– I am walking home from dinner with my host in London, a good friend from NYC, around 11pm. Almost everything in Bloomsbury is closed by this time of night, so we are surprised to hear some lively singing coming from somewhere above us in the street. We stop to listen, and then my friend suddenly pushes open the nearby door and walks in. In my usual experience with spontaneity, this building will turn out to house the British National Party or a Neo-Nazi Club or something, but it doesn’t. It’s the London Welsh Centre. We are spotted sneaking up the stairs to get a peek and dragged into the midst of a lovely 50th anniversary party. When our hosts discover I am of Southern US extraction, the men’s choir sings “Dixie” to me, along with some spirituals (for balance?). An elderly man encourages us to look upon the younger men of the club as potential husbands. “You see, they are very tall, and quite well-to-do. They’re solicitors.”

– A few days later, I find myself in a park in the middle of Galway City in the afternoon, taking a bit of a nap while waiting for a bus back to Dublin. It is the day after the last big Races party, the last hour or so of which I have no memory. My host in Ireland is a good friend from the States who lives here now, and we’re both dreading the slow intercity voyage back east. Suddenly it seems we have a third member in our party—an older man with white-blond hair and a sweatshirt modestly bragging that Galway is “Probably the best city in Ireland.” May I lie here with you? Can you watch for the Garda? May I talk to your girlfriend? She’s blond, isn’t she? Would you like to hear a song? Do you know she has great tits? Upon discovering that we are Americans, he begins to sing “Dixie” and then to tell us that he’s “not anti-Negro or anything” but the South really should have won. After about half an hour, he gets around to singing the promised song, which “only Luke Kelly was ever allowed to sing, and even he couldn’t sing it.” We never could quite discern what the song was, even after seven stanzas.

– In Germany, I discover that I am the most socially awkward person in the world. The instant someone speaks to me in German and I discover that I cannot understand, I turn purple all over and become flummoxed. My attempts to be polite cause train ticket salesmen to roll their eyes and address me sharply as “Madam!” I am so paralyzed by my newfound inability to communicate that I do not eat all day, as I cannot imagine going through the ordeal of ordering a sandwich. On the train, passengers attempt to make small-talk with me, of which I understand exactly nothing, and say so, in excellent-sounding German, which makes it sound as if I’m just being an asshole. I wonder if maybe I am an asshole. At long length I find myself on a bus that I think may be headed to the university where I am studying (at least the extended eye-roll I got from the driver when I asked seemed to suggest the possibility), and the elderly woman across from me smiles at me—the first smile I’ve seen in Lower Saxony so far. She asks me something in German, which I cannot understand, but respond (again in confusingly excellent-sounding German) that I’m American and only understand a tiny bit of German. She pauses for a moment, frowning, and begins again, and suddenly I understand every word. It’s Spanish, and she would like me to signal the driver for the next stop, please. I could kiss her.