UrbanBackpacker.org

Muses of backpacking the globe and other activites of a few outdoor, travel, and adventure loving urbanites. Including travel info on locals we've been to.

Monday, March 27, 2006

Lost in Translation


My life here is made up of extremes. If I step back to examine my time in Italy as a series of moments and experiences, they often don't make sense. Sunday was a great example of this.

Starting the day off with a trip to McDonald's automatically puts you in an American mood. Although in the 'states I can't stand the place, I've grown to really appreciate living across the street from the golden arches in a foreign county. Plus, when you eat pasta and pizza about 15 to 20 times a week, it's nice to break the monotony with a Chicken Premiere (sounds lame, but it rocks the shit out of a Big Mac), Maxi Fries, and a Fanta Orange soda. So far Sunday was great. No work, American fast food, and an evening full of NCAA Tournament basketball. Forget Rome, I took the night off from Italy and lived like a yank. At least that's how the day started.

After a late lunch it was off to the Abbey for UConn. Vs. George Mason. The Abbey is the bar I work at. It's technically an Irish pub but it's run by Italians, and frequented by American college students. It's also one of the few pubs here that shows every major American sports match and has legitimate American cheeseburgers.

The game was great. Probably the best college hoops game I've ever seen. I felt like I was in Boston again. Cold pints of beer, the smell of french fries in the air, yelling at the big-screen TV after every missed shot. At the final buzzer it was upset city. The little school from Virginia, George Mason, took down the mighty UConn. The Abbey erupted with a collective scream. High fives circled the bar as wolf-like yells were projected in every direction. Seconds later my American night was over. My night as a yank, cancelled, and I was on a theoretical express flight back to Rome.

"Andy!!!...", said Chilleste, the owner of the bar, "...Please tell American students that if they yell crazy for the games, we turn them off!". As the token American employee present-albeit my night off-I accepted this responsibility. It's been my job since the Super Bowl. Minimum collateral damage is how I look at my role as my boss' American bar ambassador. You see backpackers, cultural exchanges, body language, regional idiosyncrasies, and vocal intonation cannot be easily translated.

People feel more comfortable with their own cultural familiarities. A small fat man named Alberto serves you fettucine and overpriced Sicilian wine at an Osteria (small Italian eateries, like the one in "Lady and the Tramp"), I tell you to get lost after college basketball. It just works better that way for some people. Be honest, you wouldn't exactly feel comfortable with a Chinese-run taco stand. You don't want a Brit to give you dental advice. And you'd probably stay away from a flight school called "Air Allah".

In Rome, like in most big cosmopolitan cities-see New York, London, LA-these lines of distinction are becoming increasingly blurred. In fact, after the Abbey, I spent the rest of the night hopping between four languages and just as many continents. There were the girls from Bavaria who laughed at my jokes (English) until I called them allied spies. I had a discussion on fashion and soccer with an Italian. I said hello to a couple I knew from Barcelona. Ran into a little Bangladeshi rose vendor who I used to kick out of the bar when I was a bouncer. And finally to cap the night off, I ran into Joao (Brazilian) and some friends at the all-night coffee bar and had an hour-long conversation about, you guessed it, languages.

Joao was with a beautiful blonde American girl, her friend from Pennsylvania, and a young looking Italian. With a big Brazilian smile, I was greeted with Portuguese, my adopted third language. Joao knows this, and always talks to me in Portuguese, no matter how bad I tell him I speak it. Then without a pause, he's facing the blonde, all English. Back to me, Portuguese, and then Italian. I join in the melee of languages as best I can, we've got a rhythm going. There is actually a coherent multi-language conversation going on. Everyone's cool but the guy from Pennsylvania. What preceded really put my night into perspective.

"ENGLISH!!!" he yelled drunkenly, "Can't we all just speak English for the love of God. Ever since I've been in this fucking country it's nothing but blah blah blah in other languages. I know you all know English, so why are you trying to be a pain and not speak it?". Joao's smile faded fast. I could tell he was controlling his anger. He wanted to score with the blonde. He's lucky she was there, Joao would have plastered him all over the Piazza. Instead, he took the high road. "When I speak to you, I speak English" he said to the kid, "He (pointing to me) make a little easier with me to speak Portuguese. I make easier for him (pointing to the Italian) to speak Italian". Here we go, the cultural gloves are off.

