I guess maybe if you're speaking Arabic all Western accents sound alike.

I've heard that there are certain European countries that are more favourable to Americans than Canadians. Germany, I think might have been one.

Not Holland, though. In Holland, we're still golden (liberators WWII).

The funny thing is this guy totally had a foreign accent to me.

I thought he was from Poland originally.

I haven't been to Europe in something like a decade, but the two times I was there it never occurred to me to pose as Canadian. I did, however, notice that identifying myself as San Franciscan rather than American always got a hugely enthusiastic response.

Try telling people you live in Texas. I sometimes hastily added that I grew up in New Orleans.

I noticed that, in many places in Ireland, I got a better response to "I'm from New York" than to "I'm American." There was one cab driver in Dublin who I had a long conversation with, and as I was getting out of the cab, he asked me if I was from the Phillipines. I said no, that I was American, and he asked, "And you've always lived there?" I said yes, I grew up in New York. He told me that I didn't talk like a "Yankee" at all. Never quite figured out how he guessed Filipino, though.

Heh. Last time I was in Dublin was *just* before the 2004 election--when anyone (including cabbies) figured out I was from the US, that's all they wanted to talk about (luckily, not supporting Bush and saying "I didn't vote for him last time either!" was a popular option)

Yeah, merea, me too. I was in Wales the whole semester through the elections, and I would have to deflect so many questions about being American and why I was voting for Bush, etc. etc.

By the way, how did we not hook up if you were in Ireland at that time?