I recently returned from a trip to Amsterdam for a conference. I gave a talk at Tilburg University on Humor and the Common Good, which is my current book project. It was a great time, made even better because I got to bring family—my wife and youngest son. We added on a few days on the front end of the trip so we could visit the Anne Frank House, museums, see the sights, and enjoy the Netherlands. The cheese was and is awesome. The weather alternated between cold and rainy, cold and sunny, windy, snow, and even a little hail. I heard the locals quip more than a couple times about how the weather there changes a lot. It seems most folks regardless of where they live like to complain that the weather changes on a whim.

If you’ve not been to Amsterdam, the one thing you may not know is how many bikes there are. The infrastructure in the Netherlands devoted to bike is amazing. There’s an underwater bike garage in Amsterdam. But then again, in one sense most bike storage is underwater—a third of the country is below sea level. But it’s the bikes that lead me into how this post relates to humor.

One piece of advice, rather sound advice afterall, is that when you travel abroad you should avoid trying to use humor. There’s too much that can go wrong. The folks might not get your joke because they don’t have the same shared background, or they might not get that you’re intending to joke. Different cultures signal humor in different ways. Heck, your accent might be too hard to understand. But that doesn’t mean that all hope is lost for humor abroad. Quite the opposite. If you pay attention, you can find the things that people joke about and share that with them-like the weather. And that’s what brings us back to Amsterdam and its bikes.

When I say there are a lot of bikes in Amsterdam, I mean there are a lot. It’s almost obscene. Pretty quickly I began to worry more about the cylcists as we walked through the city than I did the cars. The bikers are not terribly worried about pedestrians.

One evening as we were taking a tour our tour guide told this wonderful joke about bikes in Amsterdam. He asked us if we knew about how deep the canals of Amsterdam were. I wasn’t sure, though I thought the average was 3-4 meters. He told us three meters. (So close!) One meter of sand, one meter of bikes, and one meter of water. The group largely laughed as did I. The joke wasn’t too bad all things considered. So I filed it away in my brain because it was a good joke about a town I was learning about. When I was giving my paper a couple days later and I was describing how important it was with humor that you had shared backgrounds and shared experiences, I told the audience that the only real joke I new about the Netherlands was the canal/bike joke. Once I told it, most people smiled in agreement.

This sort of sharing of humor is perfect for traveling. It shows that you, the visitor, are paying attention to what’s going on around you, that you’re interested in their culture. What’s more it shows a sensitivity to their humor, an important and overlooked aspect of a culture when you visit. We spend so much time doing the serious work of visiting museums, drinking in the local “culture” that we forget sometimes to experience the enjoyments that culture has, their humor. That joke is great for so many reasons. But that I remembered it and used it, made my talk all the more effective because the joke re-engaged the audience, but also showed to the natives that I “got” something about their culture. It helped me to create some more rapport.

I encourage you to not blindly avoid humor when you travel. But be careful how you use it. If you want to use humor abroad, first start looking for the jokes that that culture uses and see what you learn. You’ll open up a whole new avenue of understanding. So get out there and travel and listen for those jokes when you can. It will only add more to your experience.