Americans. Yuck.

I stood behind my Dad, watching as a perfect yellow round scoop of Italian lemon gelato was dished up onto a sugar cone. In the background, the Leaning Tower of Pisa threatened to tip over. I was eight and I had just finished climbing the lopsided tower with my family.

United States of America? The gelato man asked in halting English.

I hoped my Dad wouldn’t answer. I didn’t have the gelato in my hands yet.

The man handed me my cone. Dad nodded yes. I expected my lemon gelato to be snapped away before I tasted the cool tanginess on the tip of my tongue.

Ah, Americans. The man smiled. I retreated, in case he changed his mind about liking us.

Our trip started in France, where we climbed to the second floor of the Eiffel Tower. But what I really remember of France was my parents being ignored when they asked politely for directions. The French waved them away like they were dirt. Americans. Yuck. Go back to the United States.

We did go back to the U.S.

I never really thought of our family as Americans until we traveled through Europe.

In the U.S, I thought of us as an immigrant family. My parents had thick accents, my Austrian Oma lived in the basement, and Coca Cola, pizza, hamburgers and French fries were not on our menu. We ate sausages, sauerkraut, and goulash.

Dad told us that in the United States we could do anything. You have freedom.. But I took freedom for granted - until I went to school, worked, lived and traveled in other countries.

As a young man, my father was forced to work in a German labor camp. Latvia, his birthplace, was occupied by the Germans and later by the Soviet Union. He managed to escape to Switzerland, but the remaining family was trapped behind the Iron Curtain until 1991.

Because of his history, I developed a interest in traveling behind the Iron Curtain. My relatives from my father’s side were stuck there. I wanted to see how life, absent freedom, was lived.

One of the places I visited was East Berlin when it was under Soviet control. I passed through Checkpoint Charlie and the Berlin Wall. The wall was erected in 1961 to stop mass defections from East to West. To stop freedom of movement. Prior to the wall being built, 3 ½ million people fled the East.

The people left were imprisoned in their countries and cities. Guard towers lined the wall and there was an impenetrable dirt death strip between barbed wire fences that few who tried to cross survived.

East Berlin was eerily silent and lifeless. Buildings dull – unpainted, the streets barren, the stores empty of merchandise and people.

Leaving East Berlin, I felt lucky. I could leave this place where people were fenced in like zoo animals. I had a United States Passport.

While studying at the University of Vienna in Austria, I traveled with other students to the Soviet Union.The hotel we stayed in, in *Leningrad, separated us from travelers from Eastern bloc countries. We were not to engage them, and we had separate dining areas. We quickly picked up on the charade, noticing that we were served better food and that our tables and décor were nicer.

One night we bumped into some of the Eastern bloc teenagers in the hotel hallway. They were East Germans. They’d never met anyone from the United States. We congregated in one room and talked into the wee hours of the morning about life, our differences, our similarities, the United States of America. Germany. Communism, and freedom.

They wanted to know everything. What music we liked. What we did. What we ate. How we lived. They were starved for information. They wanted our Levi jeans. We traded what we could.

I’ll never forget their eagerness to know about people living in free countries. Their curiosity. Their dreams and hopes of someday obtaining freedom themselves. Freedom to stay, go, or travel. Freedom to go to school or not. Freedom to improve life. Choices we, as citizens of the United States, take for granted.

It was then, that it hit me how unfair it was that this group of teenagers, just like me – at the beginning of life, could not explore the world as I was doing.

Freedom. I had it. They didn’t. It was surreal. We parted ways in tears.

When the Soviet Union fell, I wondered about these teenagers and how they used their newly acquired freedom.

Later in life, my husband and I attended a U.S. citizenship ceremony for a friend. We’d known this young man when he lived in Cuba. He entered the U.S. with nothing, just like my parents. He took any job he could to support himself; waiter, plasterer, landscaper, dog walker. After becoming a citizen of the United States he worked fulltime while studying to get a Master’s Degree. He embraced freedom.

I was lucky to be born in the United States, but I think I was luckier to leave the United States. To have the opportunity to visit countries that held their citizen’s captives. To meet people living without the option of freedom. To see life through their eyes.

What makes the United States special? Why do people risk their lives to move here, away from where they were born?

Freedom. Choice. Opportunity.

Life. It’s yours to live. Go all in.

Do you take freedom for granted? What if one day you woke up and it was gone?

*From 1924-1991 the city was known as Leningrad. In 1991 the city name was restored to St Petersburg.