Missing an important day due to lack of language knowledge…
I remember how a friend of mine was looking forward to a wedding party in Italy. She had all her great expectations and she was totally prepared as she said. Her husband and she planned some days off to feel the Italian experience, hired an adventurous villa somewhere near where the wedding was to take place, in order to spend a dream vacation. Then they were counting the days…
When the day was approaching, they checked all the details for their villa and set off from Holland to Italy by car. The trip was a nice journey and they were enjoying it greatly, till the moment when they arrived late in the evening in the surroundings of the villa and they started their adventurous search of the location. Since the villa was “in the middle of nowhere”, they had difficulties in finding it. Asked here and there but the people in the neighbourhood, and at that time of the late hour, did not speak English and could not help them. No problem, they thought, and decided to not spoil their mood but spend the night in a hotel and the next morning firstly find the villa, put on party clothes and drive to the wedding. It was a strange introduction to their wedding experience, but they knew “the morning would be wiser than the night” so they waited patiently till the next day broke.
Early the next morning they drove to the supposed location to search for the villa, but as they could not explain well in Italian and the Italians in the nearby village did not speak English, it took ages before they found the villa. Then of course they were in an extreme hurry to get to the wedding, so they were driving quite much in haste. Unfortunately, this was going to be one of the worst days in their lives and if they had known that, they would have maybe opted for the LangCommLive service or would have learnt a bit more Italian in advance.
Why? Because this is what happened:
At a traffic light there were two signs pointing in the direction of the location they were going to, and there were road-works taking place. So it was quite unclear in the hurry which was the best way to go. They were almost going to take right until in the last moment they decided to take left, and at that very second…. Crash! A car from across collided with their small cute Peugeot and there it started… The police arrived after sometime and started asking all kinds of questions, of course in Italian…. There were also the Italians from the whole surroundings that gathered together to try to help, but they only spoke Italian!
So, communication was doomed to last forever.
It took about half a day to only make themselves clear about what exactly had happened. Then as sent from above, there were these two Dutch ladies that appeared from somewhere, and they were extremely helpful to offer their rescue, when they saw that the totally broken car had a Dutch number-plate.
Thank God there were these ladies! They helped as interpreters for another hour… and of course, you could imagine, the wedding had already taken place a long, long time ago…. My friends missed the whole ceremony. Yet, they were hopeful that at least they would be able to get to the party and congratulate the newly married couple…
How long would you imagine it took them before they went there?
Well, you wouldn’t guess. Firstly they had to go to a garage, where the car had to be inspected, and there they tried to order a taxi to take them to the party place. But the taxi would not come….
Finally, after half hour, luckily the garage owner was so kind as to understand somehow why my friends were “”in a hurry”” and he took them personally to that castle, where the party was going almost to its end…
A story that shows that no matter how much we like adventure, sometimes we need some practical arrangements in place, that would save us time and make our lives easier.
LangCommLive offers this kind of very economical practical arrangements.
A day of pain in Vietnam
Another friend of mine went to Vietnam, since her husband was there on business and they decided to explore the country and culture after the business trip was over. And why not?
Vietnam seems to be a very attractive country for European visitors. Europeans enjoy the freshly made food, the different way of living and of course the whole Asian experience.
My friend was having one of these idyllic days in the countryside when at once: ouch, she had this terrible, unbearable back pain. She was paralysed and could not move at all. Her husband was trying to understand what was happening, but not having any medical preparation for such cases he decided to search for help. Quickly he went to the nearest hospital to look for a doctor. Alas, when he went there he understood that there was not much he could explain since he did not speak Vietnamese, and the doctors at the hospital did not speak English.(My friend’s husband speaks Dutch, German, French, English… but alas, not Vietnamese.) So my friend was suffering enormous pain until they managed to somehow explain what they thought was wrong… but she felt this pain all her vacation after, so I am not sure the doctors understood what was the problem.
It would have been much and much better if my friends had used an interpreter or.. a telephone interpreter through LangCommLive. It would have improved the quality of their vacation and they would have enjoyed it even more.
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