By Melinda Gallo

After flying back to Italy from the US, my husband and I decided to spend the night at his parent’s house because we were too exhausted to drive to our apartment downtown.

Because one of my suitcases never made the connecting flight, I didn’t have any of my own things. My husband lent me a pair of his pajamas to wear and we went straight to bed.

When I woke up the next morning, I was feeling groggy from jet lag. My husband suggested that I take a shower to wake up, so he told me that he’d get everything I need for my shower in his parent’s bathroom.

I walked into their bathroom and jumped in the shower when the water was hot. When I opened the shower door afterwards, I couldn’t find a bath towel hanging anywhere. I spotted a small hand towel and considered drying off with it, but couldn’t bring myself to use it because it looked like it had already been used.

I stood on the shower mat dripping wet, beginning to get cold, trying to come up with another solution. I didn’t want to yell out to my husband to get me a towel because he wouldn’t have been able to hear me in the kitchen.

As a last resort, I decided to dry myself off with his pajamas instead. Luckily, my husband had handed me an accappatoio
(bathrobe) before taking my shower, so I walked out of the bathroom wearing it and holding my now wet pajamas.

I flung the accappatoio on the bed and started getting dressed. My husband scooped up the accappatoio and was about to hang it up when he said, “How come the accappatoio is dry?”

“Why would it be wet?” I asked.

“Didn’t you use it to dry yourself off?” he said, patting it between his hands.

I told him that he forgot to put a bath towel in the bathroom for me, so I had to use his pajamas to dry myself off. He told me that the accappatoio was my bath towel and showed me how to dry myself off by putting it on and using it like a towel.

I had only ever worn an accappatoio in luxurious hotels after washing up and never knew it could be used as a bath towel. As a result, I got my own accappatoio a few days later. I find it even more practical than a bath towel: I can dry off quickly while keeping warm and cover up at the same time when I exit the bathroom.

You can read more about Melinda’s adventures in Italy in her blog Living in Florence

Enjoyed this? Read more stories of cross-cultural encounters from My Partner is a Foreigner.

The frog and I speak a language understood only by ourselves, where sentences may start in French, end in English and include some words which hover somewhere in between. I’ve adopted some of the frog’s more endearing mistakes because they amused me: faulty plurals (feets, sheeps), creative past tenses (“I’m feeling hanged over”). He also does a very convincing faux Yorkshire accent when he says “fancy a cuppa tea luv?” and slips into it automatically (as do I) when he spends time with my family.

Mother called last night and asked the frog if he had any idea what she could get him for his upcoming birthday. I would give anything to have been a fly on the wall to see her reaction when he said that he could do with a pair of handcuffs*.

Strait-laced mother must have been struggling to process this unexpected/unwelcome revelation about our sex life and his request was met with a protracted embarrassed silence. I was too busy choking with mirth on a sour cream and onion Pringle to put either of them out of their misery.

He meant cuff links*.

Reproduced with permission from Catherine Sanderson´s blog Petite Anglaise. Catherine is about to publish a book about her adventures living in Paris.

*note for non-native english speakers:
handcuffs - the police use them to fasten your hands together
cuff links - decorative device used to fasten shirt sleeves

It’s a question he’d had dozens of times: Why on earth would you move from sunny friendly Sydney to cold dreary London?? Are you insane?
But finally, he had an answer.

Their meeting was uneventful, a casual hello at church one evening. Not long after however, Gezza was thoroughly missing his aussie barbecues (”barbies”) and decided to host one, and even though he hadn’t invited Alice, a mutual friend told her to come along. Alice thought she’d better check whether that was ok, so asked him and of course received a positive response.
And so appropriately, the pair had their first proper conversation over a bbq. The problem was, Alice was a vegetarian… how the heck was that going to work with an aussie bbq?

She arrived with her vegetarian sausages, “Would you like me to use a different pair of tongs?” Gezza asked, jokingly, trying to show his good aussie sense of humour. “Yes please” came the reply from an oblivious Alice, thinking to herself, “what a thoughtful, sensitive guy!”. Gezza swallowed his surprise and went inside in search of an extra pair of tongs. It was obvious that these two were made for each other.

So they got married and are still living in cold dreary London… (what happened there?)

Is your friend / husband / wife or partner from another country? Send your story to info@pocketcultures.com

The Dragonfly and the Mosquito: A true story by Nivja de Jong.

Once upon a time there was a very ambitious Spanish dragonfly. Spain was too small for her ambition, so she flew to another land. A small and far away land. It was a country of constant rain, but where all the mosquitos were very big. Even bigger than Spanish dragonflies. It was a country where the mosquitos always ate bread for lunch, bread with yellow cheese. Sometimes they ate ham with their bread, or sometimes a bit of salad.

The Spanish dragonfly tried to settle in, but it wasn´t so easy to feel at home in a foreign country. When she got home in the evening she felt hungry enough to eat a horse because the lunches were so small! And it was often so cold that her wings turned blue, although she wore three coats in winter. Luckly she met many other Spanish dragonflies in the town where she was staying. Sometimes when it was not raining so much she even forgot that she was not in Spain.

One evening our dragonfly found herself flying to the party of a mosquito born in this small, cold country. The party seemed very Spanish. There was tapas and sangria, and all the insects were dancing. The dragonfly studied this mosquito very carefully. Could he also be a dragonfly? He was the same height as a Spanish dragonfly, he made the same noise as a Spanish dragonfly, his eyes were like those of a Spanish dragonfly, but when he danced he did not look Spanish, because he danced like a mosquito.

Another night, there was another party and this time the two insects danced together. All the insects who watched this dance could tell this was love. From the way the mosquito was swinging the dragonfly, and the dragonfly floated so surely in his arms, everyone present could tell that these two insects belonged together.

Where would they live? Would they live in this small country where it rained constantly? Or should they fly to another country? They decided it was better to fly to Barcelona. Not because the dragonfly was missing her country, but because the mosquito felt he could be more comfortable in Barcelona than in the Netherlands, because it would rain less often. Happily the mosquito adapted well to life in Barcelona: he learned to wear flip flops, like the dragonflies; he ate huge lunches, like the dragonflies; and he learned to speak like the dragonflies.

The two insects threw a huge party for their wedding in the South of Spain, and they danced all night. Afterwards, they moved to their new home in Barcelona, which had a swimming pool. In the following years they filled the swimming pool with dragonfliquitos and mosquiflies and they all lived happily ever after.

Do you have a story? Please send it to info@pocketcultures.com.

Lydia writes: I had known my (now) husband Carlo for a few months when we were invited by friends to a celebration dinner. It would be a smart event, and I asked Carlo what he was planning to wear. “I have a maroon velvet suit which will be perfect” he answered. Well, in England where I grew up “maroon velvet” suits have not been in fashion since sometime during the 1970s, but since we had not known each other for very long, and after all the Italians are supposed to know something about style, I politely said nothing.  

However there was no need to have worried. On the evening itself Carlo turned up wearing a very nice dark brown corduroy suit. He had translated the Italian for brown corduroy (velluto marrone) into the nearest equivalent English words, thus causing my confusion. Now I am learning Italian, and making up many more funny expressions of my own!