Confusing cultures.

One of the things I love about going on holiday is it gives me so much time away from normal life and I have so many more opportunities to read. Especially true is this if I’m flying. I have the bus to the airport, the long wait in departures (the OCD in me can not cope unless I am through security at least two hours before the gate closes), and then the flight. Perfect time for reading if I don’t fall asleep (put me on an aeroplane and I can be out before the safety announcement and probably not wake until we land – at which point I get annoyed about the missed opportunity to read).

I’m not a beach or pool person. I like exploring and wandering so I spend most of my time away drifting down random streets and wishing I was still a photographer (a heart breaking story I’ll put you all through on a blog one day).

Then there is the inevitable café time. I love sitting with a cup of tea in a café, if it’s warm I need to be outside; it’s a mixture of people watching, writing my own stories in my head and just being one of those people I am jealous of when I’m running around like a mad thing at home.

There is also travel within the country if I get bored of looking out the window and, because I tend to travel alone, evenings. I don’t go to bars or clubs when I’m away, nightlife to me is sitting reading a book somewhere – maybe with a beer.

But here comes the problem. I love travel; to see new places and experience new things. I’ve just come back from Albania and there is a very rich history and culture there and I loved exploring it.

The people are so nice! On a few occasions I would ask if I was on the right bus to get to where I wanted and they would come with me to my destination and make sure I didn’t get lost; I didn’t really need them to but it was really nice of them and I got to chat to a lot of locals this way. One of them even paid for my ticket (40 lek = about 25p) when I only had a big note to pay with.

As always I took books with me and so I found myself in the middle of Tirana reading about Yorkshire in the 1940’s or surrounded by old castles but my head was full of 1920’s Oxford. This can be a little jarring.

Last summer I took a road trip through south west England. I was reading about a man who moved to a foreign country and was having difficulty fitting in with the culture and was trying not to let his English mannerisms upset the locals. Eventually I got it into my head because I was in a different place I had to be careful not to let my Englishness upset the locals – regardless of the fact this was my country and we were all English!

One of the most bizarre culture clashes I experienced was when I was reading Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk To Freedom as I was travelled through India. It’s quite an absorbing and intense (though thoroughly enjoyable and informative) read. Mandela goes to some detail explaining the culture and traditions he grew up with as well as the atmosphere in the country he lived in later in life. At times I would look up and expect to be in South Africa and then have the double jolt of realising not only was I not but I was also not at home and in a very different climate. It’s like reading books set in the winter during summertime or the other way round.

I suppose the solution is to make my reading material match the environment of where I am, but this is not so easily done. I was in San Marino last year…

I did take East of Eden to North California with me and had the joys of passing Salinas as I read, with one eye out the window and one in the book. It was a really good experience to see the landscape I was reading about albeit many years later. Just looking at the undulating golden countryside and the farm land made me imagine that these events could be happening just the other side of that hill (although some if not most of them you would hope were not). I love Steinbeck anyway but it did add something special to be there, of course when I went to Cannery Row I then regretted I’d brought the wrong book. Me, I can never be happy.

But for as long as I love immersing myself in different cultures, either in reality or on the written page, there will always be this clash and at the end of the day that’s ok by me.

Buy Long Walk To Freedom by Nelson Mandela
Buy East Of Eden by John Steinbeck

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