A Revision

In an earlier edition I wrote about the difference in cultural attitudes toward service between Americans and Western Europeans. In the interest of traveling Americans and innocent Western Europeans everywhere I must add to my comments.

We have been in Verona, Italy for a full afternoon and evening. Verona is a city of formidable size but significantly smaller than Venice, inland by about an hour and a half from the Adriatic Sea. We decided to come and see this famous backdrop for the story of Romeo and Juliet on our way back to Prague. It was an excellent choice (mostly on Sara’s part) for many reasons. Not the least of these reasons is some added perspective it gave us on service from Western Europeans.

We have experienced several graceful and helpful folks here in Verona, folks who give the lie to my earlier impression, which threatened to become etched in stone. For starters, the lady at the ticket office in the train station was very helpful in discerning the nuances of our train tickets. There was a woman on the bus into town who gleefully instructed me on the proper use of my bus pass (every city is a little different). The gentleman managing the desk at the Museum of Archaeology gracefully accepted our lack of Italian in helping us to find a bus back to the train station this afternoon. And the guy who owned the pizza parlour—who had respectable English himself—did not bat an eye at either our use of English or my fuddled attempts at Italian.

So there we are: a few folks who have gone out of their way to help us, and even done so with a smile. I shall soften my current understanding of the cultural divide between the Olde World and the New.

~emrys