Just what is the etiquette of breaking the ice and talking to a complete stranger trapped and sitting next to you in a passenger jet for many hours? I have just arrived in Italy having completed a two leg, 25 hour journey on Malaysian Airlines. I am travelling alone and so get to sit next to complete strangers. Twenty five hours of saying nothing is a long time so who makes the move and why?
On both legs of my flight to Rome I sit next to young women.
The crying game
On the first leg from Adelaide to Kuala Lumpur I sit next to a 20 something young woman I guess to be a English tourist returning home. I guess because I didn’t speak to her at all other than to ask her to move so I could go to the toilet although I did recognize her from the check in queue.
So why didn’t I engage with her? I took my seat first. When she came to sit down I noticed she was crying in quiet, deep sobs. I think I made a decision I didn’t want to know. She sobbed for half the more the six hours it took to fly to KL and slept for most of the rest.
When the flight was over she got up and let me step out into the flow of passengers alighting from the plane.
A few minutes later in the transit lounge our paths cross and we exchange smiles as she heads for her flight and I wait for mine.
My parents make clothes in Bali
The leg from KL to Rome is a much longer flight – more than 12 hours and once again I sit next to young woman. It’s the over night leg leaving KL at around midnight local time and arriving in Rome at about 6.00am.
I again decide not to engage but this time for no other reason that I had just taken a hay fever tablet which promised to induce much desired drowsiness when taken in conjunction with alcohol.
12 hours of silence is a long time and so at about the 10 hour mark and no anti histamine stupor left to speak of, I break the ice. Her name is India. She is Italian, 17 years old and heading home for the start of the new school year.
India has been living in Bali with her parents for a number of years where she has been going to an international school. They now want her to compete her schooling in Italy.
India’s parents are in Bali because some years ago they moved their clothing making business to Bali. This a very common story in the once thriving high end rag trade that used to employ many thousands of highly skilled artisans.
Lured by low labour costs, clothing manufacturers have been relocating overseas for many years. Gucci, Armani et al are still around of course, but now they make their clothes in places like China and Bali and then export them back to Italy charging prices that belie their country of manufacture.
As fate would have it, India, the daughter of wealthy clothing manufacturers comes from Puglia, my destination, where she lives in a "pile of rocks" in Alberobello.
Amazing what you find out when you strike up a conversation.
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