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The tinkling bell above the door announced our entry into this English village pub, causing the regulars at the bar to reflexively glance in that direction, the glance turning into a gaze, taking in these four decidedly non-locals filing into their domain.

We were at the halfway point in our weeklong cruise on the Thames and had moored our rented 32-foot cabin cruiser along the riverbank, planning to reverse course and head back downstream the next morning. The crew consisted of three close friends and me, middle aged men commemorating my decade-turning birthday. We walked up into the village in search of a pub, because, hey, it was 4:00 in the afternoon, and we weren’t setting sail until morning!

We had entered the John Barleycorn, which like many British pubs, offers several rooms in which to imbibe a pint – the front bar, back bar, and various other rooms.  We walked self-consciously through the front area, passing a number of stubbly men hunched over their beers and two guys in wheelchairs, one of whom circled around a pool table, shooting a game with a young girl who looked to be around ten or eleven.

We ordered beers at the bar and then found an unoccupied sitting area in the back, furnished with various settees and easy chairs and worn rugs under foot. We settled onto two couches, the  afternoon sunlight streaming in through the small windows. No sooner had we relaxed and taken a first sip of our beers, when a woman appeared in the doorway and enthusiastically said “Hello, friends!” She was of indeterminate age and carried a small dog of indeterminate breed. She could have been thirty, or maybe fifty, but I guessed around the midpoint of that range. 

Now, a word about my dearest friends who were with me in this moment: Several of them – OK, all three – are natural conversationalists and “interviewers” – gregarious and naturally curious, easily and eagerly engaging complete strangers in conversation.  This trait in and of itself is not a problem, as long as it is tempered by some sort of Internal Warning System: “Caution! Abort questioning! You are entering a Dysfunctional Zone!”  There was something about this woman that triggered my alarm almost immediately, but these three forged ahead in tag team fashion, asking question after question, encouraging her to continue talking. The first warning sign: As she talked, she went to each of us in turn and thrust the dog into our laps, enthusiastically motioning us to take photos each time. This poor dog had the sad, passive look of a creature who was resigned to its lot in life – or maybe it was pleading, “Please, help me!”

At last, she got to my brother-in-law Greg, at that time a prominent pastor, and, rather than putting poochie in his lap, the spirit moved her to jump into his lap herself, clutching the dog and inviting us to take a picture. (I have the only existing copy of that out-of-focus photo, which I’m hoping will help fund my retirement.)

I forget all the particulars, but she rambled on about how she was a dance teacher and singing coach, and I seem to remember something about her claiming to be a professional actress in Spain some years ago; but she was now the coach for a talented young lady who was soon to compete in the “Has Reading Got Talent?” TV show competition, coming up in Reading, UK.  She wondered, would we like to see the young lady’s act? Would you believe, she was actually present at that very moment in the pub!  As we hemmed and hawed, she scurried off through the pub, returning in a minute dragging her protégé – the girl who had been shooting pool in the front room!  She also carried a small cheap boombox that she evidently had stashed somewhere.

The Performance

She introduces this poor girl, who stares nervously at the ground in the presence of this captive audience of four complete adult strangers.  The women enthusiastically whispers to her, pumping her up for her performance.  She places the girl center stage in front of us and pushes the Play button, turns up the volume, and the tinny soundtrack starts: “Almost Paradise”, the theme song from the movie Footloose.

As the girl starts to sing, the two men in wheelchairs materialize in our back room, and the women whispers to me that one of them is the girl’s father.  The future superstar dutifully sings, dramatically and off-key, with her mentor swaying and clapping along. When the woman makes eye contact with any one of us, she grins and tilts her head vigorously toward the girl, as if to say, “Isn’t she amazing?”

Oh, almost paradise
We’re knockin’ on heaven’s door
Almost paradise
How could we ask for more?
I swear that I can see forever in your eyes
Paradise

Just when it seems that it cannot get any more cringeworthy, the song reaches its instrumental interlude, and as the woman traces the rehearsed movements in the air like a marionette puppeteer, the girl twirls stiffly, arms akimbo, in what I assume is meant to be some sort of dance move.  An eternity later (60 seconds), the routine is over, and the woman leads us in an enthusiastic round of applause.  The girl hurriedly exits stage right, followed by her rolling fan club.

As I search my memory for what happened after the performance, I come up blank.  I would guess that I encouraged my mates to hurriedly finish their beers, lest they prolong the interaction with our barmy new friend. The next thing I remember is that we were safely back on the boat for the evening.

The next day, as we motored downstream on the Thames, we once again passed through Reading.  As I gazed at the buildings along the bank, I thought to myself, “God, I hope Reading’s Got Talent.”

I am standing at the entrance of a shopping mall in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, having come here to break the monotony of a third night alone in the hotel, to walk around and people watch. It is August, where the high today was 110F/43C, and the heat is still suffocating even after dark. My Uber has been summoned and should arrive any minute.

Scanning the plate numbers of the swarming cars, I spot my ride, which is a small, older model car – not typical for Uber. The first thing that catches my eye as it pulls to a stop is that all four windows are open. I hop in the back seat, and the driver, a wiry, youngish man dressed in the normal male outfit of white thobe and red and white checkered ghutra, greets me in Arabic. His sharp features are dominated by a broad, toothy grin and wide-open eyes, a mildly discomfiting expression, in that it doesn’t change throughout the ride. We drive through the dark streets, and with each moving wave of light that washes over the car, I see that grin looking back at me in the rearview mirror.  I would be more nervous if he were not chattering nonstop to me in Arabic, even though he has surely picked up that I don’t speak the language.  As he speaks in a conversational tone and gestures, I respond at pauses with “uh huh”, “yes”, “sure”, hoping that I’m not inadvertently promising to marry his cousin.

We speed along, all windows open, the flow of air hitting me in the face like I’m sitting in front of a hairdryer. In a moment, I hear a rustling sound and see between the front seats that he has plunged his hand into a crumpled plastic grocery bag near the gearshift and is rummaging around for something.  Then he reaches his arm back, thrusting his fist in front of my face, and as his fingers slowly uncurl, his palm holds something dark and wrinkly. In a passing flashing of light, I see that it is a huge date.  He nods invitingly, saying what I assume to be the Arabic version of “bon appetit”.

I pluck it from his palm and see no appropriate choice but to pop it into my mouth. It is sticky, sickly sweet, and hot.  I chew it, forever it seems, trying not to think about how long it has been stewing in this steaming car or when he last washed his hands.

Thirty seconds pass, and then all of a sudden, his empty palm is positioned in front of my mouth. He gives it a couple of quick shakes, indicating that I am to spit the pit into his hand, so I do. He tosses it out his window, and within seconds, again the rustling, and a second hot date is proffered for my snacking pleasure.

The cycle is repeated, but then, when the third helping arrives, I thank him profusely and have to repeatedly refuse his insistent offers.

The 15-minute ride comes to an end as he pulls up in front of the Holiday Inn. I get out and thank him, as he pulls from the curb, still grinning and talking away. The experience reaffirms two cultural lessons that I learned long ago: First, the rule of thumb is that, when offered something to eat in another culture, the default is, don’t refuse. And second, be prepared to stretch your culinary comfort zone!

Monday, March 29, 2010 looked to be an unremarkable start to a normal work week in Moscow.  My commute to the office was a 30 minute trip by subway from our station, Park Kultury on the Red Line. The Moscow Metro is extremely crowded at times but amazingly efficient: over 8 million riders per day, with rush hour trains every minute or less.  Some Metro stations are deep underground, with steep escalators hundreds of feet long, but my end of Park Kultury station is much closer to the surface, with access to the platform by stairs.

