Question: a. Have you ever experienced culture shock? What did it mean to you? b. What would you say to a foreigner moving to your home country.

I am not sure I have ever experienced a real cultural shock: I have lived abroad since I was very young and, to me, the very meaning of the word 'abroad' has become blurred and unclear.


Conversely, my friends in Italy experience a cultural shock each time I meet them for dinner or cocktails: I seem to torture them with the barbaric customs I have acquired during my years outside the 'peninsula'. I combine steaks with pasta – or even worse, I dare to drink beer and wine in the same evening. These horrible actions obviously break taboos a 'real Italian' would never dare to violate. I show an embarrassing incapacity to speak on two mobile phones at the same time. I horrify my friends with my bizarre habit of stopping at red lights - and by my extraordinary behaviour in not wearing sunglasses at night. My decision to sacrifice 'look' in order to avoid the embarrassment of bumping into walls or other motionless objects is perceived as profoundly un-Italian.

There are a few behaviours a 'true Italian', (whatever that means), would demonstrate and which I do not always show in the proper way. I must confess, among other major crimes, to eating or drinking in an 'exotic fashion' and to gesticulating in a 'foreign way' - to borrow expressions actually used by my friends.

Italians have developed the peculiar custom of delivering messages by speaking and, at the same time, by frantically using their hands in a mysteriously coordinated way. No matter how spontaneous this phenomenon might appear to non-natives, this hidden communication code obviously answers to well-defined, non-written rules. Engrossed in the middle of a vivacious conversation, I spotted a glimpse of contempt in the eyes this long time friend of mine who was sitting in front of me. He looked at me as if I had committed an outrageous blasphemy and with a disdainful tone of voice exclaimed: "My God, Stefano you really ARE gesticulating in a foreign way!!".

It is a valuable insight to realise I am able to produce such a strength of feeling in other people. One that has made me examine very carefully my own response to the very different cultures, customs and behaviours I encounter around the world.

По материалам сайта www.businessweek.com.

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