One of the things I like best about traveling abroad is comparing similar experiences and seeing how they’re handled differently in different places. One of my absolute favorite things to do while traveling, for example, is going to a grocery store wherever we are. Poor John, I have dragged him around grocery stores in France, Italy, Croatia, Egypt, the Netherlands, Belgium, and now Spain. I think it’s a fascinating way to learn something about a culture and its habits. In Spain, for example, there was a huge section- as big as, say, the pasta sauce section in a U.S. grocery store- all of cooked peeled whole peppers, packed in tins, ready for stuffing. The Spanish really like their stuffed piquillo peppers, is what I’m saying. Grocery stores are also a great place to get souvenirs and gifts- no one wants a tiny replica of flamenco boots glued to a magnet, but they sure might like some Spanish paprika or some French sea salt.
A variant on this theme is watching how people interact in certain common situations, and how that varies place to place. Waiter and customer, for example, is a dynamic that can be really different overseas. For example, the following actually happened:
Me: Senor, la cuenta por favor
Waiter: [In Spanish, which I was able to understand but because my Spanish ain't great, I am unable to replicate]: But there are still potatoes on your plate.
Me: [Again, in Spanish, which I feel compelled to point out because did you know I studied French? And John studied Spanish? And yet I did 90% of the talking on this trip? This is what it's like being married to a perfectionist, folks]: Yes, but there are too many, we can’t finish. Just the check, please.
Waiter: No. Finish your potatoes.
Me: * surprised silence, wishing I had zippy Spanish comebacks *
Can you IMAGINE that happening in a U.S. restaurant?
My favorite, though, was what happened on the plane on the way home. For long and boring reasons, we ended up flying Alitalia through Rome on our flight home (let’s take a really long trip and make it Even! Longer! Genius!) So the plane from Rome was filled largely with people returning from Italian vacations, including one huge blended family sitting across the aisle from us and taking up about half the plane. Seriously, there were like twenty of them, with children ranging in age from 2 to 20, several parents, some grandparents, a few aunts, some cousins… it was a big crowd. And they were LOUD. For the entire trip, they shouted across the aisles at each other, laughed uproariously at things that weren’t funny, and played their souvenir tambourines from Sicily. (Oh, how I wish I were kidding. Who gives a 2 year old a tambourine on a plane? Seriously, who?)
A the plane was preparing to depart, the flight attendant walked through the aisles to confirm all the people who had ordered special meals. After rhapsodizing for no fewer than 5 minutes about how wonderful the buffalo mozzerella was in Italy, I was somewhat surprised when the mother of the large family stopped him and said “I’m supposed to have a lactose-free meal, and my daughter is supposed to have a gluten-free meal.”
The flight attendant consulted his list. “We have a vegetarian meal for you, ma’am, but I have no record of a gluten-free meal.”
“VEGETARIAN?” she practically shrieked. “I have never seen a vegetarian meal that wasn’t just covered in cheese! I need LACTOSE FREE.”
“Well, madam, we have a vegetarian meal for you,” he said. “Also, the only gluten-free meal we have on board was for a woman in 15-F, and she’s already confirmed that it’s hers.”
“But I spent an hour on the phone arranging these meals,” said the woman.
“Did you confirm them when you checked in?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “No one told me I needed to do that.” And that’s when she really pitched a fit. “This is outrageous. I spent time and money arranaging this, I was assured that our special dietary needs would be met, this is a ten-hour flight and now my daughter is going to be starving, this is totally unacceptable. I mean, why did I even bother if you were just going to ignore my requests? We need a lactose-free meal and a gluten-free meal. We need you to get them. This is ridiculous!”
And this is where it got awesome.
“No, madam, it is NOT ridiculous,” said the flight attendant. “There are twenty-five special meals on this plane, and yours is the only one where there has been a mistake. Someone has made a mistake- it might have been the ground crew, but it might have been you. You did not confirm the meals. That is not ridiculous.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Because he was so RIGHT, you know? She was being unreasonable- the door of the plane is closed, what is he going to do now about the fact that your special meal didn’t make it aboard? And she is SCREAMING at the man, like that’s somehow going to solve it. But in the U.S., customer service culture dictates that the flight attendant would have been falling all over himself to apologize, to assure her they’d bring them as many extra snacks as they had, to try to cobble together a gluten-free meal, whatever. And to hear a customer service agent call out a customer on the fact that it might have been their fault that things got screwed up? It was just so ITALIAN. It was hilarious.
So yeah. Some people love travel for the museums and culture. Apparently I love travel for grocery stores and customer service battles. To each their own, you know?