Culture shock is something only cool people experience...
...like jet lag, or knowing how and what to order at Starbucks. As it turns out, my standards for defining cool people are way lower than expected.
Sometimes, I feel like a Romantic poet, it’s a residue from when, in high school, I collected disposable coffee cups and ‘artified’ them (aka: wrote on them with a black sharpie) because one time I wrote a modern haiku a’ la Kerouac about stars in the night sky being diamonds in my coffee.
Before you ask, yes, I did wear worn-out Converse shoes covered in Marilyn Manson lyrics. Thank you very much.
The two stages of Culture Shock
I’d classify the first stage of culture shock as both excitement and depression, often at the same time. Said time is usually at sunset when the watercolour palette of the sky melts with the tears in my eyes.
The golden hour brought tears of joy, for the most part, and of guilt for leaving everything and everyone behind, but also of relief for finally being where I wanted to be. This was something not every expat got to experience, and I was one of the lucky few who found their place in the world.
The second stage of culture shock would be a deeper understanding of those habits and values that used to define me in a different time and place. You discover your real values when they’re being tested, and culture shock will either get rid of them or reinforce them. This is why they say that you have to travel to find yourself and I have to agree with that statement. I still have reservations about people who are content living in the same town where they grew up and why people without passports make me sad inside. Sure, it’s easy to feel strong and independent when you are vacationing or when you’re on your turf. Only when you’re embarking on a nomadic journey without a safety net you can start writing your own adventure. Along with newly discovered values, you can erase some unhelpful habits and be inspired to become the person you always wanted to be, not what your neighbourhood expects you to be.
Like a January, but for your life!
Which is usually how Januaries and time in general work, but you know what I mean.
I like big cities, they’re so intimate.
I have always liked the idea of big cities, especially the whole ‘nobody knows who you are and nobody cares’ mentality drastically opposed to the kind of judgement that marked my alternative teenage years in a small town. To quote F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby: “I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy”.
When my mother and I moved to a town even smaller than the previous one five minutes away, I immediately went out to explore local amenities such as the cemetery and the ruins of the local castle possibly older than Australia itself. In one of the side-streets behind the church, a random old guy in a hat pointed at me and asked what family did I belong to. I stared at him, hung my thumbs on my studded belts (yes ‘belts’, plural) and looked right into his eyes, defiant.
“I don’t have a family.”
The drama! Give her an award!
Other than the boyfriend, whose hand I was awkwardly holding for that was effectively the fourth time we’ve ever met in person, I don’t know anyone in the Southern Hemisphere. You see, when you are abroad, better if somewhat alone, you get to live a whole new life. Not only because no one knows you. Duh. But because the ‘you’ you used to know was a thing only when contextualised, and now that context was on the other side of the World. Being a new expat to me was less about the fun travel time and more about belonging and finding my new self while getting accustomed to all the new things around me.
Some may think that if, after a year, you still felt exiled and more prone to missing what you left behind than being excited for what’s to come, then it was time to re-assess your life choices and potentially go back. A common opinion is that, by this one-year mark, you either fit into the new culture or may never do. Which was sad and very realistic at the same time but gave me a boost of confidence that I didn’t just ruin my life since I was moderately happy with my destination and felt immediately at home. Even without all my books.
Home is where your make-up brushes are.
Before my arrival, I was only dealing with the extra bureaucracy of my Visa approval thinking it couldn’t be harder than navigating the infamous Italian university system. The real stress was packing, and I didn’t even think about culture shock yet! Well, I didn’t even look up Melbourne on Google either, so the ‘everyday life’ of an expat was the least of my worries. How different could it be? I’ll adjust, I’ll manage. I’ll meet Italians and I will have a network of expats despite not seeing myself as a proud Italian per se. And, trust me, there are plenty of Italians here! There has been a huge wave of immigrants from the Mediterranean area back in the day, so it’s not uncommon to see familiar features around.
I’ll be honest with you, for the following years I will stubbornly never speak Italian with anyone and I would rather pretend to be Middle Eastern than encourage other Italians to engage with me unnecessarily.
I didn’t like soccer, I had never been on a Vespa, I was not part of a mafia family, I couldn’t speak any dialect, and I needed subtitles when southern Italians speak. Sure, I loved cheese, gluten, and wine, and was rather fond of hand gestures, but that’s where I drew the line. Actually, I might have pushed it further only if France was involved and said things like: ‘Give back the Mona Lisa you rude mimes!’ like I had an emotional drive to fight for my Country. Which I truly don’t.
Everyone knows Italians are battling a made-up mental war against France.
From my Northern Italian perspective, everyone in Australia was way nicer than in Paris, even excessively so. It’s like Parisians are indoor fancy cats, and Aussies are golden retrievers on the beach.
I need to specify ‘Northern’ because we’re commonly seen as the bear-type. The animals not the flamboyant types. As we tend to keep to our own and hybernate for half the year in the mountains.