Over the weekend, we would have chatted with our grown sons.  One of the tradeoffs of living eight time zones away is not being able to keep up with their daily activities as they go about their lives, but they were always in our thoughts.

That Monday morning I would not have been aware that another father, 1200 miles away from me was preparing for his workday as a Russian Literature teacher in a village in the Republic of Dagestan, in the North Caucasus Region of Russia.  Rasu Magomedev had a 27-year-old daughter , Mariam, a teacher with three university degrees, who lived at home with her parents but was away, supposedly visiting friends.

In the same region, another young woman Dzanet Abdullayeva, 17 years old and living with her mother, was not at home either.  She was later remembered as a promising student in her village who recited poetry in local competitions.

Both young women were not at home because they had travelled to Moscow, where their lives would soon intersect with mine.

As I gathered my things for work and prepared for the 7-minute walk to the metro, the first female suicide bomber’s vest detonated at Lubyanka Metro Station on the Red Line at 7:56am , killing 26 commuters and injuring scores.  The bomb was packed with bolts and screws to ensure maximum lethality.

At 8:30, I walked down the stairs to the platform at Park Kultury and was puzzled to see that it was much more crowded than usual.  Trains were stopped at the platform in both directions.  A Metro employee was walking hurriedly through the crowd with a portable microphone and speaker, broadcasting a tinny, unintelligible message (in Russian of course).  I stepped into a car but quickly realized that everyone was exiting the train.  When everyone had disembarked, the doors slammed shut, and both empty trains accelerated down the tracks in opposite directions.  I watched as the crowd flowed shoulder to shoulder toward the exit at the far end of the platform

I stood there on the platform in a moment of indecision:  Do I wait until the trains start moving again, or do I go above ground and find a café for a coffee until things clear out?  I decided on the latter and was about to turn and walk toward the exit stairs as another train pulled into the station.

At 8:38am, as the train doors opened, a second female suicide bomber detonated her bomb, approximately 60 feet (18 meters) from where I was standing. I heard the explosion and saw the flash in my peripheral vision.The sound was not like a movie explosion but rather a loud, echoless bang. People screamed as the platform instantly went dark and quickly filled with smoke.  Local news would later report that people stampeded, but my memory was that people around me started moving toward the exit in an orderly way.  There was no running or pushing, because that was not possible in this tightly packed space.People were sobbing but otherwise it was silent except for the scuffing of feet and the rustling of winter coats.  I didn’t realize how close I was personally to disaster until I shuffled with the packed crowd into the growing daylight as we started up the stairs to the street.  On this cold March morning, the black parka of the man ascending ahead of me was splattered solid with someone else’s glistening blood and small chunks of flesh.

Once on the street, I started the short walk back to our apartment.  About halfway there I decided to call Cheryl, in case she might happen to see a report on the news.  As I leaned against a wall to call, the shock began to set in. 

I later learned that this bomber had killed 14 and injured many more.  I was “lucky”, I realized: She had two vests, but only one detonated, hence the lower number of fatalities. Also , hers was detonated as the doors opened but while still on the train, so the blast went through the carriage and straight outward. If it had gone off after she had exited the train, things might have been different for me.

What were the complicated motivations of these two young women?  There are numerous theories, which is way beyond my ability to comment on. But the Park Kultury bomber was the 17 year old widow of a terrorist she had secretly married and who had been killed earlier by Russian forces. These “black widows” as they are called, were recruited for such missions – whether voluntary or coerced.  Like the refrain we often hear in terrorist attacks, the father of the other woman – the school teacher – expressed disbelief that his daughter could have done this.

In a “life goes on” pragmatic reality, the Park Kultury station was back in full operation by 5:00pm that day.  I stayed home the rest of that day, but later I decided to walk to the supermarket.  But really, on the way to buy a loaf of bread or whatever, I needed to go back down to that platform and walk through it.  By that time, there were mounds of flowers and groups of people standing around solemnly, with the only sounds being the arriving and departing trains.

I must say that on that morning, at the moment I was back up in daylight and leaning against that wall, I felt very alone. Here we were, living and working in a country where it was not easy to travel into and out of at that time, and with infrequent contact with my home headquarters office. I didn’t drive in Moscow, for a number of reasons, so for a week, I took a car service to and from work.  The trip took twice as long, and Moscow traffic adds its own risks, so after a week, I was back on the Metro.  And it continued that way for the remaining four years in Moscow, without incident. 

I think that I am a resilient person in general, and this proved to be true in this situation. I bounced back quickly, realizing from experience that Moscow is basically a very safe city, and that we now know sadly that such attacks can happen in Boston, London, New York, Brussels – and the list goes on.

Life abounds with “what ifs”. And this experience was one for me. If I had not stood where I was but had decided to move with the bulk of the crowd toward the other end, the timing would have put me directly in harm’s way. On the other hand, had I left the apartment earlier or later, I would not have been on that platform. at that very moment.  Either way, although it was eleven years ago, rest assured that I remember that morning like it was yesterday. 

Choose my favorite café in Brussels?  You might as well ask me to choose a favorite painting in the Louvre or book in the New York Public Library.  The ridiculous abundance of options makes such a choice a daunting task.  In Brussels’ hundreds of cafes, you can sip tea in elegant Art Nouveau surroundings next to well-heeled matrons with their lap poodles or drink a beer at a rustic table in a café with tobacco-stained walls.  I haven’t kept a record, but I estimate that I have been to several hundred Belgian cafes over the past 20 years.  Narrowing the list to one would be impossible.  OK, I’ve done it: Café Belga.

Place Flagey in the Ixelles is dominated by the old National Radio building, a striking Art Deco building that now houses a cultural arts center and a café.  Café Belga occupies a large L-shaped space, with large windows to the north looking out over the square and a multicultural neighborhood, while the west side overlooks the string of small lakes that stretch a mile southward, surrounded by stately homes.  Café Belga occupies a prime spot on this transitional line.  On the weekends there is a bustling market, with stands for fresh fruits and vegetables, meats, cheeses, olives, rotisserie chicken, household goods and flowers. There are many food trucks and pop-up cafes if you’re in the mood for food or drink.  Each weekend we compete for a parking space with shoppers, fellow café-goers, and neighborhood locals.  We walk past a portable food stand set up on the edge of one of the ponds, where a dozen Portuguese men stand laughing and talking as they eat small sausages and sip beer or porto, rain or shine, year-round.

The clientele at Café Belga changes depending on the day and hour.  (On weekends it is open from 9:30am until 3:30 the next morning.)  Here are several glimpses at different times of the day.

Saturday, 9:30am

When not traveling we are weekend regulars here, spending at least two hours on Saturday and/or Sunday mornings.  Living in a small urban apartment with no lawn allows us to follow this typical routine:  Arrive at 9:30am, buy a cup of coffee.  Read or talk for an hour.  Purchase a second cup of coffee.  Talk or read for another hour.  Walk to the market to buy some olives or flowers for the table.  Drive home. Or not.

The weekend morning crowd is a mix of families with small kids, older couples, young hipsters, and a high degree of dog density.  A young couple pushes their toddler in a stroller through the crowd. People line up to order their lattes or teas at the bar, shared by an unshaven man who sips his first morning beer.  A woman grabs one of the newspapers in four languages before seeking a window spot.  The dogs from two adjacent tables dance in a circle, tails wagging and nostrils flaring, as their owners chat.  Cheryl and I unpack our bag: books, newspaper, magazines, calendars, work stuff.  We settle in for a leisurely morning.

We have developed a smiling, nodding acquaintance with a couple more regular than us – the Clauses.  We have nicknamed them this because of the husband’s appearance: rotund physique, rosy cheeks, bushy white hair and beard, rimless spectacles and red suspenders.  Mr. and Mrs. Claus are as regular as Christmas, always sitting in the same corner booth, usually arriving before and leaving after we do.  Employing their rudimentary English and our basic French, we exchange pleasantries each weekend.  I always make it a point to be nice and friendly.  It’s possible that he’s not the real thing, but why take chances?

