While I was waiting for some fondue this afternoon, I had the pleasure of watching an entire restaurant waitstaff yell at each other in German. (I can't imagine a waitstaff fighting in front of a client in the US, but I am sure they knew I couldn't understand them anyway.)

This incident reminded me of a time last week when an old Austrian man screamed at a tour guide for about 10 minutes (calling her the equivalent of the C- and F- words and threatening to call the police) because our group had parked our bikes in front of his house.

Normally I am very conflict adverse, but in both of these situations I had no idea what was being said, and somehow - this made me care so much less about the fight. I guess when you can't attach meaning to a fight an interesting thing happens. You begin to see them for how stupid and pointless they really are.

The excessive emotion in all these situations seemed so out of place. In both cases I thought - what could possibly be important enough for them to be this angry?

I feel like this is a good thing for me to remember - the fights that seem so important in the moment are probably pretty stupid and meaningless in reality. And more importantly, you sound like an idiot to a foreigner when you fight in public.