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Appunti d’Italia Parte Uno: Venezia

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The ability to traverse great distances quickly can lead to what the travel writer Paul Theroux called “parachuting in” to new places. He disdained air travel for the most part, preferring to approach more slowly by road or rail to get a sense of how his destination sits in the surrounding geographic context — entering a city slowly and from its periphery as opposed to being suddenly plunked down in the middle of it. This is the approach of the unhurried traveler with the luxury of time, not the one on a fixed schedule. For this trip, we were decidedly the latter.

Group travel is not typically our style, yet we were joining friends for a ten-day tour of Italy with stops in Venice, Florence, Rome, and Sorrento. My travel philosophy has always been “If you try to see everything, you risk experiencing nothing,” which left me with some reservations about the ambitious itinerary. Even so, the trip offered the chance to see parts of Italy I hadn’t seen before and to make our first trip with these friends.

With apologies to Theroux, less than fifteen hours after departing Seattle and with a quick stop in Frankfurt, we touched down in Venice. While I appreciate the capacity to reach distant locales quickly, I have long held that it is a disservice to the world’s great cities that our first view of them is often jet-lagged from the back seat of a careening taxi cab. Venice, in this respect, was a welcome exception. The Venice airport is located in the city of Tessera — about five miles north of the island of Venice. Our hotel was further to the southeast on the nearby island of Lido, and reaching it required a spirited twenty-minute jaunt by water taxi, or vaporetto (“little steamer,” from the original steam-powered versions). Straight line distances mean less here, as the islands and canals dictate irregular routes, and the fresh air and lurching about as the vaporetto navigated around other boats and their wakes helped to blunt the onset of jet lag.

Our first evening together was a welcome dinner at the hotel, where we met our host and guide (Enrico Schattermann, an exuberant forty-something from Naples), began getting acquainted, and went over the tour itinerary. The group numbered thirty-two travelers from the United States and Canada, ranging in age from forty to the late eighties. There were couples and singles, a pair of sisters, a mother traveling with her daughter, people celebrating birthdays and anniversaries, and widows and cancer survivors making their way forward. Enrico reminded us that this was a highlights tour, and we would be moving quickly and seeing lots of things — “monument snacks” he called them.

Enrico and I also had our first conversation in my halting Italian. I had dabbled with the language before our first trip to Tuscany almost twenty years ago, but before our most recent trip three years ago I had begun studying more seriously and was eager to practice. In my experience, language apps can give you a basic vocabulary and some grammatical footing, but they don’t necessarily prepare you well for the pace and complexity of an actual conversation, so the exchange was humbling. Enrico, though, was encouraging and patient.

After a mostly sleepless night — jet lag being the price we pay for such rapid relocation — and a quick breakfast at the hotel with a heretical cappuccino from an automatic machine, we boarded a vaporetto and headed to Venice proper. Local ordinances wisely disallow tour groups of more than twenty-five people, so at the dock we split into two groups and met a pair of local guides (Carlo and Rebecca) who spoke accented but certainly understandable English and would show us the city. We were also issued what Enrico called “whispers” — headsets that allowed him or a local guide to speak softly while the group could hear the commentary clearly despite the surrounding noise. Early April is considered shoulder season for tourists, but Venice was already teeming with visitors, with organized groups like ours everywhere. I’ve always considered the sight of a gaggle of tourists following a guide with a raised umbrella or flag to be a bit cliché, but here we were. We were all wearing name tags, but at least our guide didn’t have a flag.

We immediately set off along the waterfront, stopping first to view the Ponte dei Sospiri (Bridge of Sighs). I had it in my head that this bridge was the titular inspiration for Robin Trower’s hit song and album, but in fact he took the term from the name of a racehorse he saw in a newspaper, whose name may or may not have been inspired by this notable span. The famous (and likely heavily romanticized) explanation for the name came from its function — connecting the court chambers in the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) across a canal (the rio del Palazzo) to a prison — so condemned prisoners were said to have sighed as they caught their last glimpse of Venice through the small stone-barred windows on the passageway.

