I’ve always believed that passions make people bond beyond cultural and ideological barriers.

The story I tell in our book  about my encounter with a Kazakh immigration officer only a few years after the end of the Cold War is an example.

Last weekend, I found another one.

I was reading an article  in The New York Times about the anniversary of Isaac Stern’s  trip to China.

The famous violinist toured the country in 1979 giving concerts. People travelled miles by train to see him perform. This happened at a crucial time. China was emerging from a long period of isolation from the rest of the world.

Stern  is credited not only with spreading the love for classical music but also with enabling cultural exchanges between the West and a country everybody had learned to fear.

You have to watch the video  about Stern teaching young Ho Hongying to play the violin. It contains one of the best lessons in cross-cultural communications I have ever come across.

Without knowing a word of Mandarin, Stern manages to tap into Hongying’s passion for music and, instantly, her performance improves.

What would be the equivalent of this in corporate communication?

I came across a quote by former East German dissident Rudolf Bahro the other day that made me think.

“When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by those people who are not afraid to be insecure”.

If you follow the pace of the interactive web and the way in which it is connecting people around the world, you are left with little doubt that we are currently experiencing a major acceleration.

The old forms of relating to other cultures are dying.

Sharing interests on social networking platforms creates new forms of bonding. We begin to relate to people from different ethnic and religious backgrounds in a new way.

They are much closer to us. Somehow our passion for new connections makes us forget the fear.

When you move out of your culture and venture into a new one, insecurity becomes a constant travel companion.

It is there every time you realise that people around you share traditions you are not part of or memories from a school system you are unable to relate to.

What do you do?

You dwell in the experience and let insecurity become a key for exploring that particular culture.

The lessons you learn are unique. I promise.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not writing this because I think I am special.

It is just an obsession of mine. I want to find out what living abroad for the past 26 years has done to my brain.

Apparently, I am more likely than other people to be able to use a box of tacks as a candle holder.

According to studies conducted by William Maddux, Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD and Adam Galinsky, Professor of Ethics and Management at the Kellogg School, living abroad and creativity are tightly connected.

MBA students at the Kellogg School were asked to solve the famous Duncker candle problem. Results showed that the longer students had spent living abroad the more likely they were to find a creative solution.

The university also ran a second test on them involving the mock sale of a gas station. Again, those students who had lived abroad were more likely to reach a deal that demanded a creative approach.

Vacations don’t count. Only living abroad leads to creativity.

Maddux and Galinsky found out that the more students had adapted to foreign cultures when they lived abroad, the more creative they turned out to be.

So, you see, it is worth enduring being called a foreigner a million times or having to eat the worst food ever (this was in Eastern Europe a long time ago).

Pay-back time eventually comes.

Tacks and candles are high on my shopping list for the weekend.

Have you ever used food to retrieve memories?

My friend Gina has just contributed to a book that brought together Filipino expatriates reminiscing about their favourite dishes.

The authors of “A Taste of Home – Pinoy Expats and Food Memories” believe that it is “the kitchen that generates the warmest thoughts of home..”.

I love the part about Gina’s childhood in the US:

“two cans of Chef Boyardee…
It brought back everything about growing up in suburban America in the 1960s: the wobbly formica kitchen table, the cheap plastic paint sets ordered with coupons cut out of the top of Kellogs Frosted Flakes cartons…”

In Italy, the two main Christmas desserts are Pandoro and Panettone.

Pandoro comes from Verona where I grew up. On my last visit home, a friend gave me a fresh Pandoro that I brought with me to London.

I opened the bag and…for a second I was back there… in my beloved school, Istituto Agli Angeli, with its enormous park.

I must have been about 5. I felt the texture of my lunch book under my fingers. I even felt the sticky spots where I used to spill the peach juice that would come in little bottles…

I opened my eyes and the memory was gone.

All of the sudden, it was 2008… I was standing in the middle of a kitchen in West London holding the gateway to my childhood.

I was never sure of the meaning of the expression “comfort zone”.

Having lived abroad for most of my life, it is a concept I never liked to dwell much upon.

But last week, I heard a great definition.

