Culture Shock

 Growing up, we are taught that the way we do stuff is universal: it works and we haven't been exposed to some "other way", so this must be it.

One of the delights of travelling to other cultures is discovering the mundane tasks that are done differently.  In Portugal we learned about a different but tasty difference in the way orange juice is transported.  Lucky for the Italians, they do it the Portuguese way in Italy: fresh squeezed.  I'm beginning to think the US is the outlier here.

On our "Camino walks" it was typical to stay in a different place every night: washing our clothes for the next morning in the sink.  After a few days the novelty wore off.  This trip we decided to stay at least two nights at each town, and reserve places with washers whenever practical.  After our first night in Rome, we were delighted to have a machine wash our clothes for us: a washer/drier like appliance was waiting for us, hidden behind a cabinet door.  After tracking down laundry detergent at the local "minimarket" (none was provided at the AirBnB, perhaps that was a clue).

Using the "helpful" dial and lots of button mashing, we got the thing to "run".  After 4 hours of strange sounds and beeping it unlocked the door and let us retrieve our clothing.  Sadly the laundry "pod" we tossed in with the clothes looked precisely the same when it came out of the washer as when we tossed it in.

I rewashed my underwear in the sink.  In Spello, the AirBnB host set the buttons and dials for us and cautioned that we were on our own if we changed any settings.

Shopping for groceries at the supermarket is an interesting experience.  It looks like a "regular" supermarket, but all the labels are in Italian (who'd have thought).  It took us three tries to remember to weight our fruit and put a sticker on it at the fruit isle before bringing it to the checkout, which has no scales!

Our AirBnB in Spello came with a gas stove.  No problem: I've been using gas stoves to cook on for decades.  It seemed obvious enough: push the "ignite" button, press down and turn a knob until the gas ignites.   Well, that part was easy, but as soon as the burner lit and I turned the knob to "medio basso", the gas stopped flowing, the burner went out, and no amount of prodding or cursing for the next 5 minutes would encourage it to heat anything.  I tried all of the burners in turn, and even switched to a match to light the burner: all with the same results.

After carefully inspecting the unit I noticed a thermocouple sticking up into each burner, just like my gas water heater at home.  The trick, it turns out, is to hold the knob in once the burner lights until the thermocouple heats up (takes a few seconds), then adjust the flame.  It is a safety device that prevents the gas from flowing and filling the building with methane if the burner fails to light, or goes out while the knob is left on.   On reflection this seems obvious - why don't we have that safety feature in the US I wonder?