Cross-Cultural Communication, Customs, and Cuisine

What Ralf’s Stories Teach About Understanding

On a gray winter morning in Germany, Ralf is talking about the weather, hedgehogs, and empanadas — in English.

The sound crackles a bit at first. “I see you, but I can’t hear you,” he says, laughing as the audio reconnects. It’s a small moment, but a perfect symbol of what “skills across cultures” really look like: sometimes you see each other before you can truly hear each other. Then you adjust, you try again, and little by little the connection clears.

From that moment, the conversation travels — from snowy gardens to Portuguese kitchens, Italian villages, South African gun laws, and finally to a pan of paella big enough to feed ten people. Along the way, Ralf shows that cross-cultural communication isn’t a theory. It’s food, jokes, rules, fears, and the way people open their doors to a stranger with a photograph in his hand.

Hedgehogs, Weather, and the First Bridge

It starts simple:
“How’s your weather?”
“Is it snowing? Is the sunshine?”

Ralf lives in northern Germany. There is snow, then rain, then the sky turns “cloudly and gray.” He talks about the hedgehogs in his garden — four already asleep for winter, one stubborn little one still awake and hungry in the daylight.

This isn’t small talk for him. It’s a gentle warm-up, a way to step into English without pressure. Talking about the weather and animals is safe territory, but it also reveals something else: care. He worries about the hedgehog making it through the winter. He and his wife leave food out. It’s a tiny, spiky symbol of how he approaches people too — with patience, protection, and a bit of humor.

Before you can talk about gun laws, war, or religion, you talk about rain and hedgehogs. Trust starts small.

Rosa’s Empanadas: Learning by Hand, Not by Book

When the topic shifts to “skills across cultures,” Ralf doesn’t think of textbooks or business seminars. He thinks of Rosa.

Rosa is a Portuguese woman who works at the same food and beverage company as Ralf’s wife. She can’t read or write, but in the kitchen she’s a master: “the best cooker of the world,” as Ralf puts it. She makes empanadas — dough cooked in a pan, filled with tuna, shrimp, beef, or pork — the kind of food that carries a country’s soul inside it.

Ralf tries to copy her recipe at home. Technically, he knows what goes inside, but it never tastes like hers. The missing piece is not in the ingredients — it’s in the movement of her hands, the timing, the feeling.

Because Rosa cannot write the recipe down, she offers something more intimate:
“Come to my kitchen,” she tells him. “I show you what I do.”

This is cross-cultural learning at its most human:

• No written instructions.
• No formal lesson.
• Just standing shoulder to shoulder, watching, tasting, laughing.

For a former Air Force engineer who loves precision and technical detail, it’s a beautiful contradiction: the perfect recipe lives in a person, not on a page.

Sardinia: Hospitality on a Horse Carriage

Ralf’s other great classroom is Sardinia, where he spent a year as a soldier between 1984 and 1996. His plane flew low over the Adriatic, checking ships for weapons during the Yugoslav conflict. The mission was serious, but what stayed in his heart were the people.

Sardinians, he learned quickly, insist: “We are not Italian. We are Sardinian.”
They have their own pride, their own rhythm, their own way of welcoming outsiders.

One Christmas, Ralf and his first wife joined a colleague, Michael, at his Sardinian neighbor’s house. The neighbor had a horse and a small carriage decorated in red, green, and white — the colors of Italy — and took part in a church procession where the Madonna statue was carried through town.

Ralf took a photograph of the neighbor, proud beside his horse and carriage. A week later, he returned with a printed copy.

That simple act — giving the man his own image — opened a door. Ralf was invited in. Soon he was drinking local firewater, filu ‘e ferru, so strong that “one, two, three times” was enough to rearrange the evening. He could barely walk four steps afterward, but what he remembers is the warmth:

• The neighbor’s delight at the photo.
• The way strangers turned into hosts.
• The “open hearts” of Sardinian people.

Here, cross-cultural communication didn’t come from grammar or vocabulary. It came from a picture, a shared drink, and an unspoken message: You matter enough that I wanted to capture this moment and bring it back to you.

