Stranger Things.
Whoever ventures into the foreign sees more of life. So said some one of those countless voices from the folk wisdom tradition.
Yes, it takes a certain amount of courage and even more pocket money to set out into the great wide world. The wide world has many faces, and the travelling stranger has no idea about any of them — only a handful of fears. Situations like that are commonly known as adventures.
Conclusion: strangers abroad are adventurers.
It is entirely understandable that the foreign and the unfamiliar can feel somewhat threatening. The primordial instinct of Homo Sapiens — a compound word one should not hyphenate in the wrong place — developed a fine antenna for danger. What it does not recognise, it finds foreign. And potentially threatening. The sabre-tooth tiger found that rather amusing, at least.
Perhaps modern Homo Sapiens ought to remember that said tiger, sabre-teeth and all, has been dead — that is to say, extinct — for a very long time now. The fear never got the memo.
Those who are well practised in going abroad and travel boldly to other, that is to say foreign, countries are most often pleasantly surprised. On the beach, sunburn and thirst lie in wait — but neither tigers nor other creatures. Whoever wishes to strip a destination of its foreignness does well to read up on its history, its people, and their customs. And suddenly the country of arrival waves back far more warmly.
I could sing a song about that, had the general public and the shower not between them forbidden me from singing in public. The song hummed inwardly has countless verses, and precious few of them were catastrophic. When I set my twenty-five-year-old feet on Montréal soil for the first time in July 1980, I encountered the foreign up close. And it was neither unsettling nor eerie. The first impression was: “Oh, North America looks rather European.” My feet and I shuffled on across the floors of Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary and — well, that was about it, really. In these forty-six years, any fear of going abroad into other countries has simply vanished. From the foreign, curiosity has grown. And it has proved enormously useful — above all when the object of one’s curiosity allowed itself to be drawn into conversation. Canadians are extraordinarily skilled at this: even in the briefest of encounters, they toss over a compliment, a joke, or a friendly greeting.
“Canucks are a sort of kind people.”
As a Swiss-Canadian, a minimal dose of Swiss reserve is still tucked away in me somewhere. I am every time freshly astonished and quietly delighted by the ease and openness with which people meet here in Newmarket — and, one suspects, the rest of Canada as well.
Yesterday evening I was hanging about at the Flamingo Noir Record Bar, there to hear Glenn Marais and the Mojo Train. They were playing open air, it being Sunday evening and it being sunny. I spotted a long empty table and sat down in happy anticipation. Before long, other guests joined me. Naturally, we introduced ourselves. “Hi, Shannon, I’m Christian.” Just like that, and as simple as that.
At the end of the evening we parted as friends, smiling. Those who had been strangers sitting became friends standing, because the table and the openness were both free.
I arrived as a stranger and left as a friend.