This was also where I had my first flash of impatience with the pace of the tour. Since the bridge straddles a canal that opens onto the larger lagoon, our vantage point was likewise on a small bridge (the Ponte della Paglia — literally the “Bridge of the Straw” after the straw trade that used to occur nearby), which did not offer much standing room for the increasing crowds. Americans generally prefer more personal space than is common in many other places, something I’ve been reminded of often in my travels. I knew the jostling was practical rather than personal, but it always takes me a little time to readjust.

I also believe that when it comes to photography in particular, there are only two kinds of people: those who take pictures of what they came to see, and those who take pictures of themselves in front of it. We are firmly in the first group, and for years we would go on entire trips and come home with no photographic evidence we had been there. I don’t begrudge the second group, but they definitely occupy more space in the moment.

My approach to photography has always been to study, compose, shoot, review, and then repeat. Twenty years ago I carried my big DSLR camera, multiple lenses, a full-size tripod, and all manner of gear all over Tuscany. I only use my phone camera now, but the process — which takes a bit of time — hasn’t changed. I also think it’s important not to spend my vacation looking at the world through a camera, so beyond whatever time I spend trying to capture a subject, I want to pause and simply take it in. Whatever my preferences, it quickly became clear that we weren’t going to spend much time here. I had just worked my way through the crowd to an unobstructed view and snapped one or two shots, and the guide was already moving on.

As we moved past the Palazzo Ducale to the Basilica and Piazza of San Marco, the routine repeated: stop, hear one or two facts, get a moment to “take your pictures,” then move on. After a slight ticket mix-up for the Basilica tour (Enrico had been given entry tickets for another group, so for this visit I was “Marco” and Jess was “Linda”), we were able to spend some time inside. Again, the tour was fairly brief, but the interior was stunning. I also began to appreciate the whisper units, as I could easily hear our guide over the other tour leaders shouting to their groups without headsets, disturbing the ostensible sanctity of the space.

Although I had never been there, Venice — and Piazza San Marco in particular — felt almost familiar from its use in films over the years: Bond films, The Italian Job, Ocean’s Twelve, Inferno, The Tourist, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and many others. To the tour’s credit, I learned a great deal about how an entire city could be built on wooden piers across a scattering of islands, and about the substantial role Venice had played in international trade long before Italy became a unified country. The tour also made clear that alongside standard Italian — rooted in Tuscan/Florentine and adopted nationally after unification — there remain older related regional languages, including Venetian, Neapolitan, Sicilian, and others. Carlo also spoke Venetian, and we could hear subtle variations in his speech compared to Enrico, who grew up speaking Neapolitan.

Venice is also famous for its colorful hand-blown glass. After the Basilica tour, we left our local guides and moved on to a demonstration at one of the region’s oldest glass houses, Vecchia Murano. Nearly all the glassware is produced on the nearby island of Murano, but Vecchia Murano had a working furnace in Venice. There we watched one of their master craftsmen effortlessly turn a blob of molten glass into an ornate vase topped with a delicate horse in a matter of minutes. We then got a brief sales pitch on the quality and durability of their products, and we all flinched every time the presenter banged the glassware on the table to prove its robustness. Afterwards we toured their extensive showroom, a maze of collections and demonstration rooms where the same table-banging continued in several languages — clearly they were set up for the tourist trade. While we admired the artistry, much of it seemed too ornate for our style, and we moved on without buying anything.

After lunch at a nearby restaurant and a quick but expensive cocktail on the Piazza, our next activity was a gondola ride. While it had initially seemed like a predictably touristy excursion, I ultimately decided it was one of those quintessential but corny must-do experiences, and I signed the two of us up for a private ride. What I didn’t know was that we would be accompanied by two musicians — a vocalist and an accordion player. For around twenty minutes, we toured the canals with the gondolier expertly navigating even the tightest turns (becoming a professional gondolier is apparently an extensive process) while being serenaded with traditional songs like “Souvenir di Venezia” and “Volare.” For a short stretch we moved out into the Canal Grande, the main canal that bisects Venice in its meandering reverse-S course, but the water there was choppier because of heavy vaporetto traffic. The breaks between songs became opportunities to practice my Italian, and I learned that the accordion, a French word, is called a fisarmonica in Italian. This was all clearly an exercise for tourists, as we continually passed other gondolas doing the same thing, not to mention the sign in English for “Tips” at the disembarkation point, but it was enjoyable nonetheless, and I’m glad we took advantage of it.

