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Tag: Europe

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By jfbarszcz

My prompt this week asks me to talk about a custom from my country that I think the US should adopt. While not a "custom," per se, there is one big thing that the Czech Republic does better than the US: money. No, I don't mean the Czech Republic is richer than the United States, or that their spending habits are better, or that Czech monetary policy is better than America's. I mean that their actual money, their cash, is so much better than ours, for several reasons. ...continue reading "Dollars and Crowns"

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By rlubitz

So, uhm, newsflash: London has a pretty fine street treat here that I would like to see directly exported to the United States.

Back in American cities there’s the hotdog and the pretzel and that’s pretty much it. There’s a huge level of shame that comes from standing out in the sun and staring at a cart for ten minutes and then going up and saying “Hot dog, please….and these chips…..how much is a soda? Okay. Yeah. Thanks.” It really shouldn’t be shameful at all, we all know it’s unhealthy but sometimes a honey needs some chips and a soda.

Here, however, there’s NO SHAME in street eating. There’s a bit of fun in it, really. ...continue reading "Reasons to Live: Sausage Rolls"

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By squeakyrobot

My program managers made it clear from the beginning: "We're here for you, but you're on your own." I think that this a truth that some students may have trouble coming to terms with, that they're expected to suddenly rise to the occasion and keep themselves alive and well as a direct result of their own efforts and abilities (in a place with language barriers and strange customs, no less). In most cases, luckily enough, I think the experience of being a college student does most of the work for us, so it's a matter of tweaking the model and applying that to someplace foreign and undiscovered. ...continue reading "How to Adapt in St. Petersburg (and Otherwise)"

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By oncptime

Italy, the land of bistecca, and cozze, gelato and prosciutto has—miraculously—turned me into a vegetarian. Whenever my dietary restrictions come up in conversation I have a soft chuckle to myself before regaling my listeners with the harrowing tale of how I singlehandedly liberated an entire farm’s worth of innocent woodland creatures from a sadistic, blood-worshiping cult/sleeper-cell not two blocks from my home. The sick bastards planned on eating those doe-eyed does. Monsters.

Thing is though, I’m the farthest thing from a vegetarian. Unless barking or meowing, animals aren’t people, they’re food. The sadistic cult gathering I crashed? It was a barbecue festival. They wanted €30 to get in. Monsters.

I get away with telling stories like this primarily because these days I’m running on little more than bread, water, and the occasional bowl of Budget brand corn-flecks. I might splurge on some broccoli every now and then or maybe even—wait for it—a bag of potatoes when they go on sale for a single Euro (like today!), but even that is an extravagance that I must be wary of.

If you haven’t put two and two together yet, let me make my point clear: I’m ridiculously, hopelessly, unequivocally broker than broke. And somehow, I’m making it work.

...continue reading "We love our bread, we love our butter, but most of all…we can’t afford meat."

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By parisjetattends

I touch down onto the tarmac wearing a scarf, hooded winter coat, and underneath it all a thick woven sweater. Now I'm hot. I think about all of the cold weather clothes that I packed with me and know I'm an idiot. I'm in Tunisia for christ's sake. I breathe in and can taste Africa on my lips.

Tunis smells like dust and sunshine and salt, like the sea. The breezes that blow through the trees carry with them tendrils of cigarette smoke and something much sweeter, shisha. I can hear the clanking of tongs not so far off even though the chairs I'm sitting in are much more comfortable than the Cairo ahua-style plastic seats that have become so familiar to me. Interlaced in this melee is also a soft murmur that flutters through everything. The language is complex at first, being a rapid-fire hybrid of Arabic and French, the two languages that I know separately, but never together. Never together. The words become easier to tear apart as time goes on, and the part of my brain that has worked so hard to compartmentalize languages by Wednesday has dissolved, like a rubber band released. I can now type in English what the members of these meetings are saying in French and sometimes Arabic at a nearly fluid rate and I feel good and proud and as if I have actually earned my living wage. ...continue reading "Ana bahib Tunis barsha barsha"

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By squeakyrobot

MurmanskMy program is one of only a couple study abroad programs that allow its student a week of independent travel. Students can do anything in this time, so long as they’re back in class the following Monday morning, ready for the daily grind and such. After a program-mandated excursion to Kiev and then Moscow, a group of friends and I took a train to Murmansk, the Arctic Circle’s largest city.

