The paper explores recent European-American relations and the way Americanisation, once a huge influence on the European culture, has now become a two-way process. Most observers have come to this conclusion through the examination of the historiography of American philanthropy abroad, which has led them to see Americanization as a selective process which can be transferred and adapted. Two metaphors have been proposed in order to help in the tracing of these changes, i.e. the highway and the turntable. While verifying these metaphors against empirical data, the analysts discovered another conceptual projection, called the mirror maze metaphor, which highlights the thus far neglected aspect of reflexivity.