Blog Post Prompt 1: Roma

When venturing to Italy obviously there is a big difference between both the languages and cultures of Italy, England, and the United States. However, the first thing that was extremely noticeable to Lauren and I was the difference in driving styles. We had to take a 40 minute taxi ride to our hotel. I had thought that the taxi drivers in the U.K. were bad, however when arriving in Rome and getting into a taxi there, I experienced what true fear really was. The frist driver that we approached told us in perfect English that he did not speak English and that he did not want to drive us. First of all, the taxi driver did not speak a word of English. Therefore, he was hard to judge what kind of greeting he used, the only wat that we could judge what he was saying was based on his tone...a and his tone implied that he was completely frustrated with us. We had to resort to pulling out our hotel reservation and pointing out the name and address of our hotel. He then agreed to take us to our hotel for a little over 60 euro (translation about ninety dollars give or take). We got into his taxi, and he began to drive. Lauren and I were pretty much terrified at this point. First off, the concept of traffic lanes does not exist in Rome. I mean don't get me wrong there are lanes drawn, but I assure you they are purely for decoration purposes only. Our driver drove in the middle of lanes, swerved in and out of them. He also cut people of at his leisure, and proceeded to drive into head on traffic. He drove straight at pedestrians, and did not pay any attention to motorcycles or mopeds. The driver basically drove like he was the only person on the road. On top of that he would squeeze into spaces that you would never imagine trying to put a car into. You would see an extremely small space, and think no way would he even attempt to put a vechicle through that. Oh contrare my friend, he would and he did. I think that Lauren and I probably thought that we were going to die at least three maybe four times. This taxi driver basically made us a nervous wreck.

When we arrived at our hotel our conceirage was an adorable old Italian man, and he said Hello in a thick Italian accent with an excited tone. We were created the same way when we went to the pizzeria next to our hotel for lunch. Another thing that I noticed in terms of common things said to us, were "Gratzi" (thank you) and "prego" it's nothing. We also heard "Ciao" (goodbye). Also a great deal of the people that we encountered spoke English pretty well, or at least spoke some broken English. We were able to get by throughout Rome pretty well. It was just a little bit wierd constantly being surrounded by this other language. Pretty much everyone around us was speaking Italian, and many of the signs were only in Italian. I was actually a little surprised at how many words I was able to pick out based on the little bit of background knowledge I have regarding the Spanish language. Who would have guessed that after the three years of Spanish I took in high school I actually retained something? Had you asked me last week if I remembered anything that I learned in Spanish class my answer would have been unequivocably no, but now I actually realized that I learned quite a bit.

In terms of the language barrier there was one specific altercation that I noticed between other Americans and some of the natives; specifically at our restuarant on the last night. There was a middle age man and his wife who approached the waiter and wanted a table. The man spoke to our waiter very loudly and very slowly, with a condescending tone. He basically treated the waiter like he was an idiot, and I'm thinking to myself in this situation you're the idiot pal, you came to an Italian speaking country and you can't speak the language, don't speak to the man like he is a moron just because you think that he can't speak English. And the ironic thing was that our waiter actual spoke English rather well. After the man sat down, he proceeded to ask our waiter if he was Spanish. To which the waiter replied "No I'm Italian." This event kind of epitomized to me why some Italians express frustration with tourists.

Something that I noticed that was different in Italy from the U.K. is the volume of the voices of people speaking. Many of the people in Italy spoke rather loudly, even louder than the Americans surrounding them. I found this very interesting after having spent so much time in the U.K. where people tend to speak a great deal softer. In terms of nonverbal communication, I noticed that there was a fair amount of shaking hands, and smiling. And for the most part many of the people that owned businesses near each other tended to be on friendly terms, often speaking back forth across the street to eachother. In terms of listening for words that I did not know, they were everywhere, since the language was Italian.

Basically what I learned from my trip to Rome was that it is important to try to communicate with the locals on a level that they will not find offensive. Try to learn words from their language, etc. But do not talk to them like they're morons just because they do not speak the same language as you do (English). I also think that it is important to take in this new culture, and appreciate it for its differences from your own. I found the Italian culture fascinating, and I would definitely be interested in returning to Italy someday.