6:00pm on a different Saturday

Cheryl is out of town for the weekend, and I have stopped by Café Belga on my way to a documentary film at the cultural arts center theater next door.  It is a balmy spring evening, and the place is packed inside and at the tables outside.  I get a beer and share a table with two couples also waiting for the theater box office to open.  The demographics have shifted from the morning crowd:

          Average age:  35

          Drinks being ordered: 50% caffeine-based / 50% grain or grape-based

          Music being played: Popular tunes, moderate volume

9:00pm the same night

I am now back for a post-movie drink and have settled into an elevated booth on one edge, where I have a great view of the place.  I have a good book with me, but people-watching soon trumps reading.

          Average age:  29

          Drinks being ordered:  30% caffeine-based, 70% grain or grape-based

          Music:   Rock, high volume

11:00pm still the same night

I’m still in the same booth. (Hey, I’m a bachelor for the weekend, OK?)  The crowd is now wall-to-wall, and the energy level has intensified.

          Average age:   20

          Drinks being ordered:  (Sorry – I’ve misplaced my research notes.)

          Music:  Techno, deafening volume

I’m into the moment, feeling the loud beat reverberating in my bones and feeling almost twenty-something myself, until the cold realization hits me: These youngsters are probably wondering “Who’s the old coot in the corner, and why is he smiling with his eyes closed?”  On that sobering thought, I decide it’s time to head home and walk to the tram stop to catch my ride home.

10:00pm another Saturday night

My colleague Greg and I have stopped by for a beer on one of his last evenings before moving back to the U.S.  After an hour at Café Belga, we decide to walk around the neighborhood before taking the tram back to our apartments.  The neighborhood around Place Flagey has a large Portuguese population, which is reflected in the stores, restaurants, and bars.  We walk past Café Braga and Churrascaria Sol de Belem to the tram stop, where we read that the next tram is not due for 20 minutes.  So we duck into a tiny bar nearby for a nightcap. We look around and quickly realize that we might as well have walked into a working-class neighborhood bar in Lisbon.  The whole place is perhaps 10 feet wide and 30 feet from front to back. Through the thick cloud of smoke (This was 2005 or so) we see about 20 men drinking and conversing loudly in Portuguese.  As we walk toward the bar, the place falls silent, and 40 eyes turn to take in the two obviously non-Portuguese strangers who have intruded into their world.  There’s no way to gracefully just turn and leave, so we smile and push through the crowd to the bar.  We nervously look at the one beer tap, read the name and order two Cervejas Sagras.  An older gentleman standing next to us smiles and says, “Ah, Cervejas Sagras, a good Portuguese beer!” (Translation: “You passed the test.”)  The bartender places two small glasses on the bar, and our new amigo toasts our good choice.  The ice broken, everyone returns to their conversations, and we relax and sip.  We do a double take when a young man walks in with a large parrot on his shoulder.  When he smiles, it is evident that his set of teeth is a few short of the maximum.  If this were a movie, one might understandably declare this character over the top, but his friends greet him in a way that indicates that he and his feathered sidekick are regulars.  We finish our beers, bid our bar mates adeus, and head to the tram.

Postscript: Saturday Morning, One Year Later

That was a year ago.  I have lived back in the U.S. since then, and of all the things I miss about Europe, the café culture is near the top of the list.  We must search long and hard to approximate the experience.

I recently visited Café Belga again after a year’s absence.  As I approached, I passed the Portuguese men gathered around their stand, drinking and laughing.  The weekend market was in full swing.  I walked through the front door and scanned the room.  There were the Clauses, ensconced in their usual spot.  Several other regulars were there, giving me a feeling of warmth and comfort.  I ordered a cortado, found a free table, and opened my newspaper.  It felt nice, but a wave of grief momentarily swept over me as I paused to take in my surroundings.

In my small high school, I considered myself relatively cool. OK, not THAT cool -– after all, listed below my senior yearbook photo in the Planonian were, among other activities, “Slide Rule Club”, Latin Club, and “School Fire Chief” -– but I was fairly popular and self-confident.  I excelled in areas of interest, such as speech, debate, and science.  By the time I graduated, I had paid my dues, learned the ropes, been around the block a time or two, and could speak in clichés.  The world was my oyster! 

Then I started university at a small and competitive private school.  From the moment my parents dropped me and my stuff at the dorm, my world of competence and confidence began to crumble.  I was now anonymous, and nobody knew or cared about my past accomplishments.  I was in unfamiliar territory, starting over in almost every area of life.  All of a sudden, I felt awkward and insecure. 

Such existential angst occurs repeatedly in our lives.  Most of us expend a lot of energy, consciously or unconsciously, working to fit in and to be competent.  We each develop our own “comfort zone”, that unique blend of personality, social skills, preferences, and abilities from which we operate.  And none of us relishes finding ourselves repeatedly in situations where we feel foolish, out of place, or incompetent – in other words, too far out of our comfort zones.

But of course it happens.  Sometimes it’s when we’re faced with a new life situation or environment.  It also happens in cross-cultural experiences, whether in one-time encounters with those different from us or when traveling or living overseas.

After living overseas for 14 years and traveling and working in 40 countries, I have felt these feelings of lack of mastery and awkwardness hundreds of times, often on a daily basis.  It’s often the mundane daily activities that cause the newcomer trouble.  Those in the “home culture” understand these things and do them without thinking, so it is all the more noticeable when an outsider unwittingly misses the cues, is at a loss, or acts outside the norms.  A few personal examples from my cross-cultural experiences:

• I was in Shanghai for a week at a conference center where three meals a day were served family style with chopsticks as the sole utensil. Such a meal necessitates reaching repeatedly to the center of the table to fill your bowl from the many dishes circling on a rotating turntable.  I’ve used chopsticks many times and feel confident with most of the time – at least until I encountered a particular bowl of thin noodles in broth. As my Chinese dining companions deftly wielded their sticks like bionic extensions of their fingers, every time I would pick up a bunch of noodles, by the time I reached my bowl, the sticks clutched one dripping noodle. I laboriously maneuvered bits to my bowl a noodle at a time, leaving a wet and sloppy trail along the way.  What I most remember is that my six fellow diners were all aware of my struggle, but like parents teaching their toddler how to feed themselves, no one stepped in to offer advice or fill my bowl for me.  I was thankful for their sensitivity and was able to laugh at myself and survive the meal!

• On a domestic flight during an early trip to India years ago I was settling back to drink my coffee after the meal.  I casually tore open the packet of sugar and dumped it in.  I looked down to see a mass of solid material floating atop the coffee.  Instead of sugar, it was mukhwas – a packet of spices and seeds often eaten as a digestif and breath freshener after a meal.  I casually glanced from side to side to see if my teenage son traveling with me or my fellow Indian travelers had noticed.  (They had.)  And this was my third trip to India!  So much for my hoped-for persona of cosmopolitan globetrotter.  Here I was, wanting to be James Bond but ending up Inspector Clouseau.

Being in a different culture offers daily opportunities to show one’s uncertainty or incompetence.  Is this an appropriate gift?  Do I address him as Herr Schmidt or Karl?  Why had she not responded to my request?  What is an appropriate toast for this occasion?  Am I dressed properly for the meeting?  On which cheek do I start the kissing sequence with my colleagues?  By which name do I address my new Asian colleague?

And if you don’t speak the predominant language, the discomfort is multiplied.  In Russia, I could read enough to survive, but my conversational level consisted of short phrases, nouns strung together, and a few present tense verbs. 