The guy from Pennsylvania shrunk back in his seat a bit. He then turned from critical to admirational. "I can't believe you guys are actually having this conversation right now" he said, "I really wish I could just understand everything. I feel stupid that I never had to learn how to communicate in anything other than English". He was right, he never did, and neither did many Romans, Parisians, New Yorkers, or Londoners. In many circumstances you don't have to learn speak anything outside of your native tongue. In other circumstances it's a necessity.

We weren't speaking like this because it was a necessity. It just made things run smoother. It made Joao feel comfortable to hear his native tongue, and gave me some much needed practice with it. When he went into the small details of his stories, he spoke with me in English. We both spoke Italian with the Italian guy. Being multi-linguists broadened the level of the topics of conversation. We could use our own idioms, our own body language, our own accents.

Cultural rules were being stripped away by a lively chat, 22oz. Peronis, a bag of chips, and a hot blonde. Nothing was being lost in translation, and we still got to be ourselves. I was the same guy who started my evening with a Value Meal and NCAA basketball. Joao was still going to get laid in whatever language he felt like. We parted ways after some pizza and I walked home. Time to close up my culture passport and call it a night. I felt like there was a lesson to be learned from all this. Cultural judgments will fade when we communicate better with each other. I really believe that.

Maybe next time I see a Chinese taco stand, I'll grab a bite to eat. Lesson or not, however, I'll still never fly "Air Allah".

Sunday, March 19, 2006

Persona non Grata


On St. Patrick's Day I wake up, get some pizza, make espresso, complain about my women problems, and go out to paint the town green. Sometime after a beer with Basam and flirting with Valentina at Blockbuster Video, I get a free turtle. Not just any turtle though. I get a plastic, Senegalese (ahem...CHINESE) turtle for good fortune. "Uno regalo gratis per te" said the man who gave it to me, "Africano per buona fortuna". In other words, a free gift from Africa that will bring me good fortune. Why me? Why a turtle? Why free? Ok, so he tried to sell my a watch first, but when I said no and started to walk away he insisted that I take the turtle.

In Rome it's normal to be approached by recent African immigrants who try with all their might to sell you goods. In fact, it's normal in many big cities all over the world. Hell, they've perfected the practice in New York. "Rolex, Rolex...cheap Rolex mister", they say in English soaked in a thick colonial French accent. Here it's much the same. They work the same types of areas (tourist-filled pedestrian thoroughfares), have the same grueling hours, sell the same shitty goods, and come from the same countries; mostly north and west Africa. People here treat them the same too. Most ignore the sales pitch, some check out the merchandise, and some buy. Others shoot slight glances of fear and disdain, subconsciously showing their disapproval with their body language.

theoretically I should be used to this. I've seen the same guys, same sales pitch my whole life. They're the same here but I'm different. It affects me differently here. In a bizarre way we actually share a part of the same experience. Our lives and backgrounds are extraordinarily opposite but yet in simple terms we do the same thing. Let me explain. I left my country with two bags and a plane ticket. I couldn't speak the language. I needed work badly. I have no visa, no work permits, pay no taxes, and make my money off of tourists.

African politics aside-although it's shameful not to acknowledge this as the impetus for them coming here-they're here to work. They're here to survive, to keep a sustainable life for themselves. They eat pasta, drink espresso, and go to work every day like most other Romans. In Rome though, they're not welcome.

Berlusconi's government sees these types of immigrants as a social and economic cancer. Many Italians decry them in public. Rowdy sections of soccer "ultras" (hooligans) taunt African players on the field and even throw bananas at them during play. My question is, why not me? Why don't I get taunted or scoured at while I'm at work? The answer unfortunately is tragically simple: racism. In Italy the difference between a working tourist and an immigrant is the color of his/her skin.

