Another thing that became obvious is how difficult simple things become when you don't speak the native language. In Switzerland, my family annoyed the crap out of our waitress. She knew a few English phrases like "Hi... Eat?" and then after that we mostly ordered with gestures. After that, she had to help us get into the parking garage where we left our car because all the doors were locked and we couldn't read the sign that said to punch in your parking ticket number to unlock the door. After that, she had to call someone to help us get our car out of the parking garage for free because the automatic card reader would not read any of our American credit cards and we didn't have any Swiss Francs yet. Thanks waitress for going far above and beyond. She hated us.
I also learned that the Italian word for hot is caldo. At a gas station I tried to ask for someone to fill my water bottle because they didn't have a drinking fountain. She said "Ice o caldo?" (did I want ice water or hot water?) and I thought she said "Ice or cold?" (meaning with or without ice but still cold). I said "cold" because I didn't want to trouble her further for ice. She heard "caldo" and proceeded to fill my plastic water bottle with scalding water which made the water bottle too hot to even touch and probably melted a layer of hazardous materials off of the inside of the bottle. I drank the water 4 hours later when it finally stopped boiling, and ingested all sorts of bad plastic stuff!!! I don't know why hot water was even an option. It was really hot outside to begin with and the temperature of that water would have scarred my intestines.
Finally, I realized how NOT to communicate with people. When someone doesn't know English, my dad's go to way to handle it is to repeatedly shout the same word over and over again at them. Example: at a toll road, he shouted "Francs! Francs! Francs! Francs!" at the worker as he shoved money towards him. This interaction would have been better with no words at all because when he handed him the Swiss Francs, it would have become clear that he was giving him Francs just like every other car that drove through that day and didn't need to tell him. It would have also been better because the toll guy wouldn't have been afraid for his life.
Ok, here is an obnoxious amount of sweet pics from Grindelwald, Switzerland and the Italian coast (Cinque Terre villages):
Holy shiz yo! This is your best post ever. You were still able to keep the humor while adding the most wonderful gorgeous awesome pictures ever. I never thought those kind of pictures were real like I thought they had to be photo shopped to look that good. My gawwwddddd. That is so incredibly amazing. And there aren't people in any of them hardly which is awesome. It's like pristine untouched wonderfulness. The hot water sounds so yummy!! You should've brought a tea bag!
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