The Texan is here with his Ukrainian wife and her parents. They have traveled all over Europe: they have been to Italy, they have been to Greece. Oh, I ask, brightly, does he speak any other languages? Well she speaks some Italian, he says. Of course in Greece they speak some English. She was even learning some Greek. Does he speak any other language, like Ukrainian, or Russian? Well, she was so interested in learning English, that they just speak English. So he doesn’t speak another language? Well, he lives in San Antonio, so he understands some Spanish.
These people exist. They really do. There is one at the table next to me.
It’s especially cool that he’s a retired Verizon hardware engineer. An old friend works for Verizon. I can sit here in Odessa, and talk US high tech, and the rest of the world fades away. But honestly, it’s entirely possible to be an American here and the rest of the world, including Ukraine, has faded away anyway. They go to Cancun as well.
He has to get on the phone to the bank later, because they denied a charge again. They did that when they were in Greece. We discuss the frustrations of dealing with American banks when abroad. Wells Fargo in San Francisco was unable to wire money to Lithuania last year. I talked to multiple people at the bank, and the issue seemed to be with me: why would I want to wire money to Lithuania? This country did not appear on their dropdown menus, and when they tried to enter the numeric code I gave them it didn’t go through. I needed to do something else than expect this huge national bank to be able to send money to a country in the EU. I can relate to the Texan on this point. The Texan is very friendly, as Texans are, as he says goodbye and goes off to meet his wife. I am glad I am not married to him. What is this Ukrainian woman like? What brought her to San Antonio? What does she do there? Without learning Ukrainian I will not know what the waitresses at this restaurant are like. But then, I suppose I could also learn Ukrainian and still not know.