Racism breaks down reason. Racism is why I work less than these guys and make more money. Racism is why I don't hide from the police when they come around. The real tragedy is that their negative reputation is almost entirely undeserved. I've never had a bad interaction with an African immigrant in three months here. On the contrary, I've been an accessory to petty burglary with Italians (not voluntarily), seen British brawls, American vandalism, and Venezuelan drug trafficking. That's not to say that crime doesn't exist amongst African immigrants. I'm sure it does. But they have more to lose if they get caught. With these guys there's no "plan B".

After the pitch fails, some guys walk away. Other guys will actually walk and chat with you. It's not always for the sale either. My first month here I had breakfast with a Nigerian man who gave up on trying to sell me socks. We got a coffee and a cornetto, split the bill 50/50, talked about music and parted ways. I have a friend from Cameroon who sells CD's in front of the grocery store. He calls me his brother and practices English with me every time I go shopping. I've never given him a cent.

On St. Patrick's day I got a turtle. No bargaining, no hustle, no tricks, just a turtle. A man I didn't know gave me a gift for good fortune. Good fortune that he probably needs more than me. I almost felt guilty for taking it. Three days later though it finally hit me. Giving makes a person feel whole. Giving is what truly defines our character and connects us as human beings. I'll never look at African street merchants the same. I'll always look them in the eye and acknowledge them as hard-working equals. In my own way, that's the turtle I can give back to them.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

The Ugly American


Pale faces, eager eyes, a sense of enjoyment, adventure, independence. Americans in Rome are as omnipresent as Pizzerias and motorini (mopeds). In the center of the city they're catered to as if they were personally invited to come. Some restaurants have an english menu. Bars play American pop music and show college basketball on satellite television. T-shirts are sold with American phrases written on the back. You can even get a budweiser and a hot dog from a street vendor.

Day-by-day and week-by-week new people cross the pond to envelope themselves in the vast complexity that defines Roman culture. They come for the monuments. They come for the bars. They come for the women, the men, the language, the food. In an odd way they come to say that they came.

We get a bad rap here. Sometimes it's deserved and sometimes not. The problem is that we behave as if life outside of the US exists without consequences. Americans often take the "When in Rome..." attitude a little too far. We do things that we'd never dream of doing back home. We drink in the streets, urinate in public, litter, and mock Italians in their own country, Romans in their own city.

Not all of us, however, are like that. Some of us revere the same culture that others mock. Some of us get swept away in the romance and blissful chaos of the Roman atmosphere. Some of us stand breathless in front of the Pantheon, gaze humbly at St. Peter's Basilica, and marvel at the fortitude and longevity of the Coloseum.

I use the term "we" because no matter what type of visitor you are, good or bad, to Romans you're just American. We're a nation of 250 million people, but to them we're but a single entity. We all represent the ugly American. Ugly or not, I'm always going to be who I am. I'm always going to be an American. If others choose to label me that's their business. The best I can do is stay true to my beliefs, respect those around me, and respect the culture I live in. After all, incincerity is the ugliest sin of them all

Sunday, March 05, 2006

"Ada" Moment's Notice, Anything Can Happen


There's a cliche saying that states, "when life gives you lemons, turn them into lemonade". But what happens when the lemons are women, and the lemonade you make out of them tastes more like old bar mix that's turned because you left it out for too long? In an odd and somewhat tragic way, (bear with me, I know the analogy's a stretch) this seems to some up my luck with women in Rome. Out here I am the "Cooler". I'm the black cat that crosses the road, the spilled salt, the shattered mirror. You get the point.

Now I'm not beating myself up, as much as it sounds like I am. On the contrary, my luck with women here is so bad that I find it funny. I'm even smiling and laughing while writing this article. I think it's karma because I've been so lucky with everything else here so far: two jobs, lots of friends, good roommate, great apartment. Women however, are another story. Lauren and Ada are the only two stories worth actually telling. I'll skip Lauren for now, and I'll just go straight to Ada.

