Postby garyb » Fri Oct 07, 2022 10:08 pm
I'm back, so it's time for my Campania travel report!
I had a great time, and I got really lucky with the weather: there were some thunderstorms when I was in Naples last week, a place with plenty possibilities for indoor activities as well as outdoor, and then beautiful sun when I was in the coastal areas this week. It can be a bit of gamble at this time of year, and I'm glad that it wasn't the other way round!
It turned out to be a very active holiday, with lots of walking (I think I'm a bit traumatised by stairs now...), some sea swimming, and standing up on packed buses going around very narrow winding roads. In fact I'd only really recommend the area, especially the Amalfi Coast, to people who have a decent level of physical fitness because it's so hilly and you can't really avoid all these steps. And you also need the patience to deal with these buses whose schedules are a guideline at best. Fortunately I have both, but I saw some people really struggling to get around. If you're skilled and fearless on a scooter or motorbike that's probably a good way to get around all the towns and avoid some stairs, but that I am not...
Naples: Three days there were plenty. In fact two (including a half day at Pompeii) felt like enough, but on the third day I did visit the archeological museum which really impressed me, and I say that as someone who's not usually big on these sorts of museums.
Naples wasn't a place I really felt at home in or I could see myself living in, but that's part of its charm: it feels quite authentic and unique, like it still belongs to the locals rather than to tourists and investors, although visitors are of course welcome. It was enjoyable to visit, mostly felt quite safe and relaxed to me apart from the areas near the station and ports, and the food was excellent and reasonably priced.
Positano and the Amalfi Coast: As expected I found Positano itself was quite overrated and overpriced, but it was still nice to look at, pleasant enough to stay in, and it's as good a base as any for exploring the coast.
I visited Sorrento, Amalfi, Atrani, and Ravello, and walked the Sentiero degli Dei. Some people describe it as less of a hike and more of a gentle walk, but again these people are clearly fairly fit as it does have a fair few climbs and descents whichever way you do it.
Procida was again as expected: beautiful, less expensive, and a good place to chill out for a couple of days. Maybe even too chilled: even by this time of year, many places were already closed and there wasn't much going on at night. But that's what I needed after an active week.
I didn't make it over to Ischia, but I passed it on the ferry and it looked lovely and it apparently has some nice thermal spas, so it's one for the future. Capri also seemed worth a visit although less my kind of scene, and I might have done so if I had had an extra day or two, but I wasn't too fussed.
But enough travel reporting; we're here to talk about languages!
Unlike previous trips where I've already known native speakers in a place or I've had the fortune to meet some, this time my Italian use was almost entirely limited to customer service interactions. There were a few opportunities where I maybe could've got chatting to people if I had been a bit more confident and outgoing, but I wasn't, and I did kick myself a bit for it later. Less for the language practice aspect, more just for the social one and potentially getting a bit off the tourist trail. Oh well.
On that, the trip did make me think a lot about interactions with people and social confidence in general. Much like how I've managed to shed a lot of unhealthy attitudes towards language learning in the last few years and I'm now trying to figure out what healthier ones to replace them with and where the right balance is, there are parallels to that for other things in life like social interactions and the balance between being comfortable with myself and getting out of my comfort zone. But that's a subject for another place, like my private language-practice diaries.
I have acknowledged that my "day-to-day" Italian ability is a bit weak since I don't live there and hadn't visited for a few years so don't get or need to use that type of language much, while I do keep up the "more advanced" B- and C- level stuff with my Italian friends here, so it was a good thing to get some practice with the A-level language. Still, it's a shame that there wasn't much chance for my Italian to really shine or for me to use it to connect with people while I was there. I could've easily accomplished everything I did in Italian just with English. But I still think that being able to understand what was going on around me made a huge difference.
Well, there was one situation where my comprehension ability did make me the hero of the day! On one of these packed buses, the driver shouted to everyone to ask if someone was willing to give up their seat for an older lady who was recovering from a hip fracture, and I was the only person offering and in fact probably the only person who even understood the request since other than her group it was all tourists on board. And the amount of respect I got from the group was unreal: for the rest of the journey they were praising me and telling me how nice and kind I was.
But overall I believe I spoke more Spanish than Italian! At least qualitatively, if not quantitatively. I met quite a few South Americans in the hostels I stayed in, and there were a lot of Spanish and half-Spanish-half-English coversations going on so I had some good chances to speak that and go much deeper than just tourist subjects. That reminded me that Spanish is absoutely a language worth keeping working on: it's very handy when travelling (probably second only to English) and since it's spoken in lots of different countries there's less of a sense of ownership and of uninvitedly invading someone else's culture like there can be with Italian. With Italian, the standard first question I'm asked is why I learnt it, while with Spanish it's usually where; its utility as a second language doesn't need to be questioned.
I heard a lot of German. In the hostel in Naples there were a couple of big groups of young Germans, and there were quite a few German-speaking tourists around in general. But the groups mostly kept to themselves, unlike the South Americans who were alone or in small groups and mixed a lot more with other guests, so I didn't interact with them much. I did overhear a few Italian tour guides speaking what sounded like quite good German, which was interesting just because Italian-accented German isn't a combination I had heard much before.
