Cultural Drinking

Not counting toes, which have a tendency of getting caught between the rungs of the antique furnaces that used to line the walls of my parent's house, the only bone I every really broke was my wrist. It was my right wrist, to be exact, and a spiral fracture, to be graphic.

These type of fractures, I soon learned, are caused by torque. For those of you who have been out of a physics classroom for a couple of years, when torque is applied along the axis of an object there are two results: either the force stops or the object fractures. In this instance, the force (the Rialto Bridge) was greater than the object (my wrist). That, my friends, is how one ends up in an ER with Italian doctors looking at my wrist, concerned that I was in an abusive relationship.

"I fell down the stairs."

"Would you like to speak to someone? It's entirely confidential..."

"No, no. There's no abusive boyfriend. I am just an idiot."

"Well. Here's a list of services we offer that are available to you, if you choose..."

"No, it's not like that. I swear. It's just...look, I'm really embarrassed about it, ok?"

It was a lose-lose type of situation, because the only way to assure them that I wasn't involved with a man that took his anger out with his fists was to assure them that I was just abroad and drunk one night. Yeah, I'm that American. The doctors did eventually let me out of the ER with black flexi-cast and a stern warning about alcohol. "But it wasn't even really my fault." I told them. "It was the mojitos!"

The summer of the "mojito incident," my twin had been taking courses for college credit in Venice, Italy. By the time I visited her, she told me that she was "cultured," having exhausted the Piazza San Marco, the Basilicas of both Saint Giovanni and Paolo, and all of the Catholic iconography tours, at least five times over. She informed me that Venice was fun for a week, but "there is only so much gelato you can eat, Em."

During my stay, I discovered that she had learned a maximum of five Italian phrases. They mostly centered around how to order a chocolate brioche for breakfast. ("Vorrei una brioche.") A very important skill, to be sure, but perhaps ever the slightest bit shortsighted.

We played scrabble in cute little cafes off the canal, or walked down random streets just to see where we would end up. At night, we drank with a lot of Americans. It was Italy, minus the Italians. It was that trip that made me start to recognize why Americans abroad are so reviled. We ordered traditional Italian cuisine like "tagliatelle al nero di seppia" only to discover, a minute too late, that it's name means "squid ink pasta." (A marine creature's defensive excretion as my pasta? Really, Italy?) We asked for ice in our water at restaurants, and were taken aback by the confused looks we received. (Do only Americans like to be refreshed by the temperature of their beverages?) We get drunk off of the poorly mixed mojitos from the one Spanish bar in Venice and fall up the Rialto Bridge in front of every Venetian citizen who happens to be out for a late night stroll to get some gelato along the canal. We are suddenly happy that we do not know enough Italian to understand what they are saying.

No, that summer I did not help promote positive international relations on behalf of the red, white, and blue. But I did learn a valuable lesson: when you're visiting a new and exciting country, just don't drink. But if you must drink, you stick to the cultural beverages of the land that you happen to find yourself in. Would I have broken my wrist if I had drank red wine or spritzes instead of those mojitos? I can't definitively say yes, but it's not a clear no, either.

But I can tell you one thing: no Italians were physically harmed on my fall up the marble steps of the Rialto. And that has to count for something, international relations-wise.