Forget about the language barrier; forget about the different metric system; forget about the foreign social ques. How the HELL do I use this stuff?!
More often than I had anticipated, when going about my day-to-day activities I find myself slowed down as I have to stop and ponder how I’m supposed to achieve a goal that used to seem so ordinary. Examples:
The bathrooms in Italy should come with a multi-lingual instruction manual. In my apartment, there is a lever and a knob above the toilet. When I arrived to my apartment after a 9 hour plane experience, a 1 hour taxi escapade, and a 4 block walk with my bags from the incorrect address, and the 5 bottles of water I consumed within that time, I walked into my apartment and barely said hi before I ran into the bathroom. But as I ran in, I was baffled as to how to use the damn thing. Why are there two toilets in one bathroom? Why do they require 2 separate flushing mechanisms? Rather than wasting gallons of water each time you flush as we environment-hating Americans do, the bathroom in my apartment has a lever that that allows you to control how much water is released. Above the lever is what looks like a knob that you’d find in the shower, and this is used when the toilet is running and is threatening to flood the bathroom; turning this knob shuts off the water from running through the pipes.
Also horrifying: at the Universita I attend, I walked into use a bathroom and found a hole in the floor with feet grips on either side. Yup- a female urinal. That's one cultural experience I'm ok going without.
I just did my first batch of laundry today – a load of delicates. I did my best to de-code the washing machine instructions and put it on what I thought was the delicate setting, but in hindsight, it may have been worth my while to walk the extra 10 feet to get my Italian dictionary. In Italy, the “delicate setting” simply means that the washing machine doesn’t spin out the clothes. This would not be such an issue if the Italians used dryers, but they instead use drying racks. The drying rack in my apartment is more of an apparatus rather than a rack. Six thin bars hang from the ceiling out of reach, and to get them down, each is attached to separate pully system which requires a long stick with a hook to operate. Thanks to the lack of spin provided by the washer, I had to wring out each item of clothing because they were all SOPPING wet before raising and lowering the bars to hang my clothes on, which apparently is an art you need to get the hang of because somehow I kept knocking into the fastened hooks which sent the rope flying up, the bar flying down, and my clothes flying everywhere. Furthermore, it is now more-or-less raining in my CA’s bathroom because I could only wring out so much water. (Sorry, Monica.) Right now, it seems like a long shot to hope that I’ll have dry clothes to wear to my class in 12 hours. Whoops.
My apartment key is about 4 inches long and looks like a decorative souvenir or an honorary key given to the mayor of the city or something, but it most certainly doesn’t look real. To use it, it must point a certain way, and be twisted 4 times and can only be taken out on an even turn, otherwise it’ll get stuck
To get into the IES center, there is a large door on the sidewalk - and I mean LARGE door – cathedral sized doors. But to get through them, you open a smaller door that’s within the door like that scene when Dorothy stands at the gates of Oz. Then, you go through another set of doors to get to the stairs; at the stop of the stairs, there is another door to get into the center with the classrooms. Each door is requires a 4-digit number to be punched into the keypad. What’s the code number? Couldn’t tell ya. But I better figure it out because if you’re 5 minutes late to class, it counts as an absence, which is seriously frowned upon.
There are only 2 outlets in my bedroom, and each outlet only has 1 European plug. That would be made extra annoying if we were allowed to use multiple appliances at once, but each apartment is only equipped with 3000 volts of electricity. This sounds like a lot, but each light bulb is about 100 and the Italians have a much higher electrical output in their appliances. This means that only 1 large appliance can be used at a time otherwise the power will go out; in practical terms, you can use the dishwasher OR the washing machine OR blow dryer, but you can’t do more than one at once. The water supply must work similarly, because only one shower can be used at a time; if you try turning on 2, one will lose water. Also, the light switches are all outside of the rooms in our apartment, and you must flip it down for the lights to come on. And the stove does not have a flame igniter. I wanted to cook today and my roommate had to hold a cigarette lighter to the stove as I opened the gas valve and watched the flame erupt far too close to her hand than I’m comfortable with.
Looks like it’s sink or swim, folks. Learn to live Italian, or learn to live without a toilet, get rained on by clothes, get locked out of your apartment and/or school, blow a fuse, live in the dark, and burn your hand off while trying to cook. How overindulged, spoiled and bratty we must seem…
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