Co-worker:  “What did you do this weekend?”

Me:  “I am riding the Metro.  I eat in a restaurant.  It is good!”

One problem of language learning is that sometimes a small, subtle difference in words can make a big difference.  Many years ago, I accompanied a group of nursing students to rural Mexico on a public health project.  Before administering immunizations, the student nurses had to collect personal health histories from the local residents.  They had learned how to ask the questions in Spanish by using phonetic pronunciations.  One earnest young woman, clipboard in hand, was getting startled looks from the Mexicans when she asked them their age.  Instead of asking them “Quantos años (ah-nyos) tienes?” (“How old are you?”), she was asking “Quantos anos (ah-nos) tienes?”, which means “How many anuses do you have?”  She was puzzled by the response – “Uno, el ultimo tiempo que verifique.”  (“One, last time I checked.”)  What a difference a tilde makes!

So, we can’t go through life avoiding encounters with different others or other cultures.  And in those situations, there will be times that we have feelings of inadequacy.  So, what can we do?  Here are Four Easy Steps to Dealing with Your Cross-cultural Incompetency.  (On second thought, take out the word “Easy”.)

1. Face your FEAR.

FEAR is my acronym for “Foolishness & Embarrassment Avoidance Reflex”.  It’s a built- in human reaction.  Years ago, I fell off of a horse, fracturing my leg in three places.  As I type this, I realize that I don’t really have to tell you the following fact:  The horse was standing still at the time.  Some friends were watching me from a distance, as I rode onto the parking lot to get my sunglasses out of the car.  After retrieving them, I had grabbed the saddle horn and was in mid-mount when the saddle strap broke, sending me back off the horse and onto the pavement.  I felt a severe pain in my leg, but my very first reaction was to jump up and smile at my friends like nothing had happened! When I tried to stand up, I looked down to see that my lower leg was twisted at a right angle from the upper part of the leg, but, amazingly, I was still intent on appearing nonchalant to my friends watching me!  OK, so that’s a knee-jerk (no pun intended) reaction.  But some people seem to have an overly sensitive “Foolishness and Embarrassment Avoidance Reflex”.  They secretly live in fear that they might appear incompetent.  It is extremely important to always appear suave, in control, expert.  Missteps are very stressful, because it means they have fallen short of their ideal: perfection.  This might be a result of personality preferences and/or early life experiences or any number of factors.  For most of us, some healthy reflection will increase self-awareness of our particular comfort zone.

2. Lighten up.  Have a sense of humor.

Accept that no one is perfect, and try not to take yourself too seriously.  (Please note that I didn’t say don’t take life seriously, your job seriously, or your family seriously, etc. – Don’t take you too seriously!)  If you can’t laugh at yourself and be a little self-deprecating, you may have a hard time in unfamiliar situations.  Assume that in most cases, people are laughing with you and not at you.  Having a sense of humor doesn’t mean that you have to be a standup comedian, It means that you can be flexible.  The word humor comes from the Latin word umor, which means fluid or liquid.  Learn to go with the flow.  Admittedly, it’s not always easy to laugh at yourself in the stressful moment – it’s easier in retrospect.  (The author James Thurber once said, “Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.”)

3. Learn as you go.

As in most areas of life, the most effective people are the ones who are lifelong agile learners.  Individuals who are learning agile actually seek challenging experiences, even knowing that there is some risk and uncertainty involved. Agile learners are curious experimenters and are comfortable with ambiguity. They reflect, learn from mistakes, and are open to feedback.  As they learn something new, they then apply it to other new experiences. Cross-cultural learners are constantly reading, doing targeted research in anticipation of crossing cultures, and when in the situation, do much observing and question-asking.  And being a learner presupposes that you don’t think that you have all the answers. 

4. Continue to fine-tune your interpersonal skills.

There are many theories of how we gain cross-cultural competency, but one that rings true for me is the social skills model of cultural learning.  Simply stated, most cross-cultural problems occur because people lack the requisite social skills and have difficulty negotiating certain everyday social interactions in a new culture.  A person who is socially competent in their own culture may be frustrated and confused when they encounter interpersonal problems in a new culture.   If this is true, it follows that we would do well to continually seek to improve our interpersonal skills.  Rest assured that, if you’re a person who is basically kind, thoughtful, honest, genuine, humble, empathetic, tolerant, curious, respectful, a good listener, open-minded, comfortable in your own skin, able to laugh at yourself, etc. – you’ll be well on your way to feeling comfortable in any intercultural situation that comes your way.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t help your chopsticks dexterity.

Ask a librarian to describe heaven on earth and I’m certain that books will figure prominently in the vision.  I’m married to one, so I posed the question to Cheryl.  She began to dreamily describe being in a place where you could walk down any street and pass one bookstore after another, each with rows upon rows of books stacked floor to ceiling. And they would be inexpensive to buy.  (She’s not looking for free handouts in heaven.)  In fact, you wouldn’t even have to bother entering a store, because the streets would be lined with outdoor shelves of old books, with boxes every few feet to just drop a few coins in to pay for your purchase.  There would be a wealth of cafes and pubs where you could take breaks and sit for hours reading. 

Just such a heaven on earth actually exists, and we spent a long weekend there.  It is the “book town” of Hay-on-Wye, near the Wales/England border.  This village of 1300 residents has 39 new and used bookshops, ranging from small intimate shops to cavernous ones like the Cinema Bookstore, so named because it fills a former movie theater.  There are rare bookshops and “Every Book for Two Pounds” stores.  Charming bed & breakfasts, inns, pubs and restaurants fill the town center.  There are rows of outside shelves filled with musty old hardbacks, each for 50 pence, and “honour boxes” for payment.  Each summer over 80,000 literary enthusiasts flock to Hay-on-Wye for its international festival. 

It is touristy, but many visitors are day trippers who board their tour buses and return home at the end of the day, leaving the place peaceful and quiet in the evenings.  That is, except where we stayed.  We chose a B&B right off the main square to be near the action, but we failed to notice the town clock tower, 150 feet out our second story bedroom window, whose bells tolled every quarter hour, 24 hours a day.  Large clanging bells are charming at three in the afternoon but alarming at three in the morning.  We were there three nights, the first of which was relatively sleepless, since each time we dozed off we were jarred back to heart-pounding wakefulness every 15 minutes.  (This was summer and hot, so closing the window was out of the question.)  By the third night we had adjusted to the point where we were aware of the gonging in some state of sleep/consciousness, but I don’t think we ever approached REM sleep.  To add to the restless nights, our room was above the main town-to-farm road, the route of a daily 5:00 AM parade of monster tractors heading out to the fields.  The upside to the central location was that we could browse, buy, and dump our books easily before heading out for more treasure hunting, although it cost us a lot of money for excess baggage weight for the return flight.

How did this remote and economically depressed medieval market town in Wales become an internationally famous book town?  In 1961 an eccentric and flamboyant businessman by the name of Richard Booth, whose family had lived in the Hay area for decades, took possession of the thirteenth-century Norman castle in town and also opened a used bookshop.  He saw the potential of revitalizing the town with books and began to expand his real estate holdings.  On April 1, 1977, tongue firmly planted in cheek, Booth claimed independence from British rule for Hay-on-Wye, declaring it an independent kingdom with himself as king and appointing his horse as Prime Minister.  Soon passports were printed, and knighthoods, earldoms and Baronies were conferred (with minimal cost and red tape).  Some local officials and the media took all of this a little too seriously, thus assuring national and international fame.  By the late Seventies, Hay could boast of numerous bookshops with over one million books in stock.

