It's very advantageous if you have conversational knowledge of language of the country you are travelling (or living) in. For one thing, it's much more difficult to rip you off, you also don't need guide books (just ask the people around, who are invariably source of most up-to-date information) but it will also draw you into conversations with curious locals.
Which happens to me in Georgia. Often. As soon as people find out they can talk to me in Russian, these are the six sigma, I mean six questions that follow (and there is no exception to this six-question rule):
"Do you like Georgia?"
- Well, d'oh, obviously, yes. I can't imagine what hell could break loose if I broke the news I don't like several aspects in Georgia to my casual conversation acquaintance.
"Where are you from?"
- However often I say Slovakia, the response is something like "Czechoslovakia", but more often just "Czecho...? Ah, yes. Czecho!" Once I met with a "TCH - S - S - R" reaction, which used to be short for Czechoslovakian Socialist Republic, an abbreviation very similar to USSR.
"Which town are you from?"
- What's the purpose of this question, you may think, if they don't even know my country! Well, they do watch Champions League so however odd it may sound, they know my hometown more often than they know my country.
"What's your salary?"
- Here we go. One of the questions they are most interested in, as soon as they find out I am working in Georgia. Sub-questions include which currency I am paid in (seems a strange question to me as the sole legal tender in Georgia is Lari) and how much I am paid from home on top of my Georgian salary. They seem to think everyone who comes from Europe (and is not working there) must be receiving generous social benefits. I guess that's the residue of socialism.
"Are you married?"
- After saying no, I very often encounter people inquiring further: "Don't you want to choose a lovely Georgian (or Megrelian, for that matter) girl?" It's lost on them to explain, that girls are not a supermarket goods that you can choose and take home as you please and that marriage is based on informed consent of two free parties. Once, while on train from Zestaphoni to Chiatura, which is hardly, if ever, frequented by foreigners, the conductor himself offered me a girl. It went like this:
"I know a very good and hard-working Georgian girl. I will introduce her to you on our way back."
That was a straight offer, without much of previous conversation. I thought about it and came to the following conclusion:
We (Westerners) already have a good and safe life, so we can afford freedom of choice (food, entertainment, travel, girl...). They don't and can't. He was trying to safeguard better future for his daughter, niece, cousin or, as they say, relation (that's a very broad term designating any friend or relative of family, however close or distant).
"Do you have parents? How many brothers and sisters?"
After finding out I am single (which they often fail to understand, as if picking a wife was picking a cherry) they maintain their belief I am member of some family unit - families seem to be a very strong concept here. Often they ask me warily about parents, because they themselves usually have fairly incomplete families. In the village where I live of all the children I know only one has complete family (i.e. mother and father). Others are not so lucky. Father may be in jail or have committed suicide, there might have been divorce or just separation (the marriage still being valid), mom works in Russia or Turkey, dad met violent demise (mafia murder or just a common break-in) or one of the parents has died prematurely because of some illness. People here are in poor health, courtesy of cigarettes, very low-quality diet (and resulting obesity), overworking (significant cause of death for women), and, to some extent, alcohol, mostly via traffic accidents.
After the six questions (and related sub-iunquiries) are exhausted, your investigators will usually retreat, having satisfied their thirst for information about a foreigner they don't have very often a chance to talk to. But this is not always the case. While on train from Kutaisi to Tqibuli, the conductor to whom I confessed transmitted details of my life to every single passenger on the train. Not only that, everyone who got on afterwards got briefed on my story and circumstances, even though the conductor couldn't even pronounce Czechoslovakia, as the -slovakia part constituted a word too long for his brain to memorize and process.