Someone was saying that, if you leave home to go and live in another country, you don’t leave your comfort zone, you enlarge it.

I love it!

So, I began thinking about my “comfort zone” and all the factors that, over the years, have made me realise just how much I have enlarged it.

Here are some:

• Having different homes. One where I grew up (Italy), one where I live (London) and one where my spirit feels most comfortable (Prague).

• A large extended family made up of all my friends in London and other parts of the world. Being with them always gives me a sense of home.

• The dizziness I feel when walking through London. I have finally accepted it! It is like a dance. The dizzier you feel, the closer you come to feeling at home in this never-ending city.

• My love-hate relationship with airports and planes. I hate airline food…. but I love being on a plane at night over the ocean… It is like being looked after by a giant cosmic force.

Photo: thanks to experiencefestival.com

I left Dubai with two regrets last week: not having spent more time in the sun and not being able to speak Arabic.

It has been raining on and off since I got back to London. So I decided to go the gym and work myself into a trance while listening to my favourite Arab singer, George Wasouf.

While doing this, my mind took off and began thinking of my post of last week about languages (I really enjoyed Daneeta’s and Maria’s comments).

I was thinking of all the reasons why I am glad I learned other languages:

• Another language adds a new dimension to your life. It makes you realise that there are many different ways to interpret reality. An example I like to use is the verb “to take a walk”, spazieren in German. In Czech, it is reflexive: prochazet se. The fact that it is reflexive turns the experience of taking a walk into something you do for yourself, something that is good for you. I love to use the verb prochazet se when I am about to take a walk.

• Going through the pains of learning another language is a humbling experience. I remember when I learned to write in German and had to have friends check my texts. I wrote very well in Italian and would have never needed this. Languages are great destroyers of egos.

• I can think of those situations when you encounter people who look down at you because you have an accent that they consider “foreign” or because you use expressions different from theirs. Remaining polite in their presence is a great exercise if you are trying to develop compassion for your fellow human beings. Believe me! It is more powerful than 10 hours spent in meditation.

• Learning other languages brings new people into your life. I can’t even begin to think of all the people who would not be in my life if I only spoke Italian. And this has always been the strongest motivation factor for me. What is yours?

“I don’t have a village. I am a floating person”

I simply adore this line.

I went to listen to a talk by Lord Meghnad Desai last night at the Ismaili Centre about diasporas and migration.

Having been a “foreigner” for most of my life, I have a strong interest in phenomena that turn people into strangers.

Lord Desai was talking about migration being at the core of human history. “We all came from East Africa. We all descend from Lucy”.

It was really in the 20th century that people began to insist on national identities. “By thinking in terms of citizens and foreigners, we have created barriers for ourselves”.

According to Lord Desai, before the rise of national identities people used to think in terms of clusters of households. But in the 20th century, “our imagination stopped to see individuals and families and began to see only nations”.

While I was listening to this, my mind wandered back to Prague. I heard the voice of a Jewish friend of mine saying how much he hates nations. And he does have a strong point.

Prague’s cultural and social life was much richer before WWII when they had a Czech, a Jewish and a German community.

All this is gone for ever. Thanks to people chasing national identities and turning neighbours into strangers.

Lord Desai also spoke about the urge that people have to create “locals and foreigners”.

That puzzles me. It does exist. I have often been called a “foreigner” and I have always found it intriguing.

I don’t really know what a foreigner is. May be it is because I cannot really identify with a specific country or a particular place.
I have always thought that nations create distance between people. Or may be it is because of what I have seen in Easter Europe.

No, I don’t particularly like the word “foreigner”.

“It is like a journey through your subconscious”.

My friend Gina and I were trying to make our way home on the Underground after a dinner at a Chinese noodles place near the British Museum.

Midnight at Holborn station can feel like walking through the meanders of your mind (Have you ever watched Being John Malkovich?).

I love London with all my heart.

But sometimes I feel so confused. I move through the streets, rushing from meeting to meeting. A lingering dizziness starts to form in my heart, as if I was floating through a realm that doesn’t really exist.

