After an long day of moving furniture and boxes into their new house in Salt Lake City, Peter and Daphne Maramaldi, relocating from New York City, went back to eat dinner at their downtown hotel.
At the end of the meal the waiter inquired if they would like dessert. Peter asked for cannoli, a standard Italian pastry.
Not only did the restaurant not have any cannoli, the waiter didn't even know what it was.
"Peter turned to me and said, 'Where are we?' " Daphne said.
Shortly after moving to Utah, John Smith (a pseudonym), pulled into a gas station. It was raining. As he paid the attendant, Smith mentioned that the wet driving was a little tricky.
"Yeah," the attendant said in a heavy drawl. "Them roads out there are slicker than snot."
"Wow," Smith thought. "Where's Jethro?"
Moving from Rhode Island to Utah, Jill Clark got a job at a fitness/physical therapy center. One day at work someone mentioned that he had gone to a party at the local stakehouse.
"Hey, cool," Clark said. "So, what did you order to eat?"
"We're not talking prime rib here, Jill," her boss said.
Anyone who moves has to adjust to a new neighborhood and new friends. But people who move to Utah have to adjust to the state's unique quirks, too. What out-of-stater, for instance, would guess that "Tooele" is pronounced "Too-ill-a," or that here a "ward" isn't a hospital wing? The altitude, the dryness, the street coordinate system, the peculiarities of language and, especially, the cultural influence of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints combine to make any move to Utah a study in cultural acclimation.
"On many levels this is a cross-cultural experience," said Daphne Maramaldi. She would know — in addition to recently moving here, Maramaldi is an expert in international education and cross-cultural communication.
It's also a cross-environmental experience. Shortly after moving here in 2001, Maramaldi wanted to bake some koulourakia (raised, twisted cookies originating in Greece). Husband Peter loves them. But the cookies came out flat as a pancake.
Hmm, she thought — must have done something wrong. She tried again the next night, this time baking a double batch. Flat again.
"I'm like, screaming," she said. "I could not figure out what was wrong."
The problem, of course, was the high altitude. Maramaldi adjusted the recipe, husband Peter got his koulourakia, and everything ended well.
Things initially didn't go so well for David Warren, who moved to Utah to attend Brigham Young University after living in Connecticut and France.
"I was a Mormon kid who didn't grow up in Utah, so I had a nostalgia for things unknown," he said. "I could finally learn about this place called Utah that everybody talked about and expected me to know about but that I knew nothing about."
Warren's idealism had immediate consequences. Before moving to Provo, Warren drove to St. George for a summer job. Halfway there he saw a police car on the side of the road and gave the officer a friendly wave.
Big mistake.
The policeman jumped in his car, peeled out in a cloud of dust, put the flashing lights on and before Warren knew it he was spread-eagled against the car, wondering what in the world he had done. Turns out that people don't wave to police unless it's with a single finger. Warren had a hard time persuading the officer that he was just saying hello.
"I had a little adjustment that first day," he said.
Much of adjusting to Utah, in fact, has to do with cars. Consider Anne Reid, who moved from Aurora, Colo., to Riverton.
"Traffic is terrible here," she said. "Nobody goes the speed limit. On Bangerter (Highway), those cars cruising down there must be going 75 or 80 and they get mad at you if you're going the speed limit."
Easterners who move here, on the other hand, talk about how calmly people drive.
New Utahns generally like the state's coordinate address system, but it takes some getting used to. Once, trying to get to Midvale, Clark wound up in Ogden. Another time she found herself at the airport.
"I know this is going to sound dumb," she told a skycap, "but could you tell me how to get home?"
Utah is dry. Aridity is great for keeping your clothes from sticking to you during the summer, but it does have disadvantages for newcomers. Heather Conner, for example, who grew up in the East and moved here to teach piano at the University of Utah, still can't wear her contact lenses.
"The dryness here has been a huge adjustment," she said.
But dryness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Sandra Keene moved to downtown Salt Lake City from Tucson, Ariz.
"The moistness here is great," she said.
The 800-pound gorilla of Utah cultural adjustment is, of course, the LDS Church. Its influence is ubiquitous — the liquor laws, socializing, language, emphasis on families, history. You simply can't get away from it.
"Utah is pretty different," said Mike Okapal, a Bountiful resident who moved from a Chicago suburb. "The LDS Church makes it different. People will talk about their church organizations and all that's going on — it's kind of their life. It just comes up as part of normal conversation."
You can chalk up much of Utah's appeal to the influence of the church — several companies have moved here in large part because of the family-oriented atmosphere. Newcomers usually find Utahns to be friendly. ("People talk to strangers here," Maramaldi said. "I'll be waiting in line at the grocery store and people will talk to me.") But, on the other hand, where do you go to socialize if you're not Mormon and not young enough and single enough to be into the nightclub scene?
"It's a little hard to meet people in the community since so many social events revolve around the church," Conner said.
Interestingly, even LDS newcomers struggle with the church's social aspects. Outside Utah, they were part of a close-knit community working together and supporting each other amid larger competing influences. But in Utah, that identification is heavily diluted.
"We moved into a huge ward," Reid said. "Just huge. There's not a lot of 'I want to get to know you.'" And as far as the much-maligned liquor laws go, let's get this settled once and for all: Yes, newcomers say, the laws take some getting used to, but after that they're not that big of a deal.
"People think Utah is Egypt, but once they come here and experience it they absolutely fall in love with it," said Cathy Rawstorne, national recruiter for the state division of business and economic development. While new Utahns differ in their adjustment to Utah's culture, they almost immediately embrace the geography.
"I really missed the trees that we had in Connecticut, but I loved the mountains," said David Warren's wife, Adrienne. "And I couldn't believe how much sky I could see. I could see the different weather patterns developing. I loved that."
"The scenery out here is spectacular," Okapal said. "I will never move back to the Midwest. I'm a Westerner. I'm probably going to live in Utah the rest of my days. There are negatives," Okapal said, "but when you add all the pieces together, this is the place."
E-mail: aedwards@desnews.com