From there, we all took a stroll back northeast along the Canal Grande to the Ponte di Rialto, or the Rialto Bridge, the stone bridge completed in 1591 that for centuries was the only bridge across the Grand Canal. While it was swarming with tourists, it was architecturally interesting and offered great views of the Canal to the north and south. Standing at the apex of the bridge, I was reminded of the comparatively short span of American cultural history. As we prepare to celebrate a mere two hundred and fifty years as a nation, this bridge alone is nearly twice as old, and even it sits among much older structures — parts of the Basilica di San Marco date from the eleventh century. I was repeatedly struck by how these monuments aren’t at all isolated — they are part of the fabric of the central city that thousands of Venetians experience every day.

After stopping at the Rialto, we had a few hours of free time before catching the vaporetto back to Lido. Many in the group chose to tour the Doge’s Palace or go to the top of the Campanile in Piazza San Marco, but we were already feeling a little tired of the crowds. Up until 2021, Venice permitted large cruise ships to dock right in the historic center, bringing tens of thousands more tourists to a city that already felt overcrowded. As busy as it was, Enrico noted that “this was nothing” compared to high season or before the cruise ship ban.

We decided to do a little exploring and shopping away from the main piazza, and to find some coffee off the beaten track. On a lark, I looked up the location of the bridge where Rebecca Ferguson’s character Ilsa Faust was killed in a fight in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. I’ll freely admit I’m a huge fan of hers, and was disappointed to see her character killed off. Finding the bridge took a bit of doing, as it was a decent walk from the city center and an otherwise unassuming structure. Its real name is the Ponte dei Conzafelzi, though I will henceforth refer to it only as “Ilsa’s Bridge.” Some sources identify nearby Ponte Minich as the filming location, but that bridge lacks the ornate metal railing visible in the scene, so it may refer to the broader shooting area. I love the challenge of using technology — in this case ChatGPT, YouTube, and Google Maps — combined with personal experience to solve these little riddles.

Walking back toward the main square to reconnect with the group, we found a little café for a coffee, which inadvertently led to the first comical event of the trip. The restroom in the café was like many in these older buildings — some distance away through a labyrinth of hallways. It was a single-stall restroom, with an actual manual key rather than any sort of lever or handle that locked the door from the inside. When I went to unlock it to leave, the key suddenly spun freely and the door remained locked — the shaped working end of the key that operated the lock had completely sheared off. My first reaction was to fiddle with it in disbelief, but to no avail. My next thought was to text Jess and have her summon help, but my phone was back on the table in the dining room next to my empty espresso cup. There was a small window high on the back wall open to the street, but I couldn’t hear anyone passing by. I knocked on the door and called out a couple of times to see if I could attract the attention of anyone waiting, but there was no answer. Fortunately, after a few minutes I heard footsteps and then someone knocked on the door. I shook the door and tried to explain what had happened, but jet-lagged and trapped in a Venetian bathroom, I pretty much mangled it. What I meant to say was, “La chiave si è rotta” (“The key is broken”), but what came out was “La llave está rota” — the same phrase, but in Spanish. My Spanish is much better than my Italian, and because both languages share a common Latin origin and have many similarities, they often get tangled between my brain and my mouth. Usually it’s something innocuous like saying “por favor” (Spanish) instead of “per favore” (Italian) for “please,” but this time it was a whole sentence. Either way, I was promptly rescued from my misadventure, and the combined adrenaline and espresso saw us quickly reunited with the group, and we were soon headed back across the lagoon to our hotel.

When traveling, we prefer to explore the neighborhood around our accommodations, eating, drinking, and shopping locally. Even though we had to catch an early boat to the mainland to meet our bus to Florence, we walked the fifteen minutes or so down the waterfront to the central Lido business district in search of a casual dinner. We ended up meeting our four Northwest traveling companions for a delicious dinner of pasta, salad, and wine at an outdoor café. Tired but content from a very full day, we were rewarded with the sight of the sun setting over Venice as we made our way back to the hotel and our much-needed beds.

