Smirnoff Experience – Food and Language

Before this world tour began for me, I went through all the possibilities and experiences that the tour might entail. The flights, the places, the weather, the parties, the production, the people, the drinks, the music and the different foods etc.

Something I didn’t really pay much mind to, didn’t especially consider, was the language. I was going to visit all these different countries, dance to music I’d probably never heard before, be exposed to cultures different from my own home country, food I’d never tasted before, and the different nightlife. Language was something I stupidly didn’t really think about. So far I’ve been exposed to Russian in Moscow, Spanish, the Argentinean version, Spanish, the Mexican version and Portuguese in Brazil. Hmmm. And there are so many more to come.

Don’t know about you, but I’ve never experienced these languages for more than an hour in my entire life. Now imagine trying to converse in any a language you’ve never spoken before, not talking about the weather, not just saying hello, asking how are you? Or asking a cab driver to drop you off somewhere, these are somewhat easy enough. The difficulty is simply ordering food, a basic human need. Why didn’t I just get a dictionary or language guide? Well this might be the solution, but do they have menus in there?

A few funny experiences while trying to feed myself:

Moscow.
One night at about 2am Kung, John and I took a walk in search for food on the main busy street in Moscow. At that time of the night/morning, not much is available except for, as we discovered, street food. In that case, street food is sold in these ice-cream van looking structures, branded with the name of the ‘establishment’ (in Russian of course) on the outside with some photoshopped pictures of the available food.
Thank goodness for pictures. Each van, usually about 50 meters or so apart had a selection of about 20 food items (in Russian) on the menu and if you’re lucky about 5 pics.
This is where I learnt the valuable point, smile and nod enthusiastically manoeuvre, which would hopefully get you something delicious. If the retouched pictures weren’t doing it for you, then you move on to the Russian menu phase, a little bit more difficult… pick the friendliest looking words off the menu, don’t try pronunciation and wait and see what the words mean after paying and walking away with your food. Sometime we were lucky, other times, well, that’s a whole other story.

In Buenos Aires I started to learn the language, not exactly actually, I found out that chicken is pollo. You can’t go wrong with chicken; pity I didn’t learn what deep-fried is in Spanish. Another great word is fritas, as in papas fritas, potato chips to go with the not deep fried chicken. The rest of the time was a guessing game of picking the prettiest words on the menu. The same sort of rules applied in Mexico City.

Portuguese is one the sexiest yet most difficult languages I have thus far come across. I hear it and my brain does goes dead. Nothing connects. I hear nothing, I understand almost nothing, yet it all sounds so good. The food in Sao Paulo was so good I didn’t mind picking any words off the menu, and something I learnt late was that sometimes restaurants have English menus.

I feel so ignorant not being able to converse in these languages, but I will learn, for my stomach’s sake.