Foreigner

I said in my last blog that daily logistics don’t really fuss me when I’m over here.  Although that’s generally true, and if I allow myself to be a little arrogant, I am a bit proud of being capable of basic survival in a different country, sometimes the whole foreigner thing does weigh a little heavier.

The fact that everyone stares at me, the fact that every single conversation I have here begins with ‘you’re not Italian, are you?’, show that however much I might like it here, this isn’t really home for me.  Of course for the most part it seems ridiculous to philosophise heavily on my relationship with the host country of my year abroad, because obviously the entire point is to push me out of my comfort zone so I benefit from the new experiences.  However, I have a fairly deep affinity with Italy having spent an important year over here when I was 18, and spent the time ever since dreaming of it, studying it and coming back over when I could.  

I’ve been asked many times whether I want to come out here to live when I’m free to do so, and my reply is always that it would be too difficult.  It’s an issue that keeps on cropping up because my opinion is so transient.  When things are going well, I am fairly convinced that life in Italy, for all its shortcomings, is onto a seriously good thing.  Now I don’t want to seem work-shy, I’m not worried about chipping away at things when they’re not going so well, but sometimes I wonder whether I’m best off enjoying this for what it is now and then going back to my own country with the nice memories.

I am afraid of falling into the superficiality of making embarrassingly naive generalisations about the cultures and people of the respective countries, and in any case no-one wants to dwell too long on the whole ‘Italians are warm and welcoming, and British people keep themselves to themselves’, though there is of course some truth in the stereotypes.  I’m much more interested in my personal experiences of being here and there, and the simple truth is that a lot of my happiest moments have been over here.  I look at the nice things, the warm memories that I have, and the lovely little Italian touches to life, now I’m talking coffee in the piazza, kindly strangers treating you like an old friend, the sense of loving community that Italy takes to a new level, the food...  and I remember how I miss all of this when I’m back home.  Looking just at this, it would be clear that this year should really be my induction to a longer stay in the bel paese.

One big mallet through the pretty picture is that Italy just doesn’t work very well.  I’m feeling particularly sensitive to this right now because I’ve just been stranded at a town 15km away as the buses just didn’t arrive, no explanation, and I had to call in a favour with an acquaintance.  This, of course, is not an exception but a repeat of many previous encounters.  Despite being, if anything, a prohibitively prudent traveller, anecdotes spring to mind (that a lot of you will certainly be bored of) of being stranded at the notoriously dangerous Napoli Centrale station at night, at the dead-end middle of nowhere Terontola station at 11pm with very limited Italian, at the wrong Perugia station in the middle of winter with no buses, trains or taxis in sight...  We British people tend to think it’s kind of cute or endearing that fundamental aspects of Italy are not in-keeping with Western European norms, but the truth is that the cogs of general society are slow and cumbersome.  Sure, it’s part of its charm, but when you’re here for more than a holiday, you’ve got a life to get on with and everything just takes more effort, and it stops being a joke.

So that’s a little rant about the specific issues that Italy finds itself with.  The problem of living over here has two strands, and the second is that which I started with, that it just isn’t my home.  I think everyone should be made to experience being a foreigner for a while, because when things are going badly it takes a conscious strength of mind to maintain your sense of worth (sounds dramatic but bear with it).  My favourite Italian teacher articulated this well one day when I was particularly frustrated at the inadequacy of my language and my knowledge of Italy - I felt like a child again, out of my depth and just unable to do fundamental things that I wouldn’t even have to give conscious thought to in England.  With a comforting arm on my shoulder, she said (in very slow Italian), ‘you’re foreign, not stupid’.  To be honest, I do feel more stupid over here.  As a young adult, I’m used to being able to express myself well and to pretty much do what I want to do on the level of mundane life activities - if I need to catch a bus, buy blue-tack or explain to my landlord what’s wrong with my washing machine, it’s easy.  You may have guessed that those are three abbreviated anecdotes from the last couple of weeks.

And then there’s how people view me.  I understand that being a British person abroad is only dipping your toe in the torrent of stereotypes and racism that foreigners and immigrants have to deal with.  As I have done nothing at all to achieve my nationality, I feel awkward that, as an English girl, I am not going to encounter huge problems as I carry on this privileged gander abroad, so it is with more than a note of caution that I lament the problems that I do encounter.  All of that understood, I tire of the feeling that I start each conversation on the back foot - people speak to me in idiotic foreigner speak, not conjugating verbs, not forming entire sentences, gesturing dramatically, with no grounds for their presumption that I won’t understand.  If I don’t understand, they terminate the conversation immediately, judging it a waste of their time.   They have conversations about me when I’m stood right there, it gets on your nerves a bit.  Over here they’re not awfully used to foreigners, and I know they’re not trying to be rude, but it’s difficult for patience not to wear a bit thin when I’m so consistently not treated as an equal.  Add these hampering assumptions to the problems that I do have with working in my second language, and I do question whether this is really a way I’d choose to live for a long time.  After all, I’m never going to speak Italian like an Italian, and I’ll certainly carry on looking British.

I don’t like the false implication that living in England would be a back-up option, a second best if this love affair doesn’t work out. Much as I go all moony eyed over Italy (I’m sure to the boredom of a lot of you), I am always proud to be English/British, and it’s an important part of my identity (see title of blog and photos of me at the Olympics draped in flags).  I don’t know whether this Italy thing is anything more than a fun infatuation that I will enjoy for a bit until I want to go home.

I am not painting a glum picture of my year abroad, I am looking at the bigger picture, mostly because it’s quite fun to imagine where life might take me in the future.  When I’m in the big wide world I will be in the very lucky position of having lived in a different country for a couple of years, and the question of whether I’m coming back is a pretty natural one.  The truth is that when I’m in one country, I pine after the other.  The optimistic flip side of that is that I’m more at home here than I could really have ever dreamed of; if that wasn’t the case, there would of course be no decision to be made.