Some time ago I was sitting in a little restaurant with a Peruvian friend of mine. The restaurant was one of those pleasant "open-air" facilities with a waist-high wall marking the perimeter and a canvas canopy to block the sun. While we were waiting for our food to come, I couldn't help but notice that dangling from the canopy at regular intervals were clear plastic bags filled with water.

"Why did they tie plastic bags filled with water to their canopy?" I asked innocently.

My Peruvian friend didn't even hesitate.

"It's to keep out the flies."

My face turned quizzical. For the life of me I couldn't think of how that could possibly work, but not wishing to be rude, I didn't query any further.

A few minutes later I caught a fly that had been buzzing around my food and I held it out to my friend. She looked at it blankly.

"A fly, so what?"

"I guess those plastic bags filled with water aren't doing any good," I replied smartly.

At this she shook her fork at me sternly and said with a completely serious face, "without those plastic bags, there would be a lot more."

Sigh...so much for the scientific method.

Still, the whole scenario got me thinking about superstitions and how they are sometimes difficult to share across the cultural boarder. If there's one thing I've learned it's that you shouldn't dismiss what sounds like a silly idea out of hand or you might get burned.

I remember one time, for example, that my host mother started yelling at me for walking across her tile floor without shoes on.

"You're going to get a cold."

"What?"

"You can't walk across a tile floor without getting a cold! Everybody knows that."

The idea sounded perfectly silly to me so I started teasing.

"Cough...cough...cough...I feel so sick." I put the back of my hand to my brow before continuing, "Oh why oh why did I walk around barefoot!"

My host mother wasn't amused.

"You'll see," she said grumpily.

Sure enough, the next day I was struck down by that horrible Peruvian gripe that we're all undoubtedly familiar with. I don't know if it was because I was walking around barefoot or not, but I can tell you this, I go everywhere in my sandals now.

Speaking of gripe, I'm sure you've heard that it can be cured by wearing a lemon on a string around your neck. Apparently after a few days the lemon goes brown as it absorbs all the bad energy that enters your body. When I heard this I perked up.

"Has anyone ever done an experiment to compare how brown a lemon gets when tied to a sick person versus how brown it gets just by sitting out over a comparable length of time?"

I didn't even get a "no" in response to this, just blank stares conveying utter shock (and embarrassment on my behalf) that I would suggest something so stupid. Of course the lemon of the sick person gets darker. It's soaking up all the bad energy. Sheesh!

There's another superstition that I like because it involves underwear. Apparently you can change your fortune depending on the color underwear you wear. Yellow means luck, green means money, and red will bring you love. I guess some people even look for underwear with all three colors just to maximize their chances.

Of course everyone knows it's bad luck to walk under a ladder, or to have a black cat cross your path. But did you know that if you fill up your suitcase with clothing and then run around the block, you'll be granted a trip to the destination of your choice in the upcoming year? Also if you eat a grape or a raisin in conjunction with the tolling of the hours on new year's day, you'll be granted a wish for every one. Or something like that, I keep getting conflicting information on the exact procedure there (that's probably why it has never worked for me).

There was a time when I was laughing with a German friend of mine about this very same topic. Now, as you well know, Germans are always very educated, no-nonsense people. We were laughing pretty hard because of the underwear thing when I decided to throw another superstition out there.

"And," I said, barely catching my breath through the hilarity, "if you get a sore throat you shouldn't drink anything cold because that's bad for you."

At this, my German friend sobered right up.

"No, that one's true, when you get a sore throat you should only drink hot things."

"We always drank milkshakes back in Wisconsin."

"That's crazy."

Well, that may be true, but I, for one, am never going to get used to drinking warm beer, no matter how good it is for me.

Still, different countries, different customs, they're all a blast. And it's always true that it's a pretty good ice-breaker to have a legitimate excuse to ask someone what color underwear they're wearing.