The View from the Thinking Chair

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Having worked from home for nearly five years, I have adopted several strategies for breaking up the otherwise monolithic stretches at the computer working on the emails, spreadsheets, proposals, and the thousand other details necessary to propel my business forward. Many of these involve the conscious and regular scheduling of face-to-face interactions with clients, partners, and teammates, but these have been effectively stifled by the coronavirus seclusion. One continuing, pre-quarantine habit that has helped sustain my mental health is what I call the Thinking Chair, which is my exaggeratedly serious name for the place I take my coffee breaks.

Each afternoon, generally somewhere between 2:30 and 3:30 PM, I get up from my work desk, make some coffee — usually a double espresso — and go sit outside on the patio for at least 30 minutes. Sometimes I have my phone with me to check in on various aspects of the non-work world, and sometimes not, but either way it’s a pause; a time to be away from work, be outside and, well, think. Like a cat, I move my chair into any available spot of sun. I breathe the open air, and listen to the sounds of my yard and the weather, which sometimes include wind and/or rain as my patio is covered and I try to carve out this time regardless of the forecast. When it gets particularly windy, you can hear the older cedars in the surrounding yards creak as they sway, a sound that is simultaneously comforting and worrying. In the current imposed dormancy of the quarantine, the nearby road noise is pleasantly hushed. My regular interludes in the Thinking Chair are also opportunities to let my mind step outside the more orderly confines of focused work, and just randomly play with whatever presently occupies my consciousness. I find that this habit allows me to clear my head, and afterwards return refreshed to work. It engenders a sense of gratitude (I have a roof over my head, I have food to eat, I have work to do, and I have the luxury of taking a coffee break), and I often come up with interesting writing ideas or even, ironically, occasional solutions to work problems during this time.

The first thought that crosses my freshly-caffeinated mind today is that right now I am supposed to be finishing up a long vacation in Italy. I should be watching the sun set on the Adriatic Sea from the balcony of our rented apartment in Ravenna, and thinking about tomorrow morning’s train ride to Bologna and our evening flight back to London and then on to Seattle. I should then be getting on another flight for a family reunion on the northern California coast over Memorial Day Weekend. But I’m not. Those trips were cancelled, along with many others, and instead I’m sitting on the back patio at my home on an overcast and drizzly Northwest afternoon, sipping coffee that comes nowhere near the quality of what I remember from other trips abroad. So many things have changed. So many cancellations and postponements. So many people no longer with us. So much division and hostility among the rest of us.

With so much loss and future uncertainty, the backyard foliage coming into its spring livery offers a more hopeful contrast. The heathers have had their brief bloom and are now settled into their seasonal greenness. The azaleas and barberrys are showing a robust hint of great promise, while the coneflowers seem content to keep their secrets a bit longer. The lavender, rosemary and woolly thyme have all increased their hold on the open space, and appear lush and verdant in the intermittent rain. I marvel at the new growth on our gem magnolias. These young trees were severely battered by last winter’s snows to the point where all three are several feet shorter than they were last year at this time, and are still missing many of their previous branches. We weren’t sure they would even survive.

Our resident squirrel stares at me briefly from his perch atop one of our landscaping rocks, then quickly retreats and sprints his way effortlessly up a sheer stretch of fencing. I am instantly jealous of his apparent immunity to gravity. Back in my mountaineering days I was a decent rock climber, but unlike our squirrel, I seemed to plateau at a certain level of difficulty. The American system of climbing grades is based off the Yosemite Decimal System (YDS), which ranges from class 1 (hiking over flat ground) to class 5 (technical rock climbing), and then provides further incremental gradations for class 5 depending on increased difficulty. A climb in the 5.0 to 5.7 range is considered easy, 5.8 to 5.10 is considered intermediate, 5.11 to 5.12 is hard, and only a handful of the world’s most elite climbers can complete anything of the 5.13 to 5.15 variety.

