Foreigners Like Us

One of the great things about taking a vacation is getting lost in another culture.  Some of my favorite memories are of sitting in an outdoor café and watching the people go by, or finding a small local market to see another country’s version of Corn Flakes, or Ketchup.   It is interesting to see the Greek widows who, after losing their husbands, dress in black for the rest of their lives.  Or the hipster twenty-somethings in the Paris metro with their pointy, colored hair and ultra-cool mix-and-match fashions.  I love to hear the local language all around me on a bus or on the street while I try to discern what a mother is saying to her child, or what two young teenagers are jabbering about. 

This is why I find this trip to Italy so disconcerting.  Since arriving in Rome earlier this week, and subsequently in Venice, I have heard and met more Americans than locals.  Normally, a European hotel is filled with travelers from many lands.  It is exciting to come downstairs for the “breakfast included” morning ritual just to take inventory of the countries represented.  But on this trip, our downtown Rome hotel was filled with Americans.  The wait staff in the dining room did not even bother to great us with a gratuitous “buon giorno”—they went right to “good morning.” 

Exasperated, I was anxious to board the train for Venice, hoping that the retreat to a less metropolitan area would equate to more down-home Italian authenticity.  Finding my seat on the train, I popped open the lid on my laptop to polish off a blog or two.  As I emerged from my “writerhead,” I began to tune into the conversations around me.  Once again, the familiar sounds of my native language dominated the airwaves!  I stood up, deciding that a trip to the restroom was a good pretense to walk the length of the car.  Amazingly, the fully booked coach was packed with Americans.

After checking into our Venice hotel, we did what most tour books recommend: we got lost in Venice.  Walking up and down tiny alleys until the sun set, we waited until the lights came on in the various ristorantes and trattorias.   We shunned any establishment looking out onto the Grand Canal as too touristy, trekking instead up the most unlikely alleys and taking every conceivable turn.  At last, we came to a sign hanging in the alley with no English menu or queue of Americans outside.   We were greeted by a polite Venetian who wished us a buona sera before leading us through several grotto-like rooms to a small table for two.  We reviewed the menu, happy to find an assortment of native seafood and fish not available at the Cambridge Summer Shack.

As we awaited our appetizers I glanced around the room and counted eleven tables.  All were full.  I looked from table to table, tuning in to the conversations and gestures.  There were the three college-age girls taking photos for Facebook with wine glasses raised.  There was the well-dressed couple beside us who ordered the whole fish but wanted only the fillets served to them.  There was the elderly couple who struggled to pull the tiny cockles from their shells onto the plate of pasta.  The British couple in the tweedy, uptight attire.  The man who looked like Ed Asner but had a very low voice.   The old man with the young bleached blonde companion.  The newlyweds.  The wine guzzlers.  The vegetarians.  The complainers.  And us.  Every word spoken in that dining room was English. 

At some point, my husband and I began to contemplate whether there are locals in these towns doing the work of everyday life.  Understandably, tourism is a big part of Venetian life, and I imagine that the slump in the American economy must have taken its toll on a place like this.  But Venice is such a gorgeous place.  It is a tragedy to think that so many people who live here do so in service to us.