When people ask me for travel information, they often append their request with something like, “Don’t send me to any tourist traps. I want to go to a place without tourists where I can have a true cultural experience.” The unwritten part is, “…which you are going to spell out for me because I don’t speak a lot of Italian and which is going to be easy and in a very clean place.”
Here’s the thing: nobody can give you steps to follow to have a cultural experience—or, for that matter, an epiphany.
I like epiphanies. You just can’t force them. They come when you’re ready.
What you can do is open yourself up to experience. For the most part, this means becoming a “cultural relativist”, even if only temporarily and then only if your chosen political party or leaning allows it. Yes, that’s right, the first step is to stop thinking that the culture you come from is the very bestest in the whole wide world and nobody does it better, despite the fact you haven’t experienced any other cultures. Other folks a long way away from your country have solved (or tried to solve) the same social problems. They got different answers. That difference is what makes the world go ‘round. Well, that and a whole lot of good red wine…
Become childlike. Marvel at things. Have no shame in asking about things you don’t understand. People everywhere like explaining their traditions. Open your mind. Control nothing.
You’re in the garden of Eden. What’s around you is beauty and goodness and light. Marvel at it. Remember, you get kicked out if you try to gain control of things. Remember God.
Now you’re ready. I’ve got tips.
Learn a bit of the language. You’ll have a hard time making inroads unless you can at least show folks you’re a decent person. Learn the polite words. Greet people in shops. Thank folks who help you. You might be surprised by a discount they give to the few tourists who interact with them.
Go on a quest. Got a question about why folks do what they do? Why they have health care that doesn’t cost and arm and a leg? Find out for yourself. Want local regional foods, the best a restaurant has to offer? Discuss the food with the waiter and take his recommendations; it’s how you get good food in Italy because what’s special isn’t always offered to us hamburger eaters and isn’t always on the menu because they think we won’t like it. Or—go to an open air market and search for something you’ve never eaten before—perhaps agretti, or perhaps a rare cheese from a guy in a truck who likes talking and using his hands to make a point.
Let’s look at the strange case of sfilacci. I see something in a macelleria in Padua. It looks like precious saffron. Saffron has no place alongside bresaola.
So I ask the butcher. You might not want to hear what he had to say. Sfilacci is made from the shank of a horse. It’s cooked for many hours very slowly, then banged apart and the “threads” separated and fluffed—or as many translations suggest: frayed. What you have left is preserved. It goes very well on pizza and in salads. It pairs very well with arugula.
Once you see it and get to know it, you start to notice it on restaurant menus. Your growth continues, your passion for food expands. Pretty soon it is part of a long list of Italian foods they don’t know about on the internet, where “spaghetti” to a great many Americans indicates a dish made with a meat sauce and that represents the only thing you can do with spaghetti.
Stay where you’re not isolated as a tourist. That usually means you won’t be staying in a hotel. You might try a self-catering vacation home or apartment, but you’ll get more advice in a rural agriturismo, a country house on a working farm, where there’s someone to lead you over the cultural hurdles and send you to the right places to learn what you want to learn. You’ll also eat well and learn how the Italian insistence on good ingredients has created a cuisine that’s the envy of the world, especially in places where the industrial hamburgers are awash in Ammonia or other noxious liquids.
How to find an agriturismo and an owner that suits you? Easy. Go to twitter and search with the term “agriturismo”. You’ll come up with a list of owners that use the social network to tell you what’s happening in their neck of the woods. You can use twitter not only to find a likely agriturismo, but to see if the owner might share your interests or be willing to teach you something about the culture. If your quest is to find out how the taste of extra virgin olive oil you buy in the supermarket is different from that of artisanal production, you’ll be amazed the first time you taste an oil made by people who care. It’s an astonishing difference you’ll tell your friends about until they hate you for it.
I’m out of gas. Maybe my open mind has dried up. I need to remember to cover it in saran wrap when I’m not using it. There’s a hockey game on TV tonight.
More Experiential Travel
Giro 2014: Deconstructing Stage 4
La Spezia and the Clarinet Man
Quaintly Curative: The Baths of Bagni di Lucca