As a “weekend warrior” when it came to climbing, I could consistently top out routes up to 5.8, but could never successfully complete anything 5.9 or higher. After being frustrated with this for a while, I sought out an instructor at a local climbing gym to see if I could push through this ostensible barrier. After watching me climb several routes, he reached the following conclusion: I didn’t seem to trust my feet. When I asked what that meant, and what I could do to work on it, I very clearly remember him putting his hands on his hips, furrowing his brow, staring me straight in the eye, and saying, “Today, I am going to challenge your definition of a good foothold”.

I had been taught that rock climbing in particular could be broken down into three constituent things: Vision – the bigger-picture puzzle-solving skills to see a way to the top and the sequence of moves required to get there, Mechanics – the ability to understand and use the laws of physics and gravity to assist you in skillfully maneuvering and manipulating your body over the required sequence of moves, and Conditioning – the ability to apply strength when strength is needed, flexibility when flexibility is needed, and the endurance to ration both of these over the time necessary to complete the climb. I had never really considered the trust aspect.

What began was a process of reviewing my footwork mechanics – ensuring my weight was securely held by my arms and the leg opposite the one I was about to move, quickly and smoothly placing the ball or toe of my free foot on the new hold, rotating the foot towards the wall to lock the hold, then shifting my weight to the new hold to free up my other limbs to move – and then practicing these mechanics on progressively smaller and smaller sizes of footholds. I spent hours in the gym practicing, mostly on holds no more than a few feet off the ground. After a few weeks of consistent practice, I was able to advance from “requiring” several exposed inches of rock to support my foot to being comfortable on fractions of an inch, and I ultimately completed several 5.9 routes. As much as the mechanics were critical, I found that that they were almost secondary to trust – the simple, compelling belief that the preparation and placement I had done would actually hold my weight.

My coffee is finished, and I begin the physical and mental transition back to work, taking with me the fresh lessons from both the magnolias and the memories of climbing. Everything, no matter how badly damaged or beset by circumstance, can begin to find its way back. Trips can be rescheduled. More intimate personal connections with family, friends and colleagues will return. The challenge to our contemporary definition of a good foothold has been forced abruptly upon us, and now we must embrace both hope and grief as we rediscover our ability to trust our own feet beneath us.

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Another Cup

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Her name is Moon (like the moon, she says in Korean-accented English, pointing to the sky). I wandered in to her coffee shop when we were in the early stages of moving to Snohomish County and it was apparent that her store would be the closest source of non-corporate coffee to our new house. Neighborhood coffee shops are one of the few experiences I cling to desperately as we complete our flight away from Seattle and King County, and her business (Hot Shots Espresso) is one of the very few in our new surrounds where one can actually walk in and sit down. Not that it’s built for the sit-down coffee enthusiast – despite having an exterior deck and ample room inside, there’s a total of one old table inside with four chairs and two stools at the Formica counter. Located a stone’s throw from the shores of Martha Lake, Hot Shots reminds me of the resort stores in the lake town where I went to high school — somewhat dilapidated, with fading signs advertising specials no longer available, supplies stacked up in the corners, and security cameras dotting the ceiling. Everything cries out for attention and updating. It is a business that appears to run on the edge, where there is only time, energy and money for fundamental upkeep but not improvement.

On my first visit it appeared that she caters to what I call the novelty coffee crowd, who favor their brew imbued with flavored syrups and crowned with various and sundry toppings. Her menu board boasts a startling variety of convoluted coffee concoctions from Snickers and Red Bull Lattes to White Chocolate Mochas and other fabricated confections that seem more at home in a bakery than a coffee shop. I don’t begrudge anyone their sweetened drinks, I just prefer my coffee less sugar-encumbered. While the board does list an “extra shot” for fifty cents, nowhere does just it just say “drip coffee” or “espresso”, so I was skeptical from the get-go.