In Melbourne, there hasn’t been a single person who greeted me with a simple ‘Good morning’ without adding ‘howsitgoin’ which, to bear-me, is like wanting me to meet their parents on Christmas day. In Italy, you would be lucky if people as much as acknowledged you with a nod, especially in stores. For any tourist visiting Italy who may wonder what’s wrong with Italian shop assistants: forget small talk and compliments, they don’t like you and it’s nothing personal.
Imagine my confusion when I was approached by an enthusiastic shop assistant who waved at me from the other side of the store like we were long-lost friends, and as I replied that I was just browsing, mentally contemplating leaving the store in the next ten seconds, they asked where my accent was from:
“It’s from Italy”
“That’s great! I am Italian too! My mum is from Sicily and my dad is from Trieste. Do you know them?”
“I know the cities but I don’t believe I know your parents. So, when did you come here?”
“I was born here. My parents were born here too but my grandparents can speak Italian! I can’t communicate with them because I don’t speak it at all.”
I was trying to understand, how could someone say that they’re Italian if they were born in Australia, or if they have never lived in Italy, couldn’t speak Italian, nor haven’t been brought up with the system of religion and culture that Italy seemed to be so attached to? Also, who are you? Leave me alone? Why don’t they talk to the boyfriend instead who is from here? I am fresh off the plane!
Maybe I was wrong and not everyone that looked like me was from Italy, but the majority of people were somewhat Italian. Or should I say Mediterranean? Often referred to as ‘wogs’ (a derogatory term that has been fully reclaimed). Not that being from Italy ultimately mattered or defined you any more than being asked if you considered yourself a minority, where you felt at home, or in what language your thoughts were. But in the context of a casual talk about ethnicity and heritage, being from a specific country has its relevance.
I felt sorry for the boyfriend who had to witness his mountain girlfriend entering a mall and getting spooked by salespeople and then dazed by all the alcoholic fumes from the labyrinth of perfume stalls I dragged him into. This combination of caffeine and excitement instigated a series of deep questions about my own identity.
What if my new self turned out to be completely different from who I was when I left home?
My first instinct was to say this was just growing up. But what if I was in my own Twilight narrative and for some supernatural reason I belonged to Melbourne as Bella belonged to being a Vampire? Of course, I could have stayed in my Hobbit hole eating potatoes and smoking the best Old Toby of the Shire. If that’s the case I would have never met the Elves on my adventures. Would my life be peaceful, then? Instead of ending up lost in some upside-down realm and alone?
If you counted three nerd references in the previous paragraph give yourself a pat on the back and know that you are my people.
The ‘Elves’, with a bit of imagination, would be the other students I shared a house with during my year abroad in England. Two Germans, another Italian, and a French. The premise almost made it sound like a racist joke, but we all meshed pretty well, except for the time one of them stole my Christmas tree and became one of my top two sworn enemies.
The other enemy is a girl from my primary school. She knows what she did.
This experience made me realise that all Italians in the larger group, at Uni, shared a very peculiar set of beliefs about health and survival. Those beliefs were very hard to eradicate and even harder to explain, but fundamental to understanding what living with an Italian truly meant. And did I bring these with me from Italy to Australia as emotional baggage? Of course, I did. Those and daddy issues.
There are three overarching categories that all Italian beliefs relate to:
1) morality/ethics
2) ease
3) life or death
In the first category, I’d put things we did or rather didn’t do, because that was the only possible human moral approach. Like not cutting spaghetti, rejecting pineapple on pizza, not drinking cappuccino during a meal, etc. There are many more, and you might have noticed they are all food-related. That says a lot. Habits dictated by laziness looked more like ignoring signage and queue etiquette, refusing to iron towels, or avoiding making your bed every morning. Life or death matters went much, much deeper and involved things like never taking painkillers on an empty stomach - or you will die. No eating before swimming - or you will die. Always wearing a singlet and never going to bed with wet hair- or you could catch a cold, and then die. But most importantly: beware of the draft. All those cute little old ladies with shawls over their shoulders? Not a fashion statement but functional and essential. That’s how they got to be so old! I’d include in this category also those student-specific quirks and superstitions about not graduating if you climbed on top of whatever bell tower or walked through some random square in town. These may vary depending on the city, but never wish an Italian student good luck before an exam. It’s bad luck.
Just to be safe, in my introductory tour of Melbourne, I refrained from visiting cathedrals or crossing squares diagonally. Not that there aren’t many around in this fetus of a Country. The fear of not graduating still assaulted me in my worst nightmares and I would not compromise my potential future study endeavours out of mere historical curiosity!
Directly from the archives, please enjoy this authentic photographic evidence:
"Always wearing a singlet and never going to bed with wet hair- or you could catch a cold, and then die."
Oooo yes. I moved from the Netherlands to Milan and I bike to work every day with wet hair. People are stumped. Amazed. Appalled. All at once. I like to freak them out by showing off my hair during winter, when it sometimes freezes solid. Good times. Have died zero times thus far, too.
Ha! I lived in a small north Queensland town where people who are fourth-generation Australians and have never left the country say they're Italian. They did make their own pasta, at least.