In the 1990’s the book town concept was copied by towns in Belgium, France, and the Netherlands, and now there are official book towns in Norway, and other locations, including the U.S. (Stillwater, Minnesota).  There is now an official designation of “book town” and an “International Organisation of Book Towns”, with specific criteria that must be met in order to use the descriptor.  A candidate must be a rural town with historic and picturesque qualities and must be blessed by the Lord Protector of All Book Towns – you guessed it, King Richard Booth from Hay-on-Wye.  These standards are presumably to keep a town like Brookville, Indiana from just dropping the “r” and instantly becoming “Bookville”.  (Or Booklyn, New York, for that matter.)

Belgium has its book town, and it makes Hay-on-Wye look like a sprawling metropolis.  Redu is nestled in rolling hills and pastureland in French-speaking Wallonia, about an hour south of Brussels.  This tiny town of 450 residents has 23 bookstores and a number of cafes and small inns.  I asked a local inn owner how it all happened, and his answer was pure Chamber of Commerce.  20 years ago, a small farming community decided to reinvent itself as a book center, and that’s what it did.  A local man named Noel Anselot, who had met Richard Booth in Wales, was a key figure in its transformation. Redu is much more laid back than its Welsh counterpart, and most stores stock only Dutch or French language titles (of course).  There are a few that stock English books, so I decided to do an experiment.  I would pick a favorite novel and see if I could find it in English.  I decided on Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent, and within 30 minutes I had purchased my find.

Redu, in true Belgian fashion, has a local brewery brewing a strong Raspberry beer, and on weekends a local woman sells a variety of cheeses from a cart.  We have visited several times and once impulsively spent a March Saturday night there.  Walking out of a local cafe, we noticed a sign advertising cheap rooms upstairs.  We looked at each other and said, “Why not?”  We quickly made a list of the three items we needed to survive:  two toothbrushes and one tube of toothpaste.  As evidence of the remoteness of Redu, we had to drive 20 minutes to find these provisions.

The second book town to be spawned from Hay-on-Wye is Bredevoort, an 800-year-old village in the Netherlands, nestled in a beautiful region just three miles from the German border.  Bredevoort doesn’t have quite the rural feel of Redu; even though it is a town of 1600 inhabitants, you get the feeling of being surrounded by many towns and cities, and that is true.  Situated in the most densely populated country in Europe near the vast metropolitan area encompassing Amsterdam and Rotterdam, as well as the Ruhr industrial region of Germany, there are 15 million people within a two-hour drive of Bredevoort.  Not a bad market.

Like many book towns, this one owes its metamorphosis and revival to an individual.  Henk Ruessink, a retired teacher and member of the local Citizen’s Union, having read about Hay-on-Wye, paid a visit there and returned to convince authorities on both sides of the border of the viability of the book town model.  Spurred by incentive of cheap real estate, the original group of five booksellers in 1993 has grown to over 20 now, with a few art galleries and workshops added for local charm. 

My librarian companion and I drove over one Saturday and started our tour with a cup of coffee in a local café.  Suitably caffeinated, we set out to browse many of the 20 bookshops.  A few had sections with English books, but most stocks were in the native Dutch.  As you book-o-philes know, in most used bookstores, the price is marked in pencil on the first page. In one store we visited, none of the books were priced, which is unnerving to a treasure hunter.  Cheryl found a hardcover Daphne du Maurier and approached the shopkeeper, a stout and stern Dutch fellow, to ask its price.  He studied it intently with pursed lips and furrowed brow for a full 45 seconds, leafing through the pages, holding it up and bouncing it in his hand, as though its weight had some direct bearing upon its value, leafing through once again.  Based upon this mental exertion, we expected an exorbitant price, but then he held up two fingers, indicating two Euros.  Ten minutes later I approached him with a Jane Austen I had discovered for Cheryl.  Same routine.  After his careful and thorough assay, he gave his verdict.  Two fingers.  I decided to make one last pass through the disorganized stacks, thinking that I might find a Guttenberg Bible or early copy of the Magna Carta – It seemed like we were on a two Euro roll.

The joy of a book town is the sheer surfeit of shops in a densely packed area, but the real thrill is experiencing any used bookstore.  There’s something exciting about that distinctive smell – dust, aging paper, mildew.  The aisles are usually claustrophobic and the stock disorganized or piled floor to ceiling.  It’s easy to lose track of time searching for that personal treasure and squeezing down creaking aisles while the clerk sits up front lost in his current book. 

Except for the possible return trip to one of these three towns, we don’t envision visiting others.  Western Norway is a long way away, as is Stillwater, Minnesota.  And it’s probably for the best.  I love being surrounded by books, but it’s getting out of hand at the Prince house.  I decided to do a quick count of the books in our small two-bedroom apartment.  Not counting a number of boxes stored in the garage, there are 533 books in three living room bookshelves and 297 on the shelves in the second bedroom.  292 books are stacked in piles next to the bed, in the closet, and in plastic boxes under the bed.  A final sweep of nightstands and couch-side baskets nets another 76, for a grand total of 1198 volumes.  Wait, I just remembered the 50 or so that are circulating worldwide from the Prince Lending Library.  (Author’s note: When the movers itemized our books for the move back to the U.S. in 2006, the total was up to 1700.)

 I’m getting scared, because it is becoming clear that I am married to someone with a serious problem.  She is exhibiting all of the telltale warning signs: denying the problem, claiming that she can stop any time she wants.  Books in secret hiding places and reading alone.  Binge buying.  (curse you, Amazon.).   She has followed through on her promise to get involved in a support group, but all they do is buy more books and discuss them once a month.  And she does volunteer work in a library, which isn’t helping her recovery.  I guess I should look on the bright side:  We’re well on our way to stocking our first used bookstore some day.

UPDATE: Times change, and the pandemic has accelerated those changes. Hay-on-Wye lists 20 bookstores as of December 2020, down from 39 when we visited some 15 years ago.  Redu, which had over 20 bookstores then, now has 9.

For someone so inept with numbers, I never thought that I would be put in charge of the finances of an organization, but I now find myself temporarily in that role. The organization, ad hoc to be sure, is a collective of 19 Russians and one American, crammed into a large van and lurching through potholed streets on the outskirts of Moscow.

Background # 1

It is early October, and I am on an exploratory mission to find the “Mega Mall” on the outskirts of this sprawling city of 12 million people. I have done my internet homework: The website instructs one to ride to the very end of Metro Line 2, then to look for the Shuttle Bus to the Mega Mall. My assumption: Shuttle Bus equals a free ride of a few blocks in a modern, comfortable vehicle. Wrong on all three counts. I am now on a rattletrap van on a circuitous route through city streets, back alleys and freeways, which will eventually take 45 minutes before alighting at the Mega Mall. 20 of us are crammed into a van designed for 18 – two passengers in the front bench seat with the driver, me in a single jump seat facing backward, and the other 17 in bench seats facing forward. It is hot and close in here. But it is still a bargain at 24 rubles (.60 US).

Background # 2

I have not yet moved to Moscow, and my working knowledge of the Russian language at this early stage is limited to reading the Cyrillic alphabet, exchanging basic pleasantries, and (luckily) knowing basic numbers.

Background # 3

There is a unique public conveyance in Moscow known as the Marshrutka. Filling the gaps in the Metro and bus systems, these entrepreneurial minivan companies have proliferated as a convenient and necessary option for routes too long to walk but not covered by the main systems. There is a wide range of quality of conveyance, but they serve a need. They usually have a sheet of paper taped to the window stating the destination and a hand-lettered card with the fare inside.[Author’s Note: Today, 12 years after writing this, many of Moscow’s marshrutkas are modern vans with electronic signs and accept travel cards.]After some searching, I have located and boarded the Marshrutka bound for the Mega Mall. Unbeknownst to me, I have arbitrarily chosen the wrong seat.

