The Stranger in a Foreign Land

By Jeremy K. Thompson

I awoke, palms sweaty, blood turned to ice, the perception of that instantaneous moment while on an airplane some unknown distance over the dark Atlantic Ocean stretched out over an infinite expanse of time, as if I were on my deathbed experiencing what I realized to be my final moments of consciousness. My psyche had finally demanded from me a question it knew I had no complete answer for: “Why am I doing this?”

“To expand my cultural horizons! To try to learn a new language! To make new friendships, I hope with many of whom call this continent their home! To further engage with my philosophical studies in a foreign environment by examining questions that challenge my preconceived narratives of how the whole of human experience becomes manifest to me! Because I just want to travel and get away from home, dammit!”

My psyche laughed at these rationalizations. “You can’t even fundamentally answer why you choose to slither pathetically from bed each morning, not knowing if the day may bring you more pain, but aware that when the eschatology of your world finally becomes imminent it will not have made any difference what you accomplished with your life. And you think you can convince yourself you know why you chose to go to Europe for nearly six months?”

*                      *                      *

Four of those spring months would be spent at John Cabot University in Rome, and another summer month on the Ethics & Literature in London program, with additional time during, between and after these for travel to eleven nations. I considered that with every breath I took on this plane I was that much further away from anywhere I had ever been before. Would Europe feel different? I don’t simply ask in terms of culture, I mean would there be a slight change in the average spin of an electron, or a minor disturbance in the otherwise uniform Higgs Field that permeates the universe, such that if I were to close my eyes I would sense an alteration to that most fundamental sensation of Being-in-the-World?

My breath held as my nerves finally calmed. “No, that’s still the same. So far.”

*                      *                      *

I was told to expect many things. I should expect to experience the six stages of culture shock. But I was also told by other past participants about the teary goodbyes we would exchange with family when we board that airplane. I reflected on my experience that morning. My mom was doing plenty of crying, but I couldn’t help but somehow feel like a stranger to this event. Was this life even mine, or was this entire scene of me getting on an airplane to Europe just the next act in the scripted play of my life given to me by society? My instinct has always been to retreat cowering from the stage for fear that I might flub a line or stage direction, a reaction not borne of a disinterest in other people but rather from an excessive care for these people, such that one concerns themselves obsessively with how they fit the moral narrative prescribed by a society they want to be a part of. Remove the gaze of loved ones and new freedoms will be discovered…

*                      *                      *

After a couple of weeks adjusting to Roman living had gone by, I began to wonder if and how I would start to experience culture shock in the ways I had been endlessly cautioned about before departure. Rome was different, it was almost impossible to find a cheap takeaway meal between classes that wasn’t ultra-thin pizza or panini, you have to pay for your shopping bags, dinner is never held before 8:00pm, a set of anti-terrorism laws dictate that anyone renting an apartment can have absolutely no guests between the hours of 11pm and 6am, and parking is limited only by the imagination of the driver. Despite all of this, I found the most socially challenging moments didn’t come from inhabiting an ancient world where I spoke barely three words of the native tongue, but from adjusting to life with American roommates who viewed the experience as a chance to party with other students living abroad. Despite my game efforts to blend in with the scene, I was very quickly singled out as the stranger in the group; their efforts to get me to ‘come out of my shell’ and ‘be myself’ were met with my stalwart insistence that I was being myself, and if I were to suddenly break out and join the party that would be only my most elaborate, carefully calculated charade yet.

When I left the company of my fellow expatriates and took to the streets of the Eternal City alone (which included a 45 minute stroll to and from classes through St. Peter’s Square and along the banks of the Tiber River) an unexpected result happened. My identity was still that of the stranger as it always has been, but alone in a foreign land there was a liberating freedom I had never been able to experience at home. “Sono Americano, non parlo Italiano,” was all I’d have to say, and with a poof of smoke I would disappear. Transplanted to a foreign culture where I couldn’t speak the language meant the weighty burden of always being conscious of my role as a moral actor was suddenly lifted from my shoulders. My place in this drama was now in the audience as the silent observer. Disembodied from the extended world, intimately close with the people and environment, but outside it as an invisible spectator. The stranger alone in a foreign land is not expected to be anything other than what they define for themselves… for the first time ever I was allowed simply to be.