I think of myself not so much as a coffee snob, but more as a coffee enthusiast, albeit with preferences as I grow older. I worked construction in my teenage years and developed an affinity for large quantities of convenience store coffee and survived college largely on various brands of instant, so I am certainly not above the most pedestrian of brews. In my book, even bad coffee is still, well, coffee. But having had the good fortune of moving to the Pacific Northwest during the ascendancy of the artisan coffee movement and having been able to travel much of the world and be exposed to really, really, really good coffee, over time I have developed a certain quality bar and a predilection for espresso in the afternoon. I am quite capable of creating my preferred beverage at home (via an older Jura/Capresso Impressa E8 machine with illy dark roast for those scoring at home), but there is something about the sensuous environment of coffee shops. I love the intoxicating smells and the intriguing hissing and gurgling sounds of hot beverages being prepared, not to mention the convenience of having someone else make your coffee. There is also the fact that smaller home espresso machines, no matter how high the quality, simply cannot generate the water pressure that commercial machines can, which (along with the romantic fog of memory) is the predominate reason it’s essentially impossible to reproduce that amazing espresso you had on that trip to Tuscany.

My first test of any coffee shop is always a dual barometer of their product and their knowledge. I nonchalantly order a doppio like I have been speaking Italian my whole life. If they have no idea what I’m talking about, I apologize and clarify that I would like a double espresso (doppio being nothing more than Italian for “double”). My experience is that those working retail counters are often just punching the clock at a job and are not overly concerned with the subtleties of the industry in which they are employed. Having also spent time in food service, I don’t necessarily hold their ambivalence against them.

When I ask Moon for a doppio, she has no idea what I’m talking about. Assuming a potential gap in our understanding due to language differences (while noting that her relative command of English is certainly better than my handful of Korean words), I change my order to a double espresso. She still seems a bit confused, puzzled by my seeming lack of interest in the dozens of bottles of flavored syrups and powders that line her counter. Correct, I say — no milk, no syrup, no ice, no whipped cream, no cocoa sprinkles. Still shooting me a quizzical look, she turns to her large, red La Marzocco commercial espresso machine like a conductor facing an orchestra and sets about pulling my shot. Mounted to a sturdy bench perpendicular to her counter, the machine is nearly her equal in height, and she leans forward and plays it like a seasoned pro — grinding, measuring, leveling, tamping, locking, and brewing in swift, practiced movements.

Coffee is a dance between the mystical bean itself and everything that happens to it after being picked, integral to which are the quality of the initial product and the processes of harvest, transport, roasting, grinding, and brewing — including the skill of the operator for non-automated brewing. Over the years I’ve paid extravagant sums for imported, fair-trade co-op shade-grown beans craft-roasted then hand-ground and brewed in a pour-over using specially filtered water that ultimately I thought tasted like muddy crap, and I’ve had mass-brewed truck stop coffee to die for, so there is clearly a complicated connection between all the various parameters.

It’s impossible to know which of these many facets influenced the cup that Moon set in front of me, but the net result was mostly unappealing. While the texture and consistency were good (not too thick or too watery) and it had the rich, creamy layer of crema characteristic of commercial machines, something just tasted off. Not burned or anything, but it just didn’t have the nice bitter bite of a good espresso. I found no fault with her preparation, and therefore suspect that the quality of coffee may be the culprit – using lower quality beans to keep costs down in what must already be a low-margin operation. I reflected that it probably tasted just fine when inundated with other flavors and sugary substances, so in one sense she may simply know her market.

At this point I made what in retrospect strikes me as a curious choice. Perhaps sadly, it would not be unprecedented for me to roll my eyes and exit the establishment while complaining loudly about the quality. But on this day something made me stay. My best guess is that if this was my closest non-Starbucks coffee store, at some level I felt it deserved more than one shot, literally and figuratively. It was also a gray and rainy March day, and there are certainly worse ways to spend time on such days than pausing over of a shot or two of bad coffee. Further, as part of our newness and transition to this area we were consciously looking to make new connections, and this seemed like a splendid opportunity.

As Moon singlehandedly worked both the counter and the drive-through (as I’m discovering, there must be some sort of ordinance in Snohomish County that requires coffee joints to sport drive-throughs, and Hot Shots is no exception), we began a staccato conversation. Interspersed by attending to customers, and in sometimes halting English, we took our first steps beyond the regular airy shopkeeper/customer banter.