Background #4

There are unwritten but locally-understood rules for travel on a Marshrutka. The passengers abide by an informal code of conduct, stemming from the fact that there is no formal electronic payment system as on the Metro. Riders are bound by an honor system to pay up soon after the journey commences or soon after they board along the way. They are further motivated by the driver’s constant scanning in the rearview mirror. There is a jumble of notes and a plastic cup full of coins on the dashboard so that the driver can make change, along with talking on his phone – oh, and driving. Also, the tacit understanding is that the person seated closest to the driver will act as the cashier – collecting money, paying the driver, and making change for the entire group. And in this particular van’s seating configuration, guess to whom that role falls? The guy in the jump seat facing his fellow passengers and knocking heads with the driver ay every pothole. When the first person thrusts a 100 ruble note in my direction, it quickly dawns on me that I am now a temp employee of the Marshrutka company. I spring into action (no choice), turning to hand the bill to the driver. The young woman seated in the front seat next to the driver, immediately seizing her positional power, assumes the role of Assistant Cashier and grabs it from my hand. Before I know it, there are multiple payments flowing forward and a stream of change moving backward. Grasping for newly-learned vocabulary, I am asking “dvat?” (“For two?”), “chetyre?” (“For four?”). “Huh?” (“Huh?”). People are passing large notes forward and signaling to me “Me, her, and him” in pointing sign language. My Assistant is handing me back wads of bills and coins, which I pass back through my closest seat mate. I have to constantly turn on my knees in my seat to pay forward, holding on as we hit a dip or careen around a corner, concentrating intently on my math and my customers. At one point I pass up a 500 ruble note for three fares, requiring change in excess of 400 rubles. I watch the driver slip it onto the pile of money on the dashboard but make no move to make change. I become nervous on behalf of the Payor (and myself). I am tempted to fish 400 rubles from my wallet. Several minutes later the driver casually makes change and thrusts it back over his shoulder. Relieved, I pass it back to the passenger, who never seemed worried in the first place, After the longest 10 minutes of my life, the flow forward and backward ebbs and trickles down to the occasional new passenger hopping aboard. Everyone has paid their fares to me, and me to the driver. I slump in my seat and take a deep breath, heart still pounding and armpits wet with perspiration. I am aware that my fellow travelers immediately pegged me as an outsider, but no one has laughed at me, showed impatience – or offered to take my place. After all, I chose that seat. It was a good mini-immersion course in Russian culture.I take away three important lessons, preparatory to moving to Moscow:

(1) To live in Russia, a basic level of Russian comprehension is not an option but a necessity. In countries with similar Romance languages, you can at least get by because of similar alphabets and vocabularies and with a certain amount of intuition, but that doesn’t apply in Russia.

(2) Be prepared for surprises when your ethnocentrism leads you to assume that what you experience back home is what you will experience in a new culture.

(3) It is critical to get on the van early and, even if you have to scramble, make sure you get the seat furthest in the rear.

For eight days every Spring, the Andalucían city of Seville is transformed.  The occasion is Semana Santa, Holy Week, from Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday, when life in Seville is focused on its special adopted superstar, the Virgin Mary.  Other Spanish cities host Easter Week celebrations, but Seville’s is the largest and most famous.  Every year over a million visitors crowd the narrow medieval streets of the old city to pay homage to Mary and her Son.  Motivations range from the idly curious tourist to the deeply devout worshipper, resulting in a mood that is a strange mix of festive and somber.  Juan, a Sevillano acquaintance, explains the somber side: “In religion, we don’t get into the resurrection part as much as the suffering and death part.” 

We had traveled there to join our friends Eugenio and Sara, friends from the Barcelona area, for the climactic Easter weekend.  They were tourists as well but knew a local couple, with whom we would meet later for an insiders’ tour and a midnight dinner (typical dinner time) at a local restaurant.

Beginner’s Guide to Semana Santa in Seville

There are a number ofguild-like fraternities called hermandades, some having existed since the 1200’s. Since the 16^th century a number of these take part in a sacred processional each year that symbolizes the suffering and crucifixion of Christ.  There are 57 of these hermandades, each of which usually has two pasos – we might call them floats – one venerating the Virgin Mary and the other depicting a scene of the crucifixion of Jesus.  These floats are astonishing – huge structures weighing up to two tons and each carried on the backs of 20-30 men.  These are not typical parade floats constructed in someone’s driveway, but rather historic pieces of art.  Many of the Christ statues were carved and painted by religious artists in the 17^th and 18^th centuries.

The processional starts at the various local churches and winds toward the 15^th century Seville cathedral and back along an established route.  The Jesus floats feature larger-than-life painted wooden Christs depicted in some stage of suffering on the cross.  The Virgin floats are more ornate, adorned in gold and silver, embroidered cloth, candles, and flowers, with the large Virgin statue enthroned under a canopy.  And while there is only one Jesus, there are a number of different Virgins versions, such as the Macarena, Triana, and Rocio, but all have the common theme of the Virgen de las Penas (Virgin of Sorrow).  Many locals have their favorite one and will stake out a specific spot along the route to see “their” Virgin pass by.

Each year, around 60,000 people, mostly men, take part in the processional.  Women traditionally dress in black, and although a few may be in the processional, most observe and support from the sidelines.  Many of the men who take part are from families who have participated for generations, and to do so is a special honor and tradition.  There are different roles in each hermandad:

Costaleros are the float carriers.  Twenty to thirty of these long-suffering guys crouch beneath each massive float and make the arduous journey of up to eight hours through the cobbled streets.  They stay in their dark confines for hours, stopping only periodically as the fraternity commemorates one of the Stations of the Cross.   A lingering visual memory is seeing only their shoes under the massive floats, moving in caterpillar-like synchronicity.  Turning the sharp corners of the narrow streets can take a long time, as they take baby steps and gradually turn their cumbersome cargo inch by inch.

The nazarenos are dressed in robes and tall pointed hoods with eye holes – for an American the inescapable comparison is to Ku Klux Klan outfits with tall conical hoods.  The robes are white, red, or black.  Each hermandad fields dozens of these mysterious figures, who carry candles, incense, or banners in the processional.

The rows of penitentes are dressed similarly, but their tall hoods are floppy instead of erect.  They carry crosses as an act of penitence for the past year’s sins, with the size and weight of the cross proportional to the gravity of the sins to be forgiven.

Because there are 57 of these groups in the processional, it goes on for hours.   All of this is accompanied by hundreds of musicians playing bugles and drums.  They play a loud mournful dirge over and over, which sets the funereal pace and tone of the processional.  It is an indelible sight: these Jesus and Virgin statues towering above the robed marchers, rocking slowly from side to side as their bearers groan under the weight.  The blaring music echoes down the narrow cobblestone lanes, and shafts of light from the lowering sun illuminate the clouds of incense hanging in the air.

An amazing true experience…

Surely all one million visitors were not all there on this late Saturday afternoon, but it sure seemed that way.  This is a claustrophobe’s nightmare – full multiple body contact in a sea of people crowded together in the city center.  (Picture Times Square in New York at midnight on New Year’s Eve but with warm weather.)  It is almost impossible to raise your hand to scratch your nose, much less move freely. 

For over an hour the four of us had inched our way through about a mile of crowds.  Finally, we spotted an opening on the sidewalk and pushed our way in.  We were now standing so close to the marchers that we could have reached out and touched them.  We were starting to relax and watch the spectacle when Eugenio looked at us with wide-eyed horror and said, “I’ve lost my wallet!”

