Kindness on the go

I think that being humble and kind is the key. We need to help one another instead of tearing the other down. And today I want to talk about the few things I have done in the past to help strangers.

A Mexican seeks an Italian

The first episode I can think of happened over a year ago. I was scrolling down my Facebook feed and I encountered a post in a Rotary Exchange Student group from a guy who wrote: "Is there an Italian in this group? ". As in the past I helped a girl who was looking for a native Italian speaker for her homework I thought this was a similar case, so I answered: "I am, feel free to send me a private message if you need my help". It was not help for an essay what he was looking for, he needed someone to host him in Italy because he has Italian origins and he wanted to come and learned about the culture he has been missing out on. "I am sorry, man, but I can not host you, I live in Milan and my apartment is quite small. Try with Workaway! ". And I kept in touch with this guy to find out whether he succeeded in finding families that could host him. Eventually, he got to spend some time with three different families, in Umbria and Liguria. He loved Liguria and when I went to Cinque Terre with my friends I told him he could join us, and that is when I met him for the first time. Very nice and smart guy. We had a wonderful time and kept in touch. He even came to Milan and I hosted him for one night, he got to see the city and then he returned the favor by hosting me in Savona. Sometimes I think about it and I think it is crazy that Facebook is actually useful, lol. If it was not for this social network we would have never met.

French vs Italian

Source

Alright, once I was in Lake Como with my friend from the Netherlands, she came to visit me for a week, so I wanted to show her Milan and the surroundings. At the station in Como, there were two French women who were trying to speak to the employee at the ticket counter. All they wanted to know was if he could give them a train schedule, but the Italian guy behind the glass did not know English, neither French. This is when I step in. I told the ladies I was Italian and that they could tell me in English what they wanted to tell the guy and I could translate everything so that he could understand. I did not do anything big but the two ladies kept thanking me and I just felt good because I did something nice. "Treat people as you want to be treated".

Need a pen

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On our way to Lake Como, we are on the train and a young couple comes in without scanning their tickets, they did not have time to do so and just hopped on the train, so they needed a pen to write the time and date on the ticket so that they would not get a fine. As they hear my friend and I speaking English, the girl tells the guy "Can you ask them if they have a pen? I do not know how to say that in English". As I hear them and I see the look on the guy's face, which was something like "Okay I can do this, think... ". I just told them that I was Italian and I understood and gave them the pen. I saved him from making a fool of himself, as I saw he was not comfortable speaking English and I gave him a pen, which was all he needed from me.

A roof for three

(The view from the apartment I will be talking about).

This happened before everything else I already wrote about in this post. In this case, I am the one receiving kindness from someone else. Okay, by now I am pretty sure that you know I was an exchange student in Colorado and I had a wonderful American family. This family happened to host a guy from Copenhagen years ago, from the city where I was going to spend four days with two of my friends. As I had this guy on my Facebook, I texted him and said "Hey there! We previously talked, I was also in Colorado and our American mom told me you are from Copenhagen. Do you know any cheap place where my friends and I could crash for our long weekend? ". I do not know how or why we were this lucky, but he replied saying that those exact same dates he was in Nepal and that he was more than welcome to have us in his apartment for the weekend, even without him being there. His friend came to the airport to pick me up with a Tesla and drove me to the place. He gave me his number so I could reach him if I needed anything or if I had something to ask about the apartment. I did not expect all of this. We had a wonderful time, his apartment was very nice and it was very easy to reach the city, it was basically in front of the train station. It was very kind of him to let us be there, Copenhagen is a very expensive city and we saved a lot of money by simply staying there. We could also cook for ourselves instead of going out for every meal and there were supermarkets just on the other side of the street. His parents are also very kind, I guess that is where he got it from. Anyhow, they also hosted me twice when I came back to Copenhagen. The funny part in all of this is that I have never met the guy, only his parents and his brother!

I think that karma is real and that if you behave badly, there will be consequences. Always be nice to others and others will be nice to you.

- Cristian

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