The Italian Job(s)

Living on mainland Europe doesn't always make inter-cultural communication easier - as these three sketches show.

1. Umberto Eco, one of my favourite authors, came to do a talk in Amsterdam to promote his new book. I almost went - I am a bit of a literature junkie and a signed copy of the book would not have gone amiss. But I only heard about it the day before and rearranging my schedule to include a trip to A'dam was too bothersome. The next week I was in the public library and saw a copy of it - in Dutch. So I went to the help desk and asked (in my best Dutch) if I could order an English version. Umberto is pretty difficult to understand in one's native language and there was no way I was going to try to read a 'stun an ox' novel in Dutch. She (librarians are almost always ‘shes’) hunted through the system and tried hard to find a copy. A few days later I got an e- mail telling me that the book had not yet been translated into English. 1-0 to the Dutch for being more integrated with the culture of other European cultures than the Brits.

A few days later the Champions League knock-out stages came around. There were two matches that night - Man U ('my team') vs. Marseille (one of my favourite cities in Europe) and Bayern vs. Inter Milan. I skipped out of my Dutch class a bit early hoping to watch the Red Devils trounce the Marseillaise. ITV has the transmission rights to the Champions League so I am dependent on Dutch broadcasters to show the 'right' match. They choose the 'wrong' one. Actually the Bayern - Inter match turned out to be the better one - with Milan stealing a last minute goal on the Germans (déjà vu from 1998?) to become the only group runners-up to make it through to the last eight. I asked a few Dutch friends whether the choice of match reflected a critical choice about the likely quality of the match – or a nationalistic one reflecting the number of Dutch players involved. They were disarmingly honest and almost universally opted for the later choice. But it was the better match- so we’ll give them a draw on that one (though I will have to make a note to go to a pub with cable TV to watch the Chelsea v Man U match tomorrow).

Finally, one of the banes of ex-pat life in (rural) Netherlands is that foreign movies are largely inaccessible to non Dutch speakers – at least at the movies – because they are only subtitled into Dutch. Representations have been made to managers of movie houses – pointing out that they may be losing a considerable amount of custom in a town where at least 40% of the student population (or about 20% of the total population) is non-Dutch speaking: all to no avail. It seems the system is too inflexible - or the cost of getting movies with English sub titles (as well as / instead of) Dutch ones seems too high (unless one gets lucky at a film festival and gets one that has only been subtitled into English). So non-Dutch speaking world movie fans miss out. But there are occasional victories – I can manage French language movies – at a push- and last month we went see a beautiful Italian movie ‘Le Quattro Volte’ - although secure in the knowledge that there was no dialogue, and thus no sub titles, to struggle with. (Having said that I have been to see a Thai and Iraqi movie this year and got by – most of the time- with the Dutch subtitles, only occasionally asking my Dutch companions for translations of key words). It (my Dutch) must be getting better. And things could be worse – one could live in Germany and have to watch James Bond movies dubbed into German…..

Lets call it a score draw on this cultural front.