The beer, in its duty-free bag, before I had to return it.

Dear State Department,

I spent the last week in Prague, on a business trip. It’s a beautiful city; you must go sometime. Before my departure, I stopped in to the duty-free shop in the airport to pick up some famous Czech beer, so I could share a taste of this rich culture with my friends back home. That’s become standard during my travels: I did it in Iceland, I did it in Australia. Both times, like this time, the folks at the airport happily sold me their booze. But when I went through security at the airport in Prague, I was stopped.

“This a mistake,” the woman at the x-ray machine told me.

“No, no,” I said. “I just bought this at the duty-free shop.”

“This a mistake. No beer.”

“But I just bought this at the duty-free shop,” I said, again, as if she missed it.

At the first sign of me getting argumentative, four stern, uniformed men appeared behind me. One pointed at me and said, as if scolding a child, “It is new policy of your country. Your country! No beer. In EU, you can bring beer. To America, no.”

I tried to reason with them, but they weren’t having it. “Policy of your country,” they’d keep saying. My country. My country. And oh, State Department: I was ashamed. Ashamed to be American. Ashamed that here I was, in this foreign land that had been so good and welcoming to me, and yet I cannot be more than a representation our silly, unwelcoming laws. I don’t even know what these laws are for. No beer? Really? What’s a terrorist to do, make the pilot drunk?

Listen, really: There’s fighting religious extremists, and then there’s letting me and my friends have a few beers. And if we (if you!) cannot distinguish between the two, then we too continue to be extremists, a country who actively advertises our distrust, a country whose people (me!) are embarassed when a foreigner says, “The policy of your country,” and I cringe because I feel, like they do, that those words are insulting.

State Department, I don’t ask for much. But really, let me have my fucking beer. Ok? It’s just a few fucking cans of beer.

Thank you.