Misadventures of Language

Language? Yes language… when traveling to foreign lands, it can be real source of adventure or misadventure! I avidly remember an incident from 2004 when my brother and I went to Bangkok, my first step out of India. The language barrier came to show its ugly face when our tuktuk (auto rickshaw) took us to a brothel, whereas we wanted to go for scuba diving. It was so funny trying to explain scuba diving with our body language. Had there been an open sewer there – as we have many in Delhi – I could have explained our intent for a deep dive much easily!

Keeping my lingual experiences in perspective, I was quite excited about my Euro trip. Each country en my route had different codes for communicating. I obviously had to prepare for safeguarding myself against any situation of deadlock in communication. Although quite difficult for me to choose between the two, I would still not like to drink wine, when all that can satisfy me is plain water. Only 12 hours to go, and I had still not started my packing; I was wandering at ‘Nai Sarak’, scouting for language aids. Luckily I found Rick Steves’ phrase books in Spanish, Italian and French. I was happy that these books could save me from deadlock of communication, but I didn’t know that nothing could save me from miscommunication!

My first brush with miscommunication was in Barcelona, an extremely vibrant city, with people around till late hours. Around 11:30 PM after landing, I was looking for my hostel, which was located in a kind of down town. While crossing a lane, I saw a group of Nigerians sitting very close to each other; it seemed as if they were consuming drugs. I tried to overlook them, but suddenly, one of them stood up, came to me, and without uttering anything, touched his nose twice while nodding his head. I was hell scared on the very thought of even talking to a druggy in a foreign country. I thought he was asking whether I needed any drug. I just moved on without responding. Later, I passed through the same spot again, and this time, the same guy asked whether I was looking for any particular location. I said yes, and he said “I asked you the same earlier also?”… Oh my God, what a classic misunderstanding. I didn’t tell him what I had thought but I did become his friend till the time I stayed in that location.

The next big thing happened in Florence, Italy. Italian being one of my favorite cuisines, I was always excited about trying traditional food in Italy.

At a family run, non-touristic restaurant (you would hardly find people speaking English at non-touristic spots), I ordered ‘Bocconcinni’ on the recommendation of a waitress. Although I insisted for garlic flavored Bocconcinni, the waitress convinced me that I should go for the plain one to taste the most authentic version of it. And when this thing came on my table, I was awed. How could I even think of eating balls of mozzarella cheese, stir fried in just tomato gravy!!!

Perhaps many such instances happened during my entire Euro Trip; today I remember them all as funny situations. I am now not scared of misadventures of miscommunication, because they make the perfect memories.