Every time someone mispronounces a word, a stranger appears and hands them a lemon.
No matter how good your language gets, there will always be those moments when your tongue slips and you end up asking someone how they think you are feeling today or offer a bartender a gelato. It’s best to move on. There is no lemonade.
You go to a government building and it's empty except a giant, judging praying mantis.
Bureacracy is one of the biggest challenges of moving to a new country. Which of your three addresses do they want? Are the other people in the queue annoyed? Are any of these things important? Why is this office only open on a Thursday afternoon?
When you drink coffee your tongue grows extra muscles so you can speak alien languages.
Coffee, coffee, coffee. The one thing that lets you talk successfully about Wittgenstein in foreign languages. Sometimes your tongue gets twisted, but it’s all just one big language game anyway.
You lose and buy the same bike seven times because you think the bike thief is a fun person.
The (ironically) cyclical bike business may be unique to Bologna, but the lengths you’ll go to when you first arrive to meet people are certainly not. Most modern cults are made up of confused and lonely Erasmus students.
There is a small kraken living under your apartment. You try to get rid of it but discover obscure legislation requires it to exist.
I used to think my house only had scorpions, but I’m sure the confusing and lengthy contract involves something about sea leviathans.
Every time you buy something the shopkeeper is obliged to give you a huge, inconvenient piece of origami. You don’t question why.
If you do, you’ll be told it’s a way to stop tax evasion, along with legal obligation to take receipts and pay only after you drink your coffee. It once made sense to someone.
Every time you find a comfy seat it turns into Horace Slughorn and berates you for poor Potions performance.
Complacency is the enemy of language progress. It may be tempting to stop learning vocabulary and focus on other languages or spend your days comparing gelaterie, but one day someone will want to know the word for ‘walrus’ and you’ll regret that gorgonzola ice cream.
You wear a tandem badge saying ‘English’ everywhere without knowing for six months.
How do they know? They all know. There is an Italian group chat somewhere where they discuss sightings of English people, I am sure. It’s definitely not the blue eyes, sunburn and unshakeable accent.
You are told some people are born with hangovers from their previous lives. You get drunk to spite future you.
Future me would do the same.
Whenever you encounter a new language, you hear David Attenborough gently narrating your attempts to communicate. He thinks you’re called Steve.
For those who don’t know David Attenborough, imagine Morgan Freeman. He’s kind, but knows it’s a dog eat dog world out there.