Go to Russia, and you’ll immediately see that the thrills and freedoms of consumerism have hit hard. Go to Moscow, see the supercars zooming past, and it’ll be easy to forget that only twenty years ago, this was the center of a deadly chaos as the government was enduring a castling of hands and minds. Petersburg has a touch bit more Soviet-ness to it than Moscow, but not much more. So when I arrived to Murmansk, I was surprised. ...continue reading "A Trip to Murmansk"

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By rlubitz

This past week was Reading Week here in the UK and while British students read, I decided to see six different European cities in a week.

For those wondering, taking night buses is a very, very bad idea. Buses rock about and can stop abruptly and drivers can keep the lights on and blast the air conditioning on a six hour night bus to Paris and drop you off an hour early at 5:30 am. After this said journey, you look like a very unhappy newborn kitten. Your eyes can’t open and it is so, SO cold and you have no idea where you are and maybe you start crying. Night buses are a very, very bad idea. ...continue reading "People Are Amazing and I Want to Marry an Italian Flight Attendant"

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By asthaa

I woke up early on November 7th, Wednesday morning, and immediately refreshed the web page of The New York Times that I had up on my laptop screen to find who would be the next president of my country. And then, because I am in Spain, I checked elpais.com, one of the country’s major newspapers. The headlines were basically the same at 7 am. In one of the hallways of La Autónoma, we GW Madrid students talked excitedly about the outcome before class. Who stayed up until 4 am? How was the U.S. embassy election-watch party? Who made it to the Democrats Abroad party? How did the students hoping to see Romney win feel? ...continue reading "“Who’s going to be our President?” and other concerns in Spain…"

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By oncptime

You can learn a lot about a culture of a place from its grocery stores; hints and clues litter the places. The fresh produce, the types of sales, the music blaring from the tinny overhead speakers—each of them tells you a little something more about the personality of that specific place on the planet.

Florence is host to a number of minimarkets, corner stores, and bodegas of varying size, but it also has its fair share of American-styled grocery...boutiques. They’re not quite Whole Foods but they’re certainly not Safeways; they’re somewhere in between. The Conad on Via Nazionale, is my favorite. Fresh baked bread, Spanish imported mussels, and Alaskan salmon all just a few steps away from my apartment.  Uncle Ben’s brand curry jockeys for shelf space with Patak’s and three brands of pita bread conveniently lie in wait just one shelf down. The store is an exercise in internationality, and strolling down its aisles reminds me of similar stores in D.C.

The Conad outshines a number of other grocery stores in the area for a number of reasons: selection, longer hours, a markedly friendlier staff—but honestly, I’m not here to talk to you about a grocery store. Not really. No, this is a story about how I learned how not to wait in line in Italy.

...continue reading "Aspetta, Prego, Avanti"

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By jfbarszcz

I imagine that most GW students would feel similarly when I say that right now, the foremost thing on my mind is Tuesday's presidential election. In the US, the presidential election is always a time of great excitement and dominates the national attention. Here in Prague, as one may expect, the media coverage is not quite so overwhelming, but it's still a very big topic (and of course, I continue to read American news outlets online, where the election remains the top story). Seeing that we exert enormous amounts of global influence in just about every sphere, I don't find this surprising in the least; US policy decisions have effects on the entire globe. Still, it's definitely pretty weird to go to a foreign country and have seemingly everyone there know an impressive amount about my country's politics, when I know so little about theirs, and I'm the one who's in their country! Then again, I guess the same could be said about people here (especially young people) knowing English, American movies, music, etc... in other words, I should be used to this kind of stuff by now. ...continue reading "Electoral Madness"

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