A Response to Class

I had a thought today in class that I didn't have completely worked out and so I decided to take advantage of the blog and try to articulate my thoughts here.
My thought spring board was the experience of dealing with my friend after she returned from Europe this summer. My friend and her mother went on a six-seven week long "vacation" this summer. They stayed in hostiles and saw the tourist sights. They visited London, Poland, and Italy in their travels. My friend came back basking in the glow of travel (I have yet to travel out of the country I admit). Something I found a little irritating was that she would generalize about the places she went. For example "Oh no! I will never buy flats. EVERYONE in Europe wears those shoes. I think they are ugly." or the generic "well in (insert European country here) they do things like..." It frustrated me. She visited tourist sights in limited towns in limited time in three different countries and she came back knowing everything about everywhere in Europe. The people are this the people are that. She didn't even spend those six weeks in one place which I think may have given a little more validity to statements because she would have spent more than just a day or two here and their on tours the whole time and would have had a chance to (maybe) experience the place rather than rush through an itinerary.
I could rant about this for pages and pages but I will try to bring it back to class discussion by saying that she has a picture in her mind now. Sure that picture is based on things that she saw and experienced, but she now feels certain that an entire continent is a certain way because three cities were such a way. I am trying to protect my friend by leaving out certain generalizations... I just realized that that makes this commentary tricky. Okay so point number 1. she had a limited, although meaningful, experience of these places and of Europe as a continent and decided that the rest of the place must follow the same rubric if you will.
Point number 2. is that she returned and spouted her thoughts and comments and experience as the "the whole picture of europe" thereby acting as the media in a sense. She relayed her picture to dozens (if not more) of people who did not have any European experience and so created (I speculate) stereotypes and passed on her picture and interpretation
I shall conclude with an admission that maybe this was a rant, and a disclaimer that I really do love my friend.