How to Vagabond Like an Epicurean: The Vagabond Lexicon
Cultural Immersion: Learning Basic Phrases in a Multitude of Languages
If you’ve ever been touched by the wandering spirit or yearned to unfetter yourself from home and country and embrace your nomadic impulses, then the vagabond life may be right for you. One essential thing that differentiates the vagabond, especially an Epicurean one, from the mere traveler or tourist is acculturation — immersing yourself in the customs, culture and routines of the people amongst whom you now find yourself living. Obviously, the longer you plan on staying somewhere, the more important this process of immersion/acculturation becomes.
A key factor which will thoroughly enhance one’s entire experience in another country is learning the language. Or, at the very least, attempting to pick up some of the lingo and key phrases that will help you survive. There’s no concierge at the front desk facilitating your stay in this scenario.
Does it help that we can both speak and read in French? Yes. This certainly gives us a decent understanding of the rest of the Romance languages and helps us communicate with almost all of the older generations in every European country (where French was literally the “lingua franca” for centuries before being usurped by English). It also doesn’t hurt that we both speak a modest amount of Greek, and that my husband (aka Ryan the Greek) can read Greek as well (this is of enormous assistance in all those countries that use the Greek or Cyrillic alphabet).
That said, here are some of the ways in which we’ve established what we like to call “The Vagabond Lexicon.” Before we even set foot in another country, we start researching both the language and the customs of our next destination. As we mentioned in our last article in this series “How to Vagabond Like an Epicurean: Building Our Nest,” we like to choose a place to stay in less touristic neighborhoods — where the open air markets, butcher shops, bakeries, cafes, restaurants and locals reside.
This usually means there is less opportunity to speak English. “You have left the American sector!” In turn, this also means that we will be shopping where the locals shop and will need some key phrases to ingratiate ourselves with the people we are about to see for at least the next three months.
If you plan on vagabonding, here’s a smattering of some basic, essential phrases (which we’ve taught ourselves) in many of the languages of the countries we’ve been living in the last few years (French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Portuguese, Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), Romanian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Swedish and Albanian).
So, here’s our Vagabond Lexicon (not necessarily in order of importance, with the exception of #1):