Week 8: Talking on Trains (and cabs and lines and restaurants…)
As many of you know, Jeff and I recently took a journey through Europe. There were a lot of new adventures for us on this trip. We flew into London and out of Naples (with a long layover in Madrid) so we were forced a less casual timeline to traverse through the countries. When Jeff went to Rome, he had remained in that city for the duration of his stay. When we went to Paris two years ago, other than our train ride to Versailles, we did the same. We explored Paris for a week and while we wanted to see everything and therefore kept ourselves moving, we could plan our days as we went. This trip we had trains to catch in multiple cities in multiple countries and it was all new to us. So we prepared. We arrived at train stations early. We learned how to get quick tickets so we could board within minutes of our arrival. We learned how to ride the overnight trains and trust some stranger with our passports to process us out and back into the EU.
We both get pretty nervous doing new things. When we don’t know where we are going or how the systems work, we get kind of anxious. This applies to speaking to people in other countries as well. What if they don’t speak English? What if we make a cultural misstep? What if we just look generally ignorant? Jeff is bolder at walking up to people and asking questions or conversing with someone while we wait in line, but he announced this trip he’d like to get better at talking with people as we travel. We both thoroughly enjoy that human connection and learning people’s stories. We have been given such good travel advice and local tips by people like the lady in the line for the bathroom at Yellowstone or the guy behind the counter at the liquor store in Tahoe. So we made the effort to reach out. We had a lovely dinner with a couple in London who told us about their favorite spot in Paris. We later checked that shop along with others in the area and were thrilled with the suggestions. We learned the temperature of international politics and theater from couples who sat with us for two and a half hours in the dinner car of the night train. We could have cozied into our sleeping quarters and gone to sleep, but it made our experience so much richer. We ran into some Americans at the Louvre and were given some tips on international travel with kids. We met a sweet, young couple from Korea at the Uffizi Gallery who helped make our wait seem shorter and we bonded with so well, I got a hug when we left. We met a woman and her two boys from New Zealand at the train station who told us their stories and allowed us to talk about our boys and how sports and Harry Potter transcend location. We shared in the sheer joy the Barcelona students expressed with cheers and awe at the snow and seeing the US for the first time as they told us about their exchange program on the plane ride home. If Jeff hadn’t pushed this or we had just been too nervous or afraid to speak up, our trip still would have been great, but these conversations are part of us now. We look back on them with fondness and feel like we experienced far more by moving past our own discomfort to get know others’ experiences and share our own.
