On Europeans, Language, and Feelings of Inadequacy

     “Das ist sehr interessant!”

We hadn’t even had lunch yet and I’d already heard my professor speaking 3 languages that morning. Berry Kralj, lawyer at the Council of Europe and my European Policy Seminar professor, was taking our class on a three day tour of the EU institutions in Luxembourg and Brussels.

  We were at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, and he was speaking German to a British lawyer who had moments ago been explaining to us in English the finer points of how the court functions, and why the rest of the EU hates Greece right now. Professor Kralj had started off the morning conferring in French with Pierre, our bus driver (that’s right, Pierre and the purple papillon bus were back!), given us a brief introduction to the Court of Justice and our schedule there in English, talked to the security officers in French, and was now chatting with an Englishman in German.

     What I was only just realizing, was that Berry Kralj wasn’t some kind of superhuman anomaly of incredibly impressive language knowledge. He was just European. 

Professor Kralj and our class, outside the European Commission in Brussels. Photo courtesy of Arielle Ashley.

  It was an educational trip, and I learned a lot about European government, but what really stuck with me was what I learned about the role of language in Europe. A huge percentage of the European Union staff is dedicated exclusively to language translation. In the Court of Justice, 1/3 of the staff work in some form of translation, including a large team of lawyer linguists whose sole job it is to transform verbose legalize from one language to another as accurately as possible. 

  Everyone who works at the EU is required to know French, as it is the official language used, but they pretty much all also know English, and most people know at least one other language too. It’s not uncommon for people to know 5 or 6 languages. According to our guide at the Court of Justice, there are a few staff members there who speak 12 or 13 languages--and that’s barely even half the languages spoken in the EU. The EU recognizes 23 official languages, and all documents must be translated into each language for the sake of transparency. The sheer amount of resources that much translation requires is astounding.

  But it’s not just people who work at the EU; it seems like pretty much everyone I’ve met lately can speak at least 2, if not 3 languages very well. Even a little eight-year-old girl I helped learn to do a back handspring. Her mother is French and her father German and spoke both languages fluently, but she was apologizing to me for not being able to speak English. Standing there, communicating with her in my rough French, somehow, it seemed I should be the one apologizing.

     Multilingualism is such an ingrained way of life here that people hardly even think about it. But I am constantly reminded of it. Being here in Europe, I want to reach fluency in French and Spanish now more than ever. But it’s no longer just the idea that knowing several languages would be cool or would make me special in some way. Now it feels like almost an obligation. What gives me the right to expect everyone to learn my language just because I was born in an English speaking country? I believe the more effort you put into communicating, the more you get out of it. Being around Europeans, who have so much practice at it and handle multilingual situations with total fluidity is at once both inspiring and intimidating.

     It’s hard not to feel inadequate when someone who speaks upwards of 5 languages tells you they know “a little Spanish,” then starts speaking and you realize their Spanish skills are better than yours. But, despite the intimidation, as weird as this may seem, interactions like these have only made me more determined to become fluent in another language. Or two. Or maybe five. We’ll see. If I stick to it, I might get there one day. Till then, adios, au revoir, auf wiedersehen, arrivederci, sayonara, and see ya later.

Things I've Learned While Traveling Through Europe pt 2

This is the second installment in this series of rules based on my experiences and adventures in Europe, based on my travels to Stuttgart, Germany, the class study tour I went on to Luxembourg and Belgium, and my 10 day spring break trip to Barcelona, Madrid, Venice, Vienna, and Rome. I'm very behind on blog posts right now, but expect blogs about my adventures in those places soon!


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14. Go to the local market every place you visit if you can. It’s a great way to get a glimpse at the local culture, and stock up on fruit.

15. Don’t underestimate the utility of a Razor scooter as a mode of transportation. It’s the most popular mode of transit for commuting to work among the performers in the Palazzo Circus Show in Stuttgart, Germany. And if they use it, then clearly it must be a good idea.


16. When given a choice, get the Belgian beer. They’re only about a zillion times better than American beer. But careful, they’re also more than twice as strong.

17. Sometimes it can be really fun to just wander through the streets of a city at night with your friends for several hours, taking silly pictures with all the statues you find, instead of going to a bar.


18. Chocolate. Get some. Especially in Belgium. Gourmet chocolates are a lot cheaper there. And possibly even tastier. And often they give you free samples.

19. Should you find a mysterious automatic shoe-shining machine in your hotel, use it--as often as possible until you leave. But don’t make your friends late for dinner by deciding it’s imperative you shine your shoes before going out. 

20. Bring a travel-sized towel and a combination lock with you on your journey. They will come in very handy at hostels, and the less space they take up, the better. You’ll need that room for other things.

21. Know the exact dimensions of your bag, so you can know for sure if the stingy airlines will make you check your bags and pay a major extra baggage fee. 

22. Don’t plan every last detail of your trip in advance, and don’t always consult the map. It’s good to get a little lost and have some unexpected adventures. They make great stories.

23. Don’t always go to bed when you planned to; let your friends convince you to stay out just a little longer, or you know, another 3 or 4 hours.

24. Go on free walking tours. It’s a great way to see a city, especially