As a Romanian this is my oppinion

This entire conversation is crap. The movie was crap making profit off tragedies as did that *beep* flight 93. Don't give a *beep* about ethnicity. B1rd *beep* And that makes 4 variations on *beep* And the movies makes five!

wow, i can't believe this topic is still here.

Hey man, please don't use "Eurotrip" as an example of American cinema. That's what we Americans call a "B Movie".

I was surprised to read your post because I've been watching movies since I was a little kid (I'm 24 now) and from what I've seen, Europeans (Western Europeans, at least) are usually portrayed as sophisticated, intellectual and high-class. James Bond is an example. While I do agree that Eastern Europeans are often portrayed in American movies and thought of by Americans as "poor", there are explanations for that.

My first example is Czechoslovakia. My father's side of the family is Czech (making me 50% Czech). His grandparents came to this country from Czechoslovakia (before it split) in the early 1900's. They were dirt poor in Czechoslovakia and they were just as poor after they arrived here. My grandfather grew up in a slum apartment in "Hells Kitchen", which was a notoriously poor neighborhood in New York City. They didn't even have hot water. My grandmothers family wasn't much better off. Although my Great Grandmother (Bobca) died when I was only 6 years old, my father had known her well enough to hear what things were like in old Czechoslovakia. Based on those stories, I always thought of CZ as a "poor" country. Now that it's been Czech Rep. and Slovakia for almost 20 years, I understand things are better. Still, it doesn't enjoy the same amount of wealth that America, Canada, the UK, France, and other countries that Americans have greater knowledge of.

Next, there's Bosnia. When I was very young, in the early 90's, the American news was flooded with constant coverage of the Bosnian War for Independence. I was too young to understand exactly what that meant, but I remember my parents explaining to me that it was very dangerous over there and that many people, even children younger than me, were being killed or suffering and living in poverty. We went to church every Sunday, and sometime in 1993, a family of refugees from Bosnia came to our town and started coming to our church. I can barely remember them. All I remember is that we (at least my younger brother and I) referred to them as "the Bosnian People" and that they two or three kids and they were all very kind and grateful/relieved to be out of Bosnia. All the members of our church started putting together donations of money, clothes, toys, household products, appliances, etc. to help them, since they had almost nothing but the clothes they were wearing. I specifically remember that we gave them our washing machine and dryer because they didn't have any way to wash clothes and we could afford to go out and buy new ones. My parents constantly reminded my brother and I how fortunate we were to live in a safe neighborhood in a safe country and have food and clothes and nice things. I think most good parents in America try to instill in their kids those same values. From the perspective of people in other countries, it might sometimes look like all Americans look down on anyone with less money, but that isn't true. We don't pity or look down our noses at people with less, we just try not to forget how fortunate we are. I think sometimes, though, we have so much money, possessions, food, resources, etc. that we presume to think that anyone who isn't quite as rich as us is "less fortunate" and that may be why some of us think of people from Eastern Europe or other countries as "poor".

On a final note, in high school I was friends with a girl whose parents were both from Romania. She was born in the US but she spoke fluent Romanian. Her parents came to the US only a few years before she was born, so she was immersed in the culture while growing up. I took her to the Prom and we hung out a few different times and I asked her a lot of questions about Romania (which, admittedly, I thought was basically a "3rd world" country) and she was able to educate me about how it had changed in the few decades prior. Anyway, this young lady (who I'm still Facebook friends with) is one of the smartest people I know which, along with how beautiful she is, was why I liked her so much. So I personally don't think Romanians or any other Europeans are stupid.

We Americans have a lot of preconceived notions about other countries, usually regarding the wealth (or lack thereof) of its citizens, but I can assure you that the great majority of Americans don't think other people in the world are stupid, no matter how little or how much money they have. After all, America is, without a doubt, the country with the largest number of idiot millionaires ;)