Some French too. Not much in the hostels, but plenty when out and about. Yesterday I had lunch in a restaurant and was next to a mixed French and Italian group who were speaking a mixture of the two between themselves and with the waitress and mostly understanding each other quite well.
Onto the big topic: people switching to English...
When I spoke Italian, I'd say it was pretty much half and half for replies in Italian to replies in English. Which for a very touristy area in the South is actually not bad at all. I'm still of the opinion, and even more so now, that someone who wants to practise their Italian in Italy is best going to the North (except Veneto), but as I say that wasn't exactly the purpose of my trip.
It was often one extreme or the other - insisting on English although they had clearly understood my Italian perfectly, or continuing in Italian like it was completely normal - although there were also some of classic permutations:
- Saying the "important" things in English (especially numbers for prices), which can seem condescending but is probably just based on past experience with people's Italian attempts;
- Repeating a few words here and there in English after saying them in Italian, which I can't really see as a bad thing and just seems like a gesture to show that they do know a few things or they're willing to accommodate;
- Or seeming unconvinced until I explicitly say that I "parlo italiano", as if the fact that we had just been speaking Italian perfectly fine for the last minute or so wasn't enough proof, which is just amusing really.
I'm sure I could've been more insistent with the switchers, but like I said a few posts ago, I've got bigger battles to fight and better things to save my energy for so I didn't mind just letting it go. There are always different ways to interpret these situations, from the negative and victim-mindset-y (they really don't have time for my crappy Italian and see me as a stupid foreigner) to the perhaps-ingenuously positive (they're just trying to be kind and helpful), and it's hard to tell although their attitude can sometimes give you clues. Really though, non-Italians who speak Italian well are rare and I think that alone can explain most behaviour.
People could quite clearly tell that I wasn't a native speaker. Most likely because of my accent, but sometimes it could be other factors like appeance, body language, and confidence, and sometimes they could tell before I even opened my mouth. And that's just fine because I'm not one and I'm not pretending to be one, although I'm sure that at times I could've done much better at appearing as the confident and competent non-native speaker that I am, or should be with my level. I did possibly fool one museum staff member though, who just gave me the information leaflet in Italian rather than asking which language I wanted it in as she had done with other customers and staff at other places had done with me.
(For what it's worth, whenever I was given the choice of having a document or a menu in Italian or English, I usually chose English because, again, why make life more difficult: things like historical information and types of fish or vegetables can be tricky. But it did inevitably sabotage the possibility of continuing the interaction in Italian. Again I didn't mind, as there'll always be more opportunites to speak it!)
I didn't get a single compliment on my Italian, and only one genuinely friendly and curious person asked about how I had learnt the language. I suppose these are positive things: when you're actually good, people don't need to tell you so or ask you why, and the best compliment can be no compliment and just treating you normally.
Unlike on previous trips, I didn't get any real impressions of xenophobia or tourist hate this time, although it's hard to tell if the ones I did get in the past were genuinely that way or I just saw them that way because of my own unhealthy mindsets at the time. To truly figure that out, I might need to go back to Rome, as that's where I had felt it the most...
So I think I did have a much healthier and more balanced attitude towards the language than on previous trips: I did always make the effort to use it, but I didn't stress out too much about it or get too upset when people didn't cooperate. It would be a lie to say I never felt frustrated about switching - it can absolutely feel like an insult when you've been learning the language for around ten years and worked pretty hard for a lot of that time, and it's perfectly normal to feel that way - but I didn't dwell on these feelings or let them get me down.
Plans now that I'm back? I don't really feel desperate to dive back into language studies, and if anything the trip has just given me even more perspective on how there's more to life than languages and above all it's just made me want to start travelling more again (although it's also been a reminder that I really dislike flying, between the environmental impact, the early morning or late night timing of most flights plus the delays, and just the whole airport and on-board experience, so I want to do fewer longer trips rather than more short ones and even this 10-day one felt too short). And I want to keep up with the outdoor activites and general relaxation, here and elsewhere. The things I enjoyed most about the trip were just the walking, the views, being near and in the sea, and simply having time to do what I wanted and take things easy. All things I can also enjoy back home, to an extent.
I do want to keep improving my Spanish, but at this stage I think I just need to keep up the input and practice, no need for formal study. I'm ambivalent about Italian - this trip hasn't exactly inspired me to perfect it, and while I'm keen to visit or revisit other parts of Italy, there are destinations higher on my list - so I think it's just back to maintenance and maybe another push on pronunciation and revising some everyday stuff whenever I do plan to return there. German feels more like a "nice to have" than a "must have".
However I did just come back yesterday, I've not settled back into a routine yet, and I'm aware that these feelings are largely just immediate reactions after the trip and would probably be quite different if, say, I had interacted more with locals or not spoken with the South Americans or had more chance to meet the Germans. I need to give it a few days to really see where I am.
15 x