#12 It’s the little things… (English)

Imagine, you’re in a restaurant or in a bar somewhere in Italy, and you urgently have to go to the toilet. You follow the sign which probably leads you down a narrow staircase where you eventually find the toilet. One for the ladies, one for the gentlemen. Luckily, it isn’t occupied and you rush inside to do your thing. You’ve just barely unzipped your trousers when somebody knocks intrusively on the door. What do you do? 

My integration went super smoothly. Right? Well, most of the time… 

Moving abroad means that you will probably have to deal with a new language and surely with a different culture. How essential it is to speak a few words for you to actually start feeling at home somewhere will be acknowledged by anyone who’s ever travelled to a country of which you didn’t speak the language. Also, a different culture can be quite something. However, most things about Italy have become common knowledge by now, haven’t they? The passionate Italian who speaks with his hands as much as with his mouth and who worships la mamma.  The fact you really can’t order a cappuccino after eleven in the morning, nor a savory breakfast. Pineapple on pizza is worse than the evilest sin and Italians applaud loudly when their plane has safely landed. Groups of youngsters on scooters who crave a liter pistacchio ice-cream instead of a kebab as a midnight snack to accompany their beer and cigarette and your full bowl of pasta carbonara that was actually only a starter. But of course, there’s so much more than that. You can prepare yourself for a foreign language and new culture. I’ve learned Italian over the past four years by texting and calling with Italian friends on a daily basis, taking an intense language course in Naples, listening to Italian music and – take this as a very good advice – switching the language on my phone to Italian. And that Italian culture? Well, it actually felt like my second nature from the very first day I arrived, so my integration went super smoothly. Right? Well, most of the time… 

Besides the new language and culture, you’re confronted with a third category of novelties. However, nobody ever speaks about these

Because besides the new language and culture, you’re confronted with a third category of novelties. However, nobody ever speaks about these. You can’t possibly prepare yourself for them, as nobody actually knows which strange habits this mysterious third category contains. The Italians themselves don’t even realise they do and say things in a different way than anyone outside Italy would, plus, these things are no ‘funny facts’ or ‘nice-to-knows’ the Lonely Planet would want to spend its spare page space on. But then just when life happens, these ‘little things’ can actually lead to pretty funny, and pretty uncomfortable situations.

In other parts of Europe – in The Netherlands and Great Britain for sure – Chinese people have opened restaurants all over the place serving very much to our European taste adapted ‘Chinese’ dishes. In Italy, the Chinese people have completely conquered the household industry

In my second week in Rome, I got invited to come along to the Chinese. Yummy? Not so much as I’m not going crazy for that sticky food. No wonder I was only happy when I discovered that ‘the Chinese’ in Italy doesn’t refer to a Chinese restaurant at all. So, what happened? I was at the twins, the two super young girls that I’m teaching English. Around seven, their mother took her handbag, urged me to come with her and yelled to the girls “let’s go to the Chinese?!”. Immediately they jumped up of joy with their little arms outstretched in the air: si, si, si!! Wow, they do love their Chinese, I thought, while at the same time realising I actually hadn’t seen any Chinese restaurant outside China Town. Despite the fact I didn’t want to be unpolite – in Italy you can hardly refuse dinner if not for some emergency situation – I tried to come up with a good excuse. With my biggest smile I thanked her for the invite but declined it anyway as I had ‘another dinner to go to later that night’. “Ma nooo Anne!”, yelled the mom, laughing about my mistake. What was the matter? In Italy ‘the Chinese’ doesn’t refer to a restaurant, but to casalinghi instead. In other words: little shops cramped with stuff. You can buy literally anything: from (plastic) toys to (synthetic) costumes, from washing soap to fake Tupperware and from swiffers to glittery jewelry boxes. If that’s not heaven for two toddlers, I don’t know what is. In other parts of Europe – in The Netherlands and Great Britain for sure – Chinese people have opened restaurants all over the place serving very much to our European taste adapted ‘Chinese’ dishes. In Italy, the Chinese people have completely conquered the household industry. By way of doing research for this blog, I have taken a little stroll around the block. And indeed, at a surface of not more than one square kilometer I’ve come across five casalinghi, all ran by friendly Chinese people. 

To your biggest surprise, nobody is waiting in front of the loo. Who on earth was knocking so hysterically on the door then? 

But wait, you’re still on the toilet and there’s this intrusive knocking. Most likely you yell something like “Occupied!” or “Just a second!” or maybe even “What’s wrong?”. Nobody responses however. Maybe someone is really bursting for a pee, or perhaps the way down to the toilet was too long for a little child who now has had a ‘little accident’. Anyway, probably you feel completely rushed and hastily you come out of the toilet. To your biggest surprise, nobody is waiting in front of the loo. Who on earth was knocking so hysterically on the door then? 

One day, an English student really had enough of it: “Could I not just %$#*%#$^ pee here in peace for a minute, you crazy impatient Italians?!”

Last Thursday, I was writing in a bar again and when I went to the toilet I witnessed a slightly uncomfortable toilet scene once more. The toilet was occupied – indeed for a while already – and the lady waiting before me in line, a young tourist, had checked the door handle already twice. Not to rush the person inside but rather to double check whether the toilet was actually occupied. Shortly after, an elderly Italian woman appeared who looked very angrily at the tourist, waved her bag as a mean of a threat and loudly complained about the uneducated behaviour of ‘today’s youth’. The tourist looked at her in surprise – she has had no bad intentions at all – and mumbled some apologies. Then I caught sight of the little sign next to the door that reminded the people – in Italian – about the polite behavior of always knocking on the door before trying to open it. It made me think back about that – by foreigners often considered as weird – habit of ‘toilet-knocking’. I remember very well that happened to me too when I just started studying in Italy four years ago. In that one minute you would spent in the University’s bathroom, at least a couple of people would knock on your door. Being Dutch, I initially considered that pretty impolite like all other international students, as if they wanted to say ‘come on, hurry up!’. At times, it resulted in rather amusing situations with the international students yelling things from the toilet as “Just wait a minute!” or “Yes, it’s occupied, wasn’t that clear by now then?!”. One day, an English student really had enough of it: “Could I not just %$#*%#$^ pee here in peace for a minute, you crazy impatient Italians?!” leaving the Italian girls completely speechless about all those protest sounds coming from the other side of the door, and having them continue their search for an unoccupied toilet. 

A classic example of different views on what is considered to be polite

A classic example of different views on what is considered to be polite. In Italy – where toilet doors are not often equipped with those ‘occupied’ signs – you don’t try the door handle to check whether the door is locked or not. You simply knock, and after a brief “occupato” (occupied), you go and wait a little further down the hall. So while I witnessed that rather uncomfortable situation between the old Italian signora and the young tourist, I couldn’t help but smiling. Toilet-knocking? Surely the Lonely Planet didn’t tell you about that! Nor about the fact that in Italy, you can buy anything from a Chinese, except ‘a yummy Chinese’.