For the past week and a half I attended a European Union simulation in Antwerp, Belgium. This was my first trip in Europe so I was able to experience the culture for the first time. At the seminar with me was college students from all over Europe including Scotland, Germany and even China. Through talking to different people I was able to learn a lot about how life is different throughout parts of the world.

However, it wasn't until lunch of my last day that I finally got to turn the conversation to what they thought of America. Of course, the conversation on the US started with the name Donald Trump. I was quickly met with laughter from the Belgian girls and Italian guy I was sitting with.

"We don't take him seriously. We just take him as a joke over here."

After quickly laughing off the topic of Trump 2016, we made a large jump over to the left and began speaking of Bernie Sanders. The other students began to say they think he would be the best candidate, but they believe he is "too European" to be an American president.

At first I was baffled at what "too European" meant. When asked to clarify their opinion, one little Belgian girl suddenly deepened her voice and said with limited English vocab, "You know... He's not all guns! And....big strong military!"

I couldn't help but laugh learning that when asking these Europeans what it meant to be American the only two words they could apply were "guns" and "big strong military".

Although obviously a little unaware of actual American culture, I couldn't really blame them when the most exposure to the US is the things they see on the news.

Although the opinion seemed to be that the US can be rather strange at times, one thing everyone I spoke to had in common is they all were talking about how much they'd love to come here.