Spring Chickens or Old Dogs?

We aren’t spring chickens. We don’t learn as easily as we did when we were young. Therefore, like other retirement travelers, we had a decision to make….Do we learn the local languages or just stick with English and gestures?

Taking the advice of our favorite YouTube instructor, Marc Wolters of Wolter’s World, we decided to learn some language for each of our countries. No, we didn’t learn all the languages at once and we didn’t become fluent. While we were at home we learned some Italian. While we were finishing Italy, we learned some Shqip. As we finish Albania we will learn some Portuguese. Three months in Italy informed us about the most useful words we needed to know for our daily living. In each of our new countries we need to know these kinds of words.

Our language lessons have not fallen upon deaf ears. In fact, it opened several doors in Italy as people tried to serve us in our broken Italian attempts. It was our visit in Albania with their lesser-known language of Shqip that caused large, excited responses from the people.

• Checking into our first Airbnb in Albania, the father of the host let us into the apartment and showed us around. He did not know any English, so he used a lot of gestures as he pointed to the air conditioner, the water heater, and the elevator key fob. At the end of the walk-through we said “Faleminderit” and his face lit up in a giant grin because we attempted to say thank you in HIS language.

• A little boy coming down the stairs with his grandmother said hello to us. We replied in Shqip, “Përshëndetje”(“Hello”). His grandmother repeated the greeting to us. After they passed by us, the little boy excitedly turned to his grandmother and said, “Wow, they know Shqip!”

• Passing through a smaller town that MANY tourists visit, we decided to stop for a coffee and pastry at a bakery. The server taking our order had good English skills, so we placed our order in English. Finishing with the payment we said, “Po” in answer to her question about dining in, and the server giggled out loud because we could say “yes” in HER language.

When we want to say more than just a few words, we have generally found success with language apps. In Italy I tried using the Microsoft translator, but I found it clunky. We switched to the Apple translator, which worked well for the Italian language, but it did not have Shqip for our time in Albania, so we switched over to Google Translate. Find the language app that works best for you and the country you are visiting. But, remember the ONE most important language tip of all…Smile! Everyone knows that language!!