Paris has been quieter than I expected. Perhaps everyone is off to the country in much the same way that Minnesotans headed in droves for their cabins in the Northwoods over the 4th of July.
Yesterday evening, my stomach was talking to me.?I found a little brasserie near my hotel to eat dinner. Just a place to sit and watch the world go by.?
There were a couple of French couples there. but the two families that sat nearest to me were German and (chain-smoking) Danes.
When I'm sitting by myself at a cafe in a foreign city, I enjoy hearing all the different languages around me. In this case, I could understand the Danish couple, who were obviously on holiday. The man in the family seemed fairly obsessed about ordering sauerkraut, a German dish. They also made sure to order a Coke for their child to drink.
And it made me think. When I go abroad, I make a point of trying to eat food items that are indigenous to the country I'm in and that I can't get otherwise back in the States. That means that I don't go to McDonald's or Burger King — and I don't order hamburgers. Why eat the same things abroad that I can get at home? Celebrate and enjoy the differences! Learn about another culture's food.
My dinner was listed as "Poulet basque" (Basque chicken). Tender, flavorful and with the requisite bread and wine. It is Paris, after all.
But let's get back to that Dane's order of sauerkraut — and that Coke. (By the way, their discussion of the order was in Danish, but they ordered in English.) I started thinking about why people go abroad and order what they could get at home instead of being a bit adventurous.
I won't get into the invasion of American culture and cultural icons around the world. Or the issues involved with multinational companies. I want to talk about consistency.
Yep, consistency. A good restaurant survives because it provides its clientele with consistency in food and service. A company survives, in part, because it offers its customers consistency in product quality and customer service.
So the Danish guy simply wanted a taste he knows in a form that he understands. And the child wanted a drink whose taste he likes. Each of them just wanted consistency in a a place where the language, food and culture was different than their own.
And perhaps that starts to explain why it is a challenge to be adventurous when you're abroad. Many people find it disconcerting to go beyond their comfort zone — their personal consistency, if you will — in many situations. And because of that fear, they do not engage another culture in a way that could help them understand others.
Because of that dining experience, I'm going to try even harder to explore and celebrate some of the wonderful inconsistencies that can inform and affect my life and my work. How about you?
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