Among my travel companions and me, collectively we fluently speak English, Spanish, French, Chinese, Russian and Thai. Unfortunately, between the three of us, only one girl has taken Italian – for only three semesters in high school, and she has not used it since – which caused a bit of concern as we prepared for our week-long trip to Milan, Florence, and Venice over Spring Break. In preparation for the first time that I would be traveling to a foreign country whose national language I do not speak, I monopolized all of our travel books, clearly under some silly expectation of magically becoming fluent in Italian just from poring over the pithy indexes of basic phrases. Mastering little else other than the obligatory “buongiorno” and “voglio gnocchi” during the two-hour plane ride to Milan, I resigned myself to suffering the type of disapproving looks for which the French are infamous for doling out to tourists unless they make a commendable attempt at speaking their language.
I discovered that my worries were largely unfounded from my very first night in Italy. Arriving at midnight in Milan, my friends and I soon discovered that it would be nearly impossible to find our hostel, given the dimly-lit network of tiny streets in which we found ourselves. We stopped to ask directions from a young Italian couple who did not speak any language other than Italian but seemed enthusiastic about helping us and even offered to take us to our hostel. More amazed at the realization that we understood her perfectly rather than worried about following strangers around a quiet Milanese neighborhood in the middle of the night, we took them up on the offer and arrived at our hostel in no time. Over the course of my trip in Italy, I encountered similar reactions from locals towards tourists who did not speak Italian, much to my surprise: shopkeepers and service personnel accommodatingly switching to English, restaurants with English menus on hand, and even a bistro who posted their menu in Chinese and Russian. Finding myself for the first time among those tourists that do not speak the local language, I guiltily thanked the internationalization of the tourism industry for developing such a willingness to accommodate foreigners and their linguistic differences in Italy. “Maybe English really is a universal language,” I thought with both relief and a bit of self-ashamedness. “And maybe it is not necessarily a bad thing,” I considered, even more uncharacteristically.
And yet, despite the country’s welcoming attitude towards foreigners, during the last part of my Italian adventure in Venice, I realized that Italy’s culture has also suffered some negative consequences from its international exposure. Winding through the maze of narrow cobblestoned streets lined with restaurants and boutiques that seem to cater to the crowds of tourists passing through daily, I found something that caught my attention as effectively as the elaborately decorated Carnevale masks decorating every other storefront: the large white cardboard signs scrawled with black bold letters the words, “NOT MADE IN CHINA,” posted in every boutique selling supposed “hand-made” crafts. Knowing that Venice prides itself on its traditional arts, such as hand-blown Murano glass, I was surprised by the suggested lack of regulation and quality control of its artistic industry, obliging artists or shopkeepers to take individual measures to defend the integrity of their products. Some shopkeepers have even taken to installing little workshops displayed in the windows of their stores so that customers can personally watch the owners putting the finishing touches on their work. In a store full of glasswork, I paused to admire a pretty plate decorated with beads of glass arranged in the shape of a tree. “Hand-made,” the proprietor assured me, clearly noticing my interest. To prove his point, he pointed to a box of colored glass rods sitting in a corner and to pictures of himself standing in what appeared to be a glass-making factory. Not really one for impulse-buying, I politely told him that I would like to do some more exploring and may return for the plate. Twenty minutes later, on the Rialto Bridge, I noticed a stack of the same exact plates displayed in the windows of another store. Hand-written signs proclaiming the products to be “HAND-MADE” crowded the window space next to taped-up pictures of various craftsmen in another factory.
The next day, I flew home to Paris, bringing back with me as my only souvenirs of Italy the photos that I took of the amazingly intricate details of the Milan Cathedral’s facade, of the magnificent rolling hills of Florence as seen from my viewpoint on top of Brunelleschi’s Dome, of the surprise chance to see Venice decorated with gently falling snowflakes, of the work wrought by Nature and by timeless masters that capture and distinguish the true uniqueness of Italy.