His overstuffed billfold had slipped out of his windbreaker pocket somewhere along our serpentine journey through the masses.  I tried to be encouraging, but my pragmatic brain drew the obvious conclusion: We could kiss that wallet goodbye.  Cheryl said that she remembered seeing something on the sidewalk a few blocks back that might have been a wallet.  Sara and I watched as this quixotic pair decided to retrace our route and soon disappeared as the crowd swallowed them up. We wondered if we would ever see them again.

In Spain, an insurance claim requires an official police report, so a priority was now to find the nearest police station.  Sara addressed the adjacent crowd of mostly older couples to ask if any locals were present.  She explained our situation, and instantly the news of our dramatic and pitiful dilemma began to spread through the crowd.  We could hear the excited murmurs and whispered voices as the gossip radiated outward.  “Did you hear?  This poor woman’s husband has lost his wallet!” Within moments we had dozens of sympathetic/concerned/involved supporters, clucking and shaking their heads, offering condolences and philosophical observations.  Unfortunately, no one seemed to know exactly where the nearest police station was.

Who better to ask about a police station than a police officer? There were scores of them imbedded for security in the crowded processional, one every fifty feet or so.  Sara decided to ask the next policeman that passed us.  She randomly reached into the slowly moving soup of marchers and stopped the first officer she saw, who turned to look at her through mirrored sunglasses.

“Can you tell me where the nearest police station is?” Sara asked.

“Why do you ask?” he responded impassively.

“My husband lost his wallet somewhere back in the crowd.”

Without smiling and with no dramatic flourish, the officer reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a fat wallet, held it up in front of her face and said matter-of-factly “Would this be it?”

And it was — cash, credit cards, everything undisturbed.

Sara stared in disbelief.  Surely by coincidence, one of the huge Virgins happened at that very moment to pause in front of us, looking down beatifically upon us as her bearers stopped to rest.

The Greek Chorus of onlookers, still fully engaged, let out a collective gasp of disbelief.  Neighbor turned to neighbor spreading the news in reverent whispers, with intimations that we had just witnessed something miraculous.  Some applauded and others looked skyward and muttered prayers of thanksgiving to the Virgin.  Many pushed forward to pat us on the back and celebrate the return of the prodigal wallet.  All we could do was look at each other and shake our heads.

Soon we saw Cheryl and Eugenio re-emerge from the throng, weary and dejected from their fruitless quest.  They started to speak.

“You’re not going to believe this…” Sara interrupted, as those standing nearby excitedly leaned forward in anticipation of the retelling of the good news.

“Aren’t they embarrassed, Dad?”

We were on a vacation in Australia, and Brian, eight years old, was experiencing a topless beach for the first time.  His question reflected his socialization in a culture where public nudity is not the norm.  (As I remember it, he seemed to adjust to this new culture rather quickly.)

It is well known that many European cultures have a more open attitude toward the human body than most people from the U.S.  A few examples:

• An upscale Dutch hotel features “No Swimsuits Sundays” at its indoor pool.
• Vienna’s prestigious Leopold Art Museum once offered free admission to its “Naked Truth” early 1900’s erotic art exhibit to any patron coming naked.  Founder Elizabeth Leopold said, “We find the naked body every bit as beautiful as a clothed one.”
• Some years ago 7,000 people showed up in Barcelona to be photographed in the nude for American photographer Spencer Tunick’s “Naked Pavement” series.  (Interestingly, Tunick was arrested four times in New York City for attempting the same project before winning his case before the U.S. Supreme Court.)

This relaxed attitude toward nakedness is nowhere more clearly reflected than in the phenomenon of the sauna.  In Europe it is not uncommon for people to willingly strip naked and sit together on wooden benches in a cramped super-heated room, sometimes with complete strangers. 

Although this ancient tradition was not invented by the Finns, they are most closely associated with the sauna.  Finland, with a population of 5.5 million, has 2 million saunas.   In this country of long cold winters, it is understandable that saunas would flourish there.  And, conversely, because summers there are short and fleeting, they are a time of constant celebration.  There are Finnish legends surrounding summertime that have a nakedness theme.  An old legend has it that if a young woman rolls naked in a dewy field on Midsummer’s Eve, she will remain beautiful for the rest of the year (and contract Lyme Disease from rolling around naked in the weeds.)  And if a girl goes naked to the well during that same special evening, she will see the face of her future husband reflected briefly in the water (or the village lecher standing behind her.)

“Taking a sauna” can involve a complex series of heating and cooling the body, and the process varies across cultures and from person to person.  The cooling process can range from a cool shower to a heart-stopping plunge into an icy lake.  I once came out of the sauna and entered a shower which had a large red button positioned in the middle, which I incorrectly assumed would turn on the hot water.  Instead it released a five gallon dump of ice water from eight feet above.

Although still a sauna rookie, I grew to enjoy the process while living in Europe.  Before getting to that place, however, I had a few unnerving experiences.  Let me describe my first two sauna encounters.

I had decided to throw caution and ingrained cultural taboos to the wind and take a sauna au natural, but I was biding my time until the time was right.  The first opportunity that arose seemed safe enough: On a Thursday afternoon at a small German hotel, I had the sauna all to myself, with guaranteed privacy for three hours.  (A sauna with training wheels.)  I was there working with a number of co-workers, but I was the only one not in meetings all afternoon, and our group had exclusive use of the hotel.  I had carefully checked and rechecked everyone’s schedules and was confident that my total privacy was assured. 

Many hotel saunas in Europe are mixed gender, with separate dressing rooms but a common open shower area next to the sauna.  I confidently entered my private domain, turned on the shower, and hung up my towel.  I was showering with my back to the sauna when I imagined I heard the sauna door creaking open.  “Not possible”, I told myself, so I relaxed, at least until I heard a woman’s voice say, “Hey, Don!”  My heart froze as I turned my head to see one of my European colleagues peeking out of the sauna.  So much for my careful calculations.

 “Just wanted you to know I was here!” she said. 

“No problem!” I shouted back, much too quickly and loudly, attempting to sound as cool as one could in such an exposed situation.

As the sauna door closed I quickly considered my options, which boiled down to two: I could grab my towel and bolt, thus confirming the stereotype of the uptight, repressed American, or I could join her in the sauna and hope for a power failure.  I grabbed my towel and went in.  Lying there on her back across from me with her eyes closed, she said, “I do this at least once a week, so it’s no big deal to me, but I wasn’t sure about you.”

“Are you kidding?” I replied, looking at the ceiling and attempting to sound casual.  “Heck, I do this almost every day!  Why, I can’t think of anything more natural than this!”

Luckily, when we saw each other again that evening, she was the one to joke, “Sorry, I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on!”

My second sauna experience was awkward in a different way.  I was invited to the sauna by two male business partners in Finland.  We had finished the day’s business when Juhana and Ralf suggested that we take a sauna. Their company headquarters, like many in Finland, has its own sauna.  This one had separate hours for women and men to use the facilities.  It was now the end of the workday, so we three had the place to ourselves.

We entered a room that looked like an office break room with casual outdoor lounge furniture.  It was warm, humid and dimly lit.  We sat fully clothed drinking a room temperature beer and chatting about the weather.  I had no idea of the protocol, so my strategy was to observe my hosts and carefully mimic their actions.

As we talked, Juhana began to take off his shoes and socks, so I did, too.  After more banter, Ralf started unbuttoning his shirt, and I followed suit.  After a few minutes, we rose and walked into a narrow corridor lined with benches and stacks of towels.  As we continued the conversation, we unbuckled our belts and dropped our pants.  Now we were three grown men standing there in our underwear.  Juhana brightened and said, “How about a Jacuzzi before the sauna?”  He disappeared into the “wet area” to fire up the hot tub.  A few minutes later he emerged to say that he couldn’t seem to figure out how to turn it on.  We offered to help and went in, setting about the task.  I laughed to myself as I observed us: three guys, practically strangers, scurrying around, conferring and troubleshooting, in our undies.  My mind drifted back to the locker room in junior high gym class.

