The past day, we traveled to Florence in Northern Italy. It was an optional trip so it wasn't so planned. That being said, we had to find our own accommodations, whether it be a hostel or a hotel. Six of us decided to stay in the same hostel in two different rooms. We had booked our room and were set to go! We got to florence and were set free to explore, shop, and find our hostel. We finally found it after 30 minutes of walking around. We were so excited to finally put our bags down. When we got to our hostel, we had a large communication problem between us and the owners. We were under the impression that we had already paid for our rooms, yet they had not received the money. We were all freaking out that we would need to pay double, and almost walked out. The owners spoke maybe ten words of english. Luckily, one of our friends spoke Italian, but there was still so many communication problems. We ended up calling our director, Michael who did a lot of translation for us. The problem got solved, but boy was it quite a liberating and irritating experience. We were all getting a little antsy and frustrated with everything.
In this situation, i wish I would have known more Italian. That would have helped a lot. In this moment, I felt like such a tourist, when I normally would have felt like a traveler who was enjoying the city. Being in a foreign country, we need to respect the local residents, and I felt bad we were all getting frustrated with them, when in all reality, our lack of Italian and aversion to simple communication was the root of the problem. Needless to say, I'm going to brush up on my Italian!
No comments:
Post a Comment