Americanization of Amsterdam

Last weekend on my way to Amsterdam, I met a few guys about our age on the ferry was talking with them about a music festival that was happening in town that they were attending and I was thinking about going to. We somehow got onto the topic of music and throughout the whole conversation, they wanted to talk about American bands more than the European ones I was trying to ask them about. I think I knew more than they did. I figured that might be a fluke, until I had a similar experience the next day with a different group of girls from Amsterdam. All of a sudden I noticed how abundant American references were within the culture. A girl at our restaurant was wearing a Boston T-shirt, but couldn't tell us what state the city was in when someone asked. McDonald's ads were everywhere, but I could find almost none for other restaurants (especially anything local). The American flag was thrown across tons of fashion items in nearly every store we went into, and when we looked at the newspapers, there was a hugely disproportionate focus on American news (especially entertainment related stories). When I told a guy on one of our tours that I was in a sorority, he started asking me really specific questions about the ABC Family show Greek and the movie The House Bunny... questions I couldn't even answer. I overheard a group of definitely non-American friends talking about how they wanted to throw an America themed party for 4th of July next year. For such a short weekend, it seemed like I was immersed in huge group of Americans and merely placed within the geographic context another city, with probably even more examples of American culture pervading the lifestyle than I can readily remember. It was almost a reverse culture shock, as it seems natural to have the British-American culture sharing dynamic, but very unusual to have such a huge presence in a place like the Netherlands. It was incredibly interesting to see how prevalent and popular we were in their culture, considering the total lack of influence they have on our entertainment, our news, our fashion, and our lives.