Guns, Rules, and Shock Across Borders

The conversation doesn’t stay soft. Ralf moves from food and festas to a harder topic: guns.

As a German, he’s used to a world where weapons are rare in civilian life. Guns stay mostly with police, security, and licensed hunters. A friend who hunts must go through regulations, hold licenses, and keep strict track of every firearm he owns.

So when Ralf visits the United States, he’s shocked. He sees prisoners cleaning roads under the watch of a guard with a pump-action shotgun, sees hunting in the Everglades “only for fun,” and can’t reconcile it with his own sense of normal.

Later, speaking with his teacher from South Africa, he hears how common guns are there too — for hunting, self-protection, and crime. The process to get a legal firearm is strict on paper, but illegal guns flow anyway.

For Ralf, these stories hit deep. He’s worked with military technology; he knows what weapons can do. He’s also proud of his country’s attempt to keep tight control. He worries about children in schools, people in supermarkets, and the stories of shootings that appear again and again.

He isn’t preaching. He’s comparing:

• German rules and American freedom.
• European caution and South African reality.
• The big gap between law on paper and life on the street.

Cross-cultural communication here is not about harmony or agreement. It’s about facing the uncomfortable differences and still talking. Still listening. Still trying to understand why another society made the choices it did — even if you don’t accept them.

The Global Skills He Believes In

When asked what global skill everyone should have, Ralf answers without hesitation: a common language.

If people could all speak at least one shared language, he believes, we could avoid many misunderstandings. “You say something,” he explains, “and the other person hears it wrong and thinks you are angry.” A shared language, for him, is a bridge that keeps conflict from catching fire.

But then he corrects himself.

Language is important, yes — but respect is “higher than one language.” Respect for different beliefs, different histories, different fears. And right after respect comes another universal skill: the ability to laugh.

Ralf loves laughing. He sees it as medicine for the soul and a universal human signal. Even if the joke doesn’t translate perfectly, shared laughter loosens the tension and makes room for patience.

His list of global skills ends up looking like this:

• A shared language, to build clear bridges.
• Respect, to honor different ways of life.
• Laughter, to remind us we’re all human.

These aren’t bullet points in a training manual; they’re values he’s tested across Portuguese kitchens, Sardinian churches, American highways, and German living rooms.

A Dish Called Understanding

At the end of the conversation, Ralf is asked a strange, poetic question:

“What dish represents understanding the best?”

He thinks of calamari. Mussels. And finally lands on paella.

When he makes paella at home, he uses a huge pan. Eight to ten people gather around. There is seafood, rice, vegetables, and the kind of smell that pulls neighbors out of their houses “just to see what’s going on.”

It’s not just about the food:

• Paella is cooked in one big pan — different ingredients sharing one space.
• Everyone eats from the same source but fills their plate differently.
• While it cooks, people talk about recipes, trips, family, work, politics, and dreams.

Around that pan, cultures mingle: German friends, maybe a Portuguese colleague, stories from Sardinia, tales from South Africa, jokes about American TV shows. The world shrinks to the size of a table, but the conversation expands.

For a man who loves order, tools, machines, and well-structured routines, this is the perfect metaphor: one system, many parts; one dish, many flavors; one table, many histories.

Understanding, for Ralf, tastes like shared food.

One Kitchen, Many Cooks

When you zoom out from all these stories — hedgehogs, Rosa’s empanadas, Sardinian firewater, gun laws, paella — a pattern appears.

Cross-cultural communication isn’t a grand theory in Ralf’s life. It’s a series of small, concrete moments:

• Offering food at the right time.
• Bringing someone a photograph of their proudest moment.
• Being shocked by another country’s “normal” but listening anyway.
• Learning a recipe from someone who cannot write, by standing next to them and trusting your senses.
• Choosing to laugh together, even when words get tangled.

In the end, the world looks to him a bit like Europe as a single kitchen with many cooks. Everyone brings their own spices, habits, and rules. Sometimes the flavors clash. Sometimes they produce something unforgettable.

But if there’s coffee, a good pan, a little patience, and space for everyone to speak — and eat — there’s always a chance to understand each other a little better.