Cross cultural hospitality - thoughts from Slovenia

Yesterday, Rachael shared what hospitality looks like in Vanuatu, and what she has learned about hospitality through being in that culture.  Today's post has been written by Roni Box, who is a missionary in Slovenia.   She has also been met with some challenges when it comes to hospitality in a different culture. 

- Hospitality is VERY strange here. It is just weird to have anyone other than extended family come to your home (with the exception of birthday parties - and even those don't usually happen in the home). Slovenes will generally catch up with their friends over a coffee.

- Slovenia is a very works-based culture. In regards to hospitality, it means that people will not agree to come to your house unless they are prepared to invite you to their house. (If you go to someone's house, you are obliged to invite them back). And this applies to people in the church as well. They keep a tally. The first time we realised this was when we invited a family from church to our apartment for lunch and they insisted that it was their turn and so we would have to come to their house first. So we effectively (unwittingly) invited ourselves to their house for lunch by inviting them to our place twice. This is a little awkward, because we have four children, which is WAY above the national average, so it is a big ask for people to invite us to their house. One lady in our church refused to come for lunch to our house (she did come to afternoon tea though), because she lives in a very small apartment (a small kitchen plus a living/bedroom) and couldn't cook lunch for our family.

- A Slovene lunch traditionally starts with soup, then a main meal and dessert and should be ready when the guests arrive (lunch is their main meal).

- Slovene ladies keep their houses ridiculously clean. My neighbour mops her floors every day (and even the landing outside our apartments every second day). I grew up in a more relaxed, not-so-fanatically clean house. I just can't keep up with Slovene housewives, although I'm sure they can't understand why, because they all work and I am at home!

So, how have we tried to deal with these cultural norms? Here are a few things that we have done:

- We try to take things slowly with people we have just met - we ask them out for coffee first.

- We would love to be able to break the works mentality, but it is so deep. Grace is not natural. We have tried explaining that we don't have the same expectations, but usually it doesn't make much difference. It is a long process. For our friends in Ljubljana who are in a church which has had Aussie missionaries for over 10 years, the culture is changing. So we will keep inviting people and pray that God will allow them to break out of their cultural restrictions over time.

- We have found younger people are less bound by the culture. They are more likely to accept hospitality without feeling obliged to return the favour. As well, as we get to know people, we work out whether we need to do soup for them - some people are less fanatical about the necessity of soup!

- I try to have the apartment clean when we have guests over - it's still not to their standard but at least better than my norm was in Australia. (I have recently started working on cleaning one room well each day of the school week, so that hopefully the workload is not so high the night before we have guests).

- If we have people for lunch after church I try to have some things cooked either the night before or do a lot of cooking in the morning before church, so that it is mostly done when we get home.

 

Thanks Roni!  Tomorrow, I'll share some thoughts from Jo Charles, in Chile.