I sometimes make strange encounters. I cherish them. The stranger the better. They help to soothe my dizziness…

I went into Boots yesterday. The lady at the counter looks at me: “Where are you from?”

You will probably know by now that I have a knee-jerk reaction to this question. I have been asked it a billion times over the years. I don’t even hear it any more. My ears switch automatically to a Buddhist mantra every time somebody in my vicinity formulates it.

But this time, it was different….

The woman had such a sweet face. So I told her I am Italian.

She looked at me with dreamy eyes and said, “Have you ever met the Pope?”

I told her that I had been to Rome on a school trip as a young girl to see the previous Pope.

The lady fell deeper into her dream, “He was such a nice man.”

“He was,” I said. And this time it was my mind to wonder off, back to Easter Europe and to dreams of better times that I hope will stretch into eternity.

Later on, I was chewing my noodles near the British Museum and looking at the peaceful face of our Chinese dinner companion.

“The restaurant smells like Asia”, said Gina.

Behind me a wall-to-wall flat screen was showing MTV-style videos from the 90s.

I leaned back and gave in to the energy of London. May be my dizziness is a sign that I am becoming part of it.

Photo: thanks to inmagine.com

I wrote last week about the surreal feelings connected with having spent most of my life abroad.

Many thanks to Mike for writing on my Facebook that this post resonated with him.

It’s great to know I’m not the only one.

I am always on the lookout for comforting messages of this kind and a couple of days ago… I hit the jackpot

I was reading in the International Herald Tribute about the life of Barak Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann, and the influence she had on him. And I came across this quote by Obama’s sister, Maya:

“She [Stanley Ann] felt that, somehow, wandering through uncharted territory, we might stumble upon something that will, in an instant, seem to represent who we are at the core”.

Obama’s mother lived in different parts of the US before moving to Hawaii, where she met Obama’s father. She then moved to Indonesia where she became a consultant to the USAID on setting up a village credit program. She also worked for the Ford Foundation in Jakarta specialising in women’s projects.

Ever since I read Maya’s quote, I have been thinking about that “something” that makes up my core.

I think I know what it is.

I was wandering through “uncharted territory” in Eastern Europe and I came across what became the essence of who I am today.

Now that I think of it, it is all quite clear, but you first need someone to explain to you how it works.

That’s why I love this quote.

All of the sudden, it all makes sense. To use the words of an old friend, it is as if someone came into your kitchen and started to make order. The cups with the cups….the plates with the plates….

This quote is exactly what you need to read to yourself when you feel confused. And living in different places can leave you confused. Your path is so different from that of many of the people who sorround you.

So every time you start doubting that path, just read this quote.

Picture: thanks to iht.com

I know it sounds strange but I don’t recall ever feeling homesick.

At the age of ten, my parents sent me to a Kinderheim on the Adriatic cost for the summer. I packed my favourite doll, Leopolda (my grandfather bought it the day I was born), and off I was.

I usually get quite puzzled when I am asked at dinner parties:

‘So where is home for you?’

I blank out for a couple of seconds and just stare. By the end of the two seconds my dinner companion will already have started feeling uncomfortable, suspecting some tearful story.

But my silence has more to do with the fact that the answer to this questions is a difficult one.

My home is in London where I live now. It is also in northern Italy where my family still lives. The home of my memories is in the Austrian Alps where I spent my student years. And the home of my spirit is in Prague.

I have tried to simplify my answer but it is not easy.

I have thought about my evident inability to feel homesick.

It must have something to do with the fact that I deal with so many people in different parts of the world and home for me is made up of different places.

This might mean that you are in many places at the same time, so that when you travel they are always following you.

This makes me think of the quantum theory of multiple universes developed by Hugh Everett. I just read an article about it in the Scientific American.

According to Everett, the world tends to split into many universes, one universe for each different possibility. The universe you find yourself in depends on the choice you have made.

It reminds me of my friend Christine who worked with me in Prague. She would often get confused and disoriented and thought that it was because, if you lived in Prague, you were able to feel the existence of the parallel universes and you were suddenly aware of all the choices.

I promise I will not go into this at the next dinner party.

Photo: thanks to hshpgraphics.com