After finally finding the switch, we dropped our drawers, showered off and hopped in.  After a while we moved into the first round in the sauna.  Finns like their saunas hotter than most, and this one felt like a pizza oven to me.

 After 15 minutes we took a shower and relaxed together in the lounge area until going back in.  For Round 2, they brought in a bucket filled with hot water and a number of vihtas, bundles of birch branches tied together.  They had been soaking for a while to soften the branches and leaves.  I watched my companions and as they each grabbed a vihta and began to flagellate their naked backs, chests and legs.  I followed their lead, and after a few minutes of this exertion in the superheated air, I was near heart failure.  We finished with another shower and warm beer before dressing and oozing home.

What about this openness to nakedness?  Is it a healthier attitude?  How does it affect people’s views of sexuality?  I’ll leave that to the social scientists.  I do know that it is not usually shocking or offensive and that after a while one becomes blasé to it because it is commonplace.

One learning from observing this more casual attitude toward nudity is that is not typically about sexuality and arousal.  In fact it is almost asexual and sometimes even anti-sexual.  I once sat in a sauna in the Netherlands as three rather rotund couples lumbered in and plopped down in splayed positions which left nothing hidden from the light of day.  (Interesting place for a tattoo.  Artistic trim work.)  It made me wish for something, anything, to be left to the imagination. 

Another lesson is that what is the local norm is normal.  Walking into a “naked” sauna in a swimsuit feels like showing up at a picnic in a tuxedo – way overdressed for the occasion.

Have my views on nakedness changed?  Maybe a little, but I am not sure that I have adopted a total Nordic attitude toward nudity.  But to be on the safe side, if we’re ever stepping into a hot tub together in the US, please stop me before I forget where I am and take off too much.

Compared to most other carnivorous cultures, U.S. Americans are among the world’s most finicky meat eaters.  If we were a pride of lions that had just chased down a wildebeest and were gathered around for the feast, we would tend to concern ourselves with the wildebeest tenderloin, chuck roast and prime rib, leaving the majority of the carcass to rot in the sun.  Not so for much of the rest of the world, who might remark, “Hey, you’ve left some of the best parts!”

In the U.S., many people are selective about both the animal parts we eat as well as the types of creatures we consume.  As for the parts, except for the cuisines of many cultures that are present, many of us tend to stick to the muscle and fat of the animals we eat.  There are a few notable exceptions, about which most people are either blissfully ignorant or in complete denial.  For example, that ballpark hotdog we’re scarfing down is composed mainly of “variety meats”, a labelling euphemism for “guts”, and no amount of mustard and relish can cover up that fact. 

For perspective’s sake, let’s pause a moment to recognize that there are hundreds of millions of earth’s inhabitants who eat no meat whatsoever, either out of necessity or for health, religious, or environmental reasons. I personally am not of their tribe, but I respect them for their convictions, discipline, or for the fact that they would eat meat if it were available.  I admit that I am a confirmed carnivore, having grown up on a Texas cattle ranch no less, where we always had a large freezer stuffed with beef wrapped in white butcher paper.  Many Sunday nights of the year were spent gathered around our family altar, the brick barbecue grill in the backyard, as the High Priest (Dad) cooked and served Fred Flintstone-sized slabs of sirloin or T-bones.

Having said that, though, I must admit that I’ve never been very adventurous when it comes to what meat I eat.  I prefer my chicken in the form of a skinless breast and my fish non-fishy.  My “meat credo” is fairly straightforward: “No Organs.”  After all, organs are designed to produce, secrete, transport, filter, or store many substances that I, for one, don’t want coming in direct contact with the parts I ingest.  But, alas, from a global perspective, I am in the minority.  The rest of the world beckons for me to broaden my gastronomic horizons.

As I stroll past our a local butcher shop here in Brussels, I spot a whole baby pig that appears to be peacefully sleeping, naked on a bed of ice.  Trays of brains, hearts, and tongues vie for space with brightly feathered pheasants and ducks with beaks and feet still attached.  No part is wasted.  This efficiency of utilization is found in most parts in the world.  Once on a trip to Taiwan, I was eating with a Chinese family when Robert, the university student son, sought to engage me in conversation to practice his English.  Keying off of the main course, he asked, “Which part of the chicken do you not like?”  I mentioned the back and the neck, to which Robert responded, “I do not like the chicken’s ass!”  Yes, I allowed, that’s on my list, too.  On that same trip I ate chicken’s feet two ways — boiled (like chewing rubber bands with goose bumps) and roasted whole, with claws intact. (Saves on toothpicks.)  On my last trip to China, I enjoyed dishes made from cow lungs and beef tendons, among many other picturesque dishes. (See photo below.) There are just some parts that I’m just not drawn to. 

I’m the first to admit that much of my Organ Aversion is purely mental.  And when it comes to the types of animals we eat, it is emotional as well. Different cultures may have wildly different attachments to a given species.  Why do we have no qualms about eating cows but get apoplectic at the thought of eating a

horse?  After all, here in Europe there is the cheval steaks right next to the boeuf at the supermarket.

 What’s the big deal?  Well, it seems like a big deal to me!  I grew up watching now-ancient shows like “Fury”, whose tagline was “FURY! The story of a horse…and a boy who loves him.” I think back over those “Fury” episodes and wonder if I had misinterpreted that special relationship between Joey and his horse:  “Thanks for saving me from the abandoned mine, Fury!  Now let’s hurry home and get you a big bag of oats – You’re looking a little thin…”

Saddled with such long-held associations, I bridled at the thought of eating horsemeat, but for the sake of experimentation, I reined in my aversion and trotted to the supermarket to buy a nice horse steak and threw it on the grill.  I cooked it medium-well and tentatively dug in.  The verdict?  It was OK, and it would have been even better if I hadn’t known what it was.  When I was thirteen years old, a friend offered me a piece of chocolate that tasted like a crunchy chocolate bar.  “How was it?” he asked with mischievous cackle.  “Great,” I said, after which he gleefully informed me that it was a chocolate covered grasshopper.  It would have been OK had I not known – It’s mostly mental. 

The fact is, dietary preferences have cultural roots and are neither right nor wrong.  What is appetizing and appropriate is culturally conditioned.  For instance, many Australians regularly tuck into Vegemite, a dark brown yeasty, salty goo that tastes to the uninitiated like something scraped out of a rusted water heater.  Is it unappetizing?  Not to them, because they have grown up eating it.  On the other hand, I have met a number of Australians who are repulsed by the taste of peanut butter, which is, of course, the manna from heaven referenced in the Bible.

So what are the lessons from this?  First, all joking aside, we shouldn’t judge others’ foods and eating habits.  Listen to yourself, and when you hear yourself using words such as weird, gross, or repulsive, you’ve crossed that line.  Stick to describing and not criticizing.  At least be willing to say, “It is gross to me.” Or “It’s not something I like to eat.” 

Also, eat what you like, but be willing to stretch your dietary comfort zone a little.  If nothing else you’ll have something new to brag about!   This is also a critical part of cross-cultural etiquette.  In many cultures, turning down an offered dish is not interpreted as merely a personal preference but as a social snub.  (In parts of Asia, when you are offered the eyes of the fish being served, be honored and not repulsed!) 

Another point of personal reflection is around the amount of waste of edible foodstuffs in our lifestyles.   In light of world conditions, many of us waste an obscene amount of food.  No, you don’t have to eat the chicken’s feet or the cow’s stomach, but do take a look at what you throw away and make conscious and responsible adjustments.

Well, it’s lunchtime, so I’ll stop for now.  Anyone up for a salad?