My mother always says, “Guests and fish smell the same after three days.” She also always says “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him fish,” so I occasionally chalk these sayings up to an opium addiction and venture off to spend a week with relatives. This time I went to Vicenza, Italy to see my second cousin twice removed and his family, whom I had never met. The last time I recall seeing him I was eight and he was graduating from high school, so I figured it was about time to tighten the family bond, while also escaping boredom and starvation due to a swine flu fear in Egypt. I figured he could provide some needed familial comfort and risotto.
Education is very dependent on money. Year after year the American youth resubmits FAFSAs and takes out student loans. Though I too continue to compile thousands of dollars of government debt, I have found that spending money on traveling is also a great way to achieve an education. Through my travels I have learned more about cultures than any sociology or history class has taught me. Unfortunately, employers want to see diplomas and transcripts rather than passports.
Travel Lesson #1: “No Pushing” is only a rule in American Kindergartens
While in the Cairo airport I learned that not everyone went to preschool. Perhaps because it is an Arab nation “full of terrorists”, the first security scan is actually before the ticket counter. The guards let people through five at a time to deposit their luggage in to the first of four security scanners. Because everyone knows that pushing is going to make this process go faster, the Egyptians would push as hard as they possibly could each time the guard let through another five people. The goal must have been to covertly to squeeze through a sixth human being, thus making the process go faster? Astoundingly, the guard was on to their little intellectual scheme, and the pushers failed miserably, but they did succeed in giving me a bruise across my calves.
There was also no line courtesy within this pushing cluster. Wait, there was no line, just a big mass of men and their armpits wafting a stench resembling a cross between South Carolina bluff mud and cheetos accompanied by more touching than a petting zoo field trip. Look! White girl. American? Touch her. Is she real? The teacher in me wanted to scream out, “Please, stop pushing and keep your hands and feet to yourself” and the violated human instinct in me keep repeating, “Get away from me you revolting waste of life before I destroy your ability to procreate.” Either way, when I’m in a Middle Eastern airport, I try to refrain from speaking English or acknowledging my American heritage. I said nothing and thanked the Allah above when an airport employee came to save me from the depths of testosterone chaos. He led me through the crowd to the front of the line where I could immediately scan my items. Then he asked me for a tip. And then he told me I didn’t tip enough.
Travel Lesson #2: The French are Snobs.
I feel like this one is self explanatory, but as the story goes, I was ordering a much anticipated luscious coffee treat after a long night on an airplane. I’m serious about my beverages. If I had to choose between an inferior double shot skinny vanilla latte and the insertion of a rusty, splintered rake prong through my septum, I would take the torture. So, I ordered, “Could I please have a cappuccino with skim milk?” I get the pursed lips, one eyebrow raised reply, “Souhaitez-vous compléter entier ou écrémé?” “I’m sorry, I don’t speak very much French. Je voudrais du café avec skim milk?” She snobbishly smiles at her friend who then pours whole milk into the cup. Merci, beaucoup ya passive aggressive cowards.
Travel Lesson #3: Atkins was Wrong
As an American female, I have an engrained fear of carbohydrates and fat. I spend at least one eighth of my life looking at nutrition facts and labels in search of a fat-free, carb-free, calorie-free bite of deliciousness. I spend another fourth of my life working off my “healthy” food at the gym, and an additional eighth analyzing my bulges in a full length mirror and trying on yet another outfit. In Italy, this is not the case. Pasta, risotto, dark chocolate, wine, gelato, and other guilt laden pleasures have nestled themselves quite comfortably in the hills of Veneto. Within a day of my stay, my thighs perked up and whole heartedly embraced this new culture. Fantastic. However, as I ventured around town and enjoyed a typical Italian lunch of wine, soup, pasta, risotto, meat, salad, polenta, cake, and coffee, I realized that I was the only one with this problem. Why were all these Italians so skinny? Hadn’t they read Oprah’s diet plan and followed the ups and downs of Kirstie Alley? Where do Italians get these miraculous skinny genes? And most importantly, where can I get a pair?
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