When we arrived at the home of the family with whom we were staying, Jesslyn went to use the bathroom. There was a bidet, but no toilet paper, nor even a TP holder. She asked me what the deal was. I wasn’t quite sure. If you use a bidet, do you not need TP? I have seen bidets before, but honestly have no idea how to use one. So, we struggled with what to do. Should she attempt to use the bidet even though she doesn’t know how? I realized I was going to face the same problem at some point, but was embarrassed that I didn’t know about the bidet. So, like a good husband, I encouraged Jesslyn to ask our hosts about it. We pondered just how she should ask. “How do you use the bidet?” No, that might be interpreted as “can you demonstrate how to use the bidet?”, and that would just be awkward. Finally, Jesslyn asked, “we don’t have bidets back home, and I notice there isn’t any toilet paper…”. She let the beginning of the question linger for a moment in order to judge the reaction. After a slightly embarrassed giggle, our host said “Oh, sorry, I forgot to give you toilet paper. I will get some for you right now.”.
As previously mentioned, I like to speak the local language as much as I can when I travel. However, as those of you who have travelled through Europe know, there are a lot of different languages to learn. You can easily find yourself immersed in 3 or 4 different languages within a week, which makes it tough to learn more than, “hello”, “please”, and “thank you”. I never studied Spanish in school, but I have visited a number of Spanish speaking countries and have a lot of Spanish speaking friends. That must be why whenever I want to translate something from English to another language, the default is Spanish. It even almost works here in Italy because Italian and Spanish are so similar. So, every time time someone says “grazie” (“thank you”) here in Italy, the thought in my head is to say “de nada” (“you’re welcome" in Spanish). German is not similar to Spanish, but when we were in Munich, I was paying a cashier for some food and when she said “danke”, I said “de nada” to her out loud!
I’m not the only one to do this. A common exchange in Italian is “Come va?” (“how are you”), to which I would reply “bene” (“well”) or “molto bene” (“very well”). After a week, Jesslyn has finally broken herself from saying “molto bueno”.
- Jake