The great memories I had in Barcelona was so connected to a German girl Bianca. We spent the whole three days together walking around and listening to the opera. Without her, I didn't even know that it cost only a few Euros to go to an opera if you had an international student card.
This day we came to a traditional market and decided to take a look. To be honest, there was nothing I wanted to buy. But I always enjoyed checking around a bit. From local markets, you could see a lot of their culture.
She turned around, saw a stall, and said to me, “Do you mind? I want to buy some xxx.”
And this xxx was a new word to me. So I repeated it and asked, “What is that?”
She looked at me as if I was some kind of alien. Started to give me a lecture saying that it was one sort of cheese. And then gave me a long list of different vocabulary for various cheeses. OK. Give me a break! In my life, I thought I could survive perfectly well with only one general name──cheese. I don't need to know two hundred names.
So if you see this photo with Bianca trying to shop for this cheese, you can imagine, I was there listening to this conversation, which was all Greek to me. So I thought I'd better make myself useful by taking pictures for her instead of saying something stupid to reveal my ignorance.(Oh, yeah. It was also possible that she wasn't really speaking English. No wonder it didn't make any sense.)
So this reminded me of the year before this, I met Sylviane in Mexico City. She told me a very funny story of hers. She said that she was traveling in Thailand and one day, she came to this traditional market. Wandering around, she got to a very beautiful stand selling so many colorful “cheeses”. Watching and couldn't helping drooling, and in the mean time, strained by the language, the one thing she could do was to point at one after another and asked, “How much?”The vendor showed a number after another on a calculator accordingly. Not having any cheeses for a long time, she finally chose one, paid the money, and couldn't wait to open her mouth and try to get a bite.
NO! NO! NO! NO EAT! NO EAT! The vendor lady shouted.
It turned out that the delicious-looking cheese was actually not a cheese. It was a piece of soap.
It was so hilarious that I laughed to tears. Luckily she craved for a cheese so much that she couldn't wait to eat it in front of the seller. Had she waited until getting back to her hotel, what would it have been like?
So next time when you go traveling in another country and see something colorful, you might want to ask to make sure what it is. As an Asian, you might think they are soaps. Oh, no. They actually are cheeses.
