No Corkscrew

By David de Vries
THE EXPERIENCE OF traveling abroad, in a country unfamiliar in both language and custom, can generate cultural dissonances at almost every turn. Language – or the lack thereof – is the biggest obstacle in most cases. You order a meal with difficulty and then find that what you thought you had ordered, doesn’t in any way resemble what is placed before you “a tavola”. This is disconcerting, but if you’ve an adventurous nature, you can try it and hope for the best. Several of us have noticed that a transaction with our landlords can be frustrating experience, leaving us to wonder if language is the major impediment or if custom is the bigger culprit.

Our first group meal in Cagli was held at Darcy’s apartment. Just drop in a Euro and bring a bottle of wine and enjoy good food and good company. When I realized that there was no corkscrew to be found in the apartment, (that seems confounding considering we are in a country that has the second highest per capita consumption of wine in the world) I decided to run back to my place and pick one up. I saw Mario, Darcy’s landlord in the street, and thought to myself maybe he’s got an extra corkscrew. Surely it can’t hurt to ask. In my best gestural language along with my broken stutter of Italian, I managed to make him understand that I needed a corkscrew for the apartment. Mario’s nods of understanding led me to believe we were both on the same page. I was mistaken. He told me in Italian that he had a corkscrew at home but that there wasn’t one in the apartment. Nothing more. I wanted to say AND…

Now here is where lack of language comes back into play, since I was tempted to ask him if he wouldn’t mind if I borrowed his for a second, if I returned it right away. But I didn’t have the words. A delicate dance of social interaction was clearly not going to happen with Mario, and I figured the best thing to do was smile, say okay and go with plan A and get the corkscrew as originally planned.

But I was perplexed and slightly disgruntled at the turn of events. Had I committed a cultural faux pas? Was Mario just kind of a jerk? A landlord could be a jerk in any country after all. Or was there a cultural divide I wasn’t aware of? I don’t know the playbook here in Italy – the unwritten customs and mores that are so important in high context cultures. It’s hard to say. But I shall think twice before asking for something in the same situation again while I am here in Italy.