She has owned Hot Shots for the last 15 years. She actually used to own and run two different locations, but found it exhausting to split time between them. She also had a significant problem with theft by employees when she wasn’t on the premises – caught red-handed by the cameras in plain view. So she now prefers to operate one store full-time with the help of a single trusted employee during the busier summer season.

There is a quickness and a borderline abruptness to her diction, which combined with English not being her native tongue makes parts of our conversation difficult. Perhaps confused by my insistence on sitting and savoring my coffee, and looking at my causal clothing, she asks “Not working today?” in her rapid-fire manner of speaking. It’s a reasonable question, given that her establishment clearly isn’t set up for patrons to work (no Wi-Fi and the aforementioned lack of tables), and I appear to have time to loiter. I took it as an honest inquiry, phrased as best she could, and not as any sort of observational judgement. I explained that I now work from my home and was just taking a coffee break. I tried to expound further that since I didn’t have any meetings scheduled, I was in my “non-client” wardrobe of jeans and a tee-shirt, but the language gap precluded mutual comprehension of most of the supporting details. The additional upside of this portion of our exchange is that it gave me the most insight yet on the lack of sit-down coffee shops in this area – do only non-working people here have time to sit? It’s as practical an explanation as any other so far.

This veneer of abruptness manifests as a negative in her shop’s mixed internet reviews, but my take is that a hurried dash through a drive-up window doesn’t leave much room for deeper understanding. Having spent time in countries where I had a near-zero grasp of the local language, I know it’s entirely possible have a meaningful conversation composed of nothing more than smiles and awkward pantomime, but this takes time, patience, and willingness by both parties to try. I once spent over an hour in a small tea shop at the Lo Wu train station on Hong Kong’s northern border with a proprietor who spoke absolutely no English, and we had a magnificent time finding ways to communicate while tasting various teas. I also know it’s possible – easy, actually — to come off as unintentionally rude when trying to communicate in a language that is not yet your own. I have both compassion and deep respect for anyone that has come to this country and made sufficient linguistic inroads to run an entrepreneurial business.

After a little more back and forth, it becomes clear that I’ve actually caught her on a bad day. The son of a good friend of hers had been taken to a nearby hospital that morning after suffering a heart attack. He was only twenty-six years old, and was not expected to recover. Her own mother passed away just two months ago, and the feeling of loss is magnified with this latest news. I learn that she has a daughter, but her subsequent mention that with her mother’s passing all her remaining family lives in South Korea makes a curious omission of any current or former husband. Having lost my mother a few short years ago, we quickly find ourselves on common ground. But just as quickly the customer traffic picks up and she breaks off, wistful and preoccupied. Before leaving I surprise her by thanking her in Korean, which prompts at least a sliver of a smile.

In a previous career I had the opportunity to travel extensively, with an emphasis on the Asia-Pacific rim countries. These trips were always a combination of business and social, as my hosts were always eager to share of their country and culture. Over several trips to Seoul, I was repeatedly shown an important aspect of Korean culture — the preeminence of harmony and order. This is more than just everybody looking to get along with everybody else, it also surfaces in not trying to stand out or be highly individualized. I had one colleague illustrate this by pointing out the highway running near the office building in which we were meeting. He had me notice that there wasn’t a great variety of types of vehicles on the road, and nearly all were very utilitarian and painted some tone of blue, silver or beige. No flashy red or bright yellow sports cars. This concept applies to everything from art to architecture, and is most intimately expressed in the importance of family and community. They regard family as the basic social unit, and consider harmony at home the first step toward harmony in the community and ultimately in the nation as a whole.

I cannot imagine coming from a culture with such an emphasis on the connected family, and then being essentially alone and over five thousand miles from your nearest relatives. Yet here she is, on her personal version of the American frontier, working and scraping to make it happen. Even if we come from very different places and only cross paths in a small coffee shop many miles later, our current worlds are not so far apart. We both call this our neighborhood, but that’s just geography. Community is built by engaging and building relationships on an individual human-to-human level, and so despite any lingering qualms about the coffee, I’ll be back. Another cup. Another conversation. Another chance to connect.