Brooks: Will American tourists abroad be welcome, or at least tolerated? I found out.

I had an entire row to myself on the half-empty flight across the Atlantic.

And while it was nice to fly coach without someone’s elbow in my ribcage, all those empty seats were unnerving. Flights to Europe are supposed to be crammed with American tourists heading out and European tourists heading home.

But that was before President Donald Trump threatened Europe with punitive tariffs, called the European Union “worse than China” and announced that the E.U. was created just to “screw the United States.” That was before Minnesota’s homegrown Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called Europeans a bunch of "PATHETIC" (emphasis his) free-loaders in a not-so-secure Signal chat.

I pushed up every armrest in my row, stretched, and thought about recent headlines.

“The New American Travel Anxiety: ‘Will They Hate Us?‘”

“US expected a big travel year, but overseas visitors — angered by Trump — are heading elsewhere”

“‘It feels terrifying’: Why some Americans are anxious about traveling abroad under Trump”

My friends and I were heading to Italy by way of Ireland — two nations Trump had threatened with 20% tariffs on that oversized chart of his, followed by a threat of 200% tariffs on Irish whiskey and Tuscan wine. For months, we texted back and forth, wondering whether American tourists would be welcome, or at least tolerated.

I’ve traveled from Istanbul to Xi’an to Capetown to Lake Titicaca. The only other time I’d flown with this tiny flutter of anxiety in my belly was after 9/11, when I covered the 2004 Olympics in Greece. Don’t draw attention to the fact that you’re American, they warned us at the time. Don’t fly the flag. Don’t make yourself a target.

And then the plane landed and the Italian vacation started. And it was lovely.

I can’t speak for everyone on the planet, but the locals I met were friendly, welcoming and deeply, deeply uninterested in talking about Donald Trump. They weren’t angry at Americans. If anything, they seemed to feel a little bit sorry for America.

“You seem nice,” said the clerk in the Roman pharmacy where we had stopped to scan the shelves for a wild brand of Italian toothpaste that comes in flavors like rhubarb, anise and jasmine. Emphasis on the “you.”

We toured the Forum, shuddering as our guide pointed out the places where the fascists left their mark on the landscape — turning thousands of people out of their homes so Mussolini could repurpose ancient architecture as propaganda. The day before our tour, an American tourist accidentally impaled himself on a spiked fence at the Coliseum, but nobody seemed to hold that against our great nation.

In the middle of our trip, white smoke rose above the Vatican. We had a new pope. An American. A Midwesterner. Our first Ope.

An Italian volunteer admitted, as we idled next to him in an enormous line at the Vatican Museum, that he’d been hoping for an Italian pope this time.

“Mi dispiace‚” I said. “I’m sorry” was one of only three phrases I could remember from Duolingo, and it was coming in handy this trip.

“But I like Pope Leo,” he hastened to reassure us. “He has a face that is very simpatico.” You seem nice, Leo XIV. Emphasis on the “you.”

It turns out, the rest of the world doesn’t hate America nearly as much as we hate ourselves.

Adventure over, I headed back to the airport and started catching up on the news I’d missed. Immigration agents had seized a father at a gas station, leaving his two children behind, alone, in the car. Congress was making plans to slash health care for the poor and elderly to fund tax cuts for the rich. The president was shredding the Constitution’s emoluments clause as he prepared to accept Qatar’s “gift” of a luxury jet. The White House wouldn’t rule out the use of force to steal Greenland.

I had an entire row to myself on the half-empty flight back to America.