If you had read my previous post "Nothing is Ever as it Seems", you'd know that Ada is the southern Italian girl who works at the hot dog stand near my pub. For weeks now we've been chatting with each other in a mixture of broken English and my white-boy version of sloppy street Italian. Each time we would talk, we seemed to get closer and closer. Finally I ponied-up and asked her out via e-mail. I used a webpage to translate text from English to Italian to make it easier. After a day or so, she agreed to go out to dinner and dancing with me and my friend Jason. Hallelujah, my first successful attempt at courting an Italian woman!!!

We agreed to meet on Friday night in Piazza Risorgimento at 8:30, and then walk to small Italian restaurant in my neighborhood. I met up with Jason at 7:00, got dressed up, and walked with him down to the Piazza, 5 minutes late for our agreed upon time. We took a seat on a nearby bench and began to wait. First it was 10 minutes, 20, 30, and eventually 45...no Ada. Just as we were ready to throw in the towel she sent me a text message. "Ciao Andy, I'm Ada....I'm have an problem so no dinner...I come to your house with a friend....and then for dance...ONE BIG KISS".

Jackpot baby, jackpot. Jason and I met up with another friend, grabbed some Egyptian food at "Mr. Kebab", and went home to drink some "Vodka Lemons" before the girls arrived. She got to my house shortly after with her roommate, a beautiful Roman girl named Emmanuella. We flirted, drank, played music, and practiced our respective new languages. Then it was off to the club. As we walked down the street Jason was flirting with Emmanuella and I was singing "Temptations" songs to Ada as she mumbled what she thought were the lyrics to "My Girl". Oh irony, how sweet you are. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Next stop, the "Cantina Messicana" salsa club.

Dancing was a lot of fun. Ada and Emmanuella both study dance at La Sapienza University, and previously attended Italy's National Dance Academy for high school. Those girls could really move. Jason and I weren't humble either, we're both avid dancers, and I think the girls were impressed by our confidence. Yet again, same pairing as earlier. Emmanuella-Jason, Ada-Andy. We took pictures of the four of us and decided to leave around 1:30. Emmanuella told us she had to wake up at 7 and abruptly decided to go home, much to Jason's dissapointment. The rest of us were going to "The Groove", a late-night hip hop spot that's almost as infamous as it is popular. Ada was willing to ditch her friend and go with two Joe Shmo Americans to an after-hours hip hop club that was a 15 minute cab ride away. We kept hugging and flirted like adolescents do; first funny faces, then tickling, pinching, nose grabbing, and noogies.

I was in like Flynn backpackers. Jason knew it, and he acknowledged me with a wink and a smile. When we hit "The Groove" we headed straight for the coat room, Ada's hand in mine, Jason not far behind. Then disaster struck. On our way to the coat room we ran into two girls from Los Angeles who had been drinking at the bar I work at the night before. "Andy Andy..." they shouted drunkenly, "....we're so glad to see you. What are you doing here?". Then one at a time, they leaned over to me and planted a drunken sloppy wet kiss right on my lips. Both of them. This was followed immediately with, "come back home with us, we're leaving right now." We had just jumped from a category 3 to a category 5 disaster, and I could see that Ada's face was not smiling.

I politely declined their request (it takes a brave man to decline that kind of request) and we hung up our coats without much discussion of the incident. Luckily for me, Ada didn't speak enough English to understand what they were saying. Jason split and Ada and I sat and chatted, then danced, then chatted some more. In the smoking room I went in for the kill, I tried to kiss her. She pulled back immediately and in her best English said "NO...you kiss every girls here before me. Why you do that?". The eye of the storm had passed and we were back to a category 5.

"No no no," I said almost desperately, "I'm not like that". Panicking, I grabbed my Cuban friend Ony who could speak Italian fluently. "Dude, I'm in trouble. You have to explain to her that I only want to kiss her, the other girls were just joking". It took him 10 minutes, but Ony got the job done. She was back to smiling and looking at me with widened eyes. Then I tried to kiss her again. "NO Andy, I can't. I can't kiss you" she said again. Now I began to speak Italian with her. "Why, what's the problem, I thought you liked me". "I do.....but I can't, I just can't," she said. Forget a category 5, the next words out of her mouth were like Hiroshima. In the next four words I saw our whole night vaporize before my very eyes. "I have a fiancee," she said, "so I can't kiss you". It was 3:30 in the morning.

The only word which could have been worse than that would have been husband. My face turned pink with embarassment. She apologized repeatedly and said that she still thought I was a great guy. She knew exactly how I felt and it showed. I think she was embarassed too. Apparently he's from her home town in Puglia and he studies economics in Milan. She showed me a picture of them kissing with a heart drawn around it and the words "Ti Amo" or "I Love You" written on it in black ink.

The next few minutes were really awkward. We took a shot of Jaegermeister and hit the dance floor again. We were both trying to pretend like none of that just happened. I began to scour the room for the girls from LA, no luck. That ship had sailed.

After a good dance to ease the tension we went to Dog-Out with my friend Ty who I saw at the bar. She gave us free beers and hot dogs. We said goodbye as if nothing had happened, and Ty and I split a cab home. I was exhausted, it was 6:00am at this point. I smiled, laughed to myself, and grabbed some pretzels from my kitchen. So ends another day in the eternal city. At least I had a fun night. I started out with a lemon, and in the end, this was my lemonade.

Friday, March 03, 2006

Berlin: Some Reminders of the Brutality of Goverment

Berlin Some Reminders of the Brutality of Government:

The NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in the Lexus and the Olive Tree that the worlds “New Economy” and the concept of Globalization in the modern era began on Nov 9, 1989 (in his new book he pokes fun at the irony that this date is 11/9 and has far more significance to the world than 9/11) with the fall of the Berlin Wall. With the collapse of the worlds most heavily monitored and fortified boarders signaled the collapse o f Communism in Europe and the end of the Cold War.

Never has any place stood out to me as a lesson in the follies of control. The obvious atrocities committed by Hitler and the Third Reich are the first to come to mind but that was only the beginning of the control exerted on Berliners in the last century. Three sights illustrate these follies perfectly. They are the Reichstag, The Empty Library, and of course the Berlin Wall. All are with in a shot walk of each other with a number of tours operating in the area (the best is the New Berlin Free Tour leaving from the Starbucks in front of Brandenburg Gate).

The Reichstag is where the control stems from Hitler’s use of the burring of the Reichstag as his opportunity to seize power. He claimed that the arson was actually a communist plot and a signal for revolution. Hitler said he was the man with the plan and persuaded the government into giving him absolute power for 30 days. Those 30 days turned into 12 years of World War and one of the darkest moments in the history of civilization. It was this centralized concentration of power that allowed Hitler’s dictatorship to rise and take control of Europe. The Reichstag remained in its burned shell state up and until just after the fall of the wall. The architect Norman Foster patched the dome with a glass top as an obvious reminder for the past. In addition a spiraling walk way that serves as an art gallery winds up along the dome. From here citizens can look down upon the government in session and elected officials can look upward to the people for inspiration. A fantastic physical analogy for how government should function, for the people.

The Second sight is the Empty Library. This is a subterranean library serving a a memorial to the Nazi book burring. You know that seen in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where Indy needs to go to Berlin to get back his father’s diary. When he gets there he saves it from a book burning and gets it singed by Hitler himself in the process. Well that burning is what the Empty Library is memorializing. Thousands of books by Jewish authors, liberals, foreigners, communists, and basically anyone Joseph Göbbels deemed unfit to read were tossed from the top window of the Berlin Library and onto a massive bonfire in the middle of. This included authors like Hemmingway, Kafka, Marks, and many others with some of the only copies in existence destroyed. The memorial is a completely empty room with empty white shelves enough to hold about 26,000 books or just ½ of what was burned. You look down though a glass panel in the middle of the square. There is a marker next to the window into the library that has a quote from Heinrich Heine another author whose works were burned. Although the quote was written in response to another book burring 100 years earlier, the words are a chilling forecast of what was to come.

“This was just a practice run. For those who burn books also burn people.”