Perched in my balcony box vantage point, Italy gave me witness to a far more exciting and rich drama than anything I’d seen at home. The Vatican was a monument to the awe-inspiring greatness of God for my more religious travel companions, but I saw only the incredible amounts of human labor used to accomplish this feat. I wondered why the masses of pilgrims I’d have to elbow my way through each day to get to class on time didn’t give a moment to instead worship those sad mortals who have been rotting thanklessly in their graves for centuries. While others tried to will from their mind’s eye the existence of those wrinkled, quivering gypsies sprawled across the cobbled sidewalks weeping for some kindness, I wondered what stories they might tell if we could speak the same language, or how different it would be to view the world from their equally invisible perspective. What do the modern Romans think of their inhabitance amongst these ancient buildings, monuments and statues of an extinct civilization? Do they not secretly feel this home of theirs does not belong to them? Their body language told me nothing, but kept looking for clues from my perch.

*                      *                      *

“Is this really all you desire from your experience on this planet, to be an anonymous stranger to your own life?” My psyche was not done tormenting me yet with this realization that my freedom indeed had a price. While there are few greater satisfactions the postmodern world can provide an individual than the opportunity to completely disappear, there are also few feelings more dreadful than having no souvenirs to take from this disappearance upon their return.

Thus a new opportunity presented itself when I was invited by our distant Italian relatives Giancarlo and Teresa to visit their home in northern Italy over a weekend, where they gave me a personal tour of Venice, Vicenza, and Recoaro (the small mountain town we originate from). The first evening I was there a family dinner gathering was held to celebrate their son Enzo’s birthday. Only Giancarlo and his granddaughter Giulia (who’s about my age) spoke any English, although I tried to converse in Italian as I could before I would require my translators, who also made game but unsuccessful attempts to explain the humor in untranslatable jokes. The main course was homemade white lasagna, and some television was also involved during dinner. This night remains one of my best memories from Europe because it was the most authentic glimpse yet into that foreign entity I called the Real Italy. Yet the fundamental difference this time was that I wasn’t there as a stranger observing from afar, I was there as a member of the family.

The next evening Giulia took me out to a ristorante with several of her friends, who came to affectionately call me the “strange man”, in part because I was familiar with many obscure Italian films and musicians none of them had ever heard of, while I confessed zero familiarity with any of the American pop tunes they sung along to on the car radio. As we dined, one of my new friends confronted me with that original question I had never answered: “So tell us, strange man, why did you choose to come to Italy?” As they explained the United States has the best of everything and every Italian youth’s goal is to see America; once I’m there, where else can I possibly want to go? Did I finally have an answer?

*                      *                      *

I realized the existential freedom foreign travel had to offer wasn’t the ability to deny my corporal existence and reject my status as a moral agent rather than an invisible, socially neutral entity. This freedom only truly manifests itself only when one finally has the courage to examine themselves and say, “Yes, I will be a part of this world.”

There is no other choice when that person is traveling alone and they realize that nobody but themselves will be capable of getting them back home safely. When locked outside a small city park in Budapest because I was ten seconds late, invisibility was not an option if my will was to get just a single ride. The same was true for the decision made atop Monte Igueldo; so long as I was oriented to care about the projects I take up in the world, I couldn’t in good faith get on that bus having missed my most desired goal for all of Spain. A choice in the negative or the affirmative would still be a choice, and only when I accepted the full burden of that responsibility had I truly acknowledged my freedom. True freedom does not lead one to a lightness of being; the weight of an authentically free will is heavier than ever imagined.

The forced loss of invisibility travel brought meant I no longer had to be concerned if I was genuine or was playing a part. The vertigo felt from seeing my reflection in the eyes of others had lessened; it was now possible to talk to people as myself. Most valuable of all was the time I spent meeting and getting to spend time with Europeans, whether it was only a brief conversational exchange upon checking into a hostel, making acquaintances and going out to dinner together, spending an entire day at a park with like-minded enthusiasts, or spending the weekend with extended family. At the end of it all I realized I was no longer ‘the stranger in a foreign land’; I was a friend from a foreign land.

On the plane ride back over the Atlantic Ocean my psyche woke me with one final, terrifying question: what if when I’m dying I decide these 5 ½ months in Europe were the best time in my life? What if I will never be as happy, or as deeply influenced by my experiences in the world? How sad should I be right now if that is true? After a moment I decided to commit to an answer: I’ll just have to try as hard as I can until I die to make sure that doesn’t happen.

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