March 26, 2007

  • Culture Shock

    Just after Chinese New Year and my
    return from South Africa, the guys in my apartment complex decided to
    hold a barbecue and invited your humble narrator, despite the
    knowledge that I am vegetarian. When they told me that there would be
    alcohol, however, it was a simple choice. I informed the people that
    I had given up beer, and so they asked what I drink instead.

    "Red wine is fine – I can bring
    my own," I informed them.

    "No no," came the
    insisitence, "we'll sort it out."

    After a mountain bike ride the
    following morning and then a tonk down the coast on the Suzuki in the
    afternoon, I got back in time for the evening's festivities, and the
    lady who lives in the apartment opposite mine, across the courtyard,
    got all excited to see me and went to get the various bottles of wine
    she had been out to buy that morning.

    I was talking with other people from
    the apartment complex in Chinese, my Chinese for once actually being
    better than other people's English (which should tell you how bad
    their English is), until Lisa (the girl with the wine) returned
    clutching the three bottles. She handed them over to me. They were
    almost freezing.

    "Have you put these in the
    fridge?" I asked.

    "Yes."

    Oh dear.

    "Never put red wine in the
    fridge," I told her.

    "Really?" came the surprised
    reply.

    "Really."

    I deftly opened up one of the bottles,
    an Argentian Hermitage, and left it to warm up a little. Thankfully
    the evening air was warm, and so I figured it would not take long for
    the wine to get to a much more pallettable temperature. Lisa,
    however, was impatient, and took some of the cold wine.

    "Don't you want any?" she
    asked.

    "Yes, but not yet," I
    replied. "I'll wait for it to warm up."

    At which all the Chinese looked at me
    as if I had just placed an order for a stir-fried yacht and noodles.

    So I had to educate my friends at the
    barbecue – and once the wines had indeed warmed up, and everyone
    tasted them, everyone had to agree that I was right. And they all
    promised never to put a red wine in the fridge again.

    I carried on drinking, watching the
    firework display that Lisa and friends had organised. I found it
    amazing that they would just place fireworks willy nilly, with a
    couple of rockets straying from the safer path, and flying off in an
    almost random direction, missing the 4 rather drunken Chinese people
    who were lighting them by a matter of centimetres. Even more
    concerning was the fact that they just laughed as a firework whistled
    past their head. If I had done that as a child my mother would have
    chucked a mental, and I would have been grounded for a decade. In
    Taiwan, a child gets hit by a firework and the parents just accept it
    as "one of those things".

    Coming back to Europe though, I have
    realised at just how much I too take for granted. Sitting in a
    village in Slovenia (the capital city has only 200,000 people) I was
    eating dinner in the hotel at which I am staying, courtesy of my
    financial backer, until the people occupying his apartment leave
    (next month) which is when I will move in. I asked the waiter what
    there was to do in town, and he said that the place I am staying is
    the place to be.

    176 slot machines, a restaurant and a
    smoke filled bar. That's what this place has to offer. No internet
    connection, no cable TV. No 7-Eleven. Nowhere to go shopping, nowhere
    to buy a bag of crisps or some chocolate at 3 in the morning. But
    they do make a mean cappuccino. And their panna cotta is to die for.

    Thankfully my partner is well
    connected, and he managed to obtain a mountain bike for me, so
    yesterday – my first weekend day in Slovenia – I went out on an
    adventure in the rather cold weather. It must have been a good 30 to
    35 km, along a valley, following a river and railway track, up in to
    the hills, past a castle until I got to the top. The weather is cold
    though, and by the time I made it to the peak I was feeling the need
    for something warm – like a cappuccino and a shower – and so I
    headed back.

    And last night, as the evening meal of
    spagetti and gorgonzola sauce settled in my stomcah, I realised
    something – you could fit the whole of Slovenia's population in to
    Taipei. Twice. And still have room to spare. It made me understand
    I'm not in Kansas any more.