The final sight is the one that dominates the central Berlin landscape at almost every turn. This of course is the Berlin Wall. Erected in 1961 by the soviets as a means to better control the population of Deutsche Demokratische Republik and in particular the population of East Berlin it quickly became the symbolism of the metaphorical Iron Curtin. Eventually the wall really became two walls with a “killing zone” located in between both. The Soviets made sure that it was secure and employed highly sophisticated security measures to thwart would be defectors. If trying to cross you were forced to one of the 3 designated crossing points Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie. The latter being the most infamous of the three. If trying to cross on your own you would be meet with attack dogs on guide wires, land mines, machine guns designed to fire at sound and motion, and of course armed soviet boarder guards. Within the confines of the wall your every as a citizen your every action was monitored, regulated, and controlled. The Gestapo had some 1 agent to every 400 people during the Nazi era. By the late 1970’s the KGB was in the range of 1 agent to every 8 East Berliners. The state knew when you farted. This was all at the fore front of an effort to shape and control German thought into the perfect socialist state.

By 1989 the relaxation of media regulations in the Soviet Union two years earlier had started the disintegration of the Eastern Block. By Nov. 1989 and with the help of a few blunders on the part of the East German DDR government the border was open and the wall was coming down. I was 9 at the time but its significance is clear. Few other events have shaped our world like this and it has defined the world I will grow up in and the differences between the one my parents did.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

English by Intimidation


"Forget the Grammar, Learn to Speak!" is the motto of the Callan method of teaching English. And at the Eil School in Rome, we do exactly that. From the moment you step into the classroom until the moment you leave you are inundated with nothing but English. Not just regularly spoken English though, that would be too soft, leave too much room for error. No, at the Eil School we yell. We stand up, look you right in the eyes, and assertively give you the English language as if we were your drill sergeant, and you were Private Pile in "Full Metal Jacket".

A typical class sounds a little like this. "TOMORROW I WILL GO TO THE CINEMA!...WILL I GO TO THE CINEMA TOMORROW!?!?", then without giving them the time to think or even move, we lead the student's answer along with ours. In unison this time, we both yell "YES, YOU WILL GO TO THE CINEMA TOMORROW!!!!" Any error in pronunciation by the student is quickly corrected by repetition from the teacher. For example, if the student struggles with the word "cinema", we repeat it louder and slower with a bit more annunciation. We say, "CI-NE-MA, CI-NE-MA, CI....NE....MA!!!!!!", and eventually they get it.

As my first teaching job in Rome, or anywhere else for that matter, I found this method of teaching to be rather shocking. Don't get me wrong, I'm one of the loudest people around. It just seemed a little bit too forceful for me at first. I thought, "why would anyone subject themselves to being screamed at in a foreign language for weeks on end, and to top it off, pay about 30 euros an hour for the privilege???". Then it hit me when I met students who had worked their way up through the ranks to the higher level classes. They all spoke English. It worked. It worked in the same way training a dog does. Your puppy doesn't know what the fuck "sit" or "stay" or "good boy" means. If you yell it at him/her enough times and show it what to do however, it will. The difference is that a dog can't speak it back to you, people can.

The human brain is a lot more perceptive than we give it credit for. We innately learn what we feel we have to in order to survive or succeed. For example, I live in Italy, I want to order food, no one in my neighborhood speaks English. After 2 months here I can now order food, make variations on my order, and flirt with the girl serving me. Survival baby, survival. I also do my work schedule (Bartending) in Italian, tell Gypsies to fuck off in Italian, explain my illnesses to the pharmacist in Italian, and make sorry attempts to get laid in Italian (almost never actually works but it's worth a shot). You get my drift backpackers? We learn what we have to and not what we want to. That's the brilliance of the human mind.

The irony of the whole matter is that I've lost my voice after teaching for 5 days with bronchitis. I'm on the sidelines for now until my vocal chords heal a bit. But rest assured I'll be there bright and early on Monday morning, ready to scare the English into a few more Romans. In a sadistic way it's fun. And who knows, maybe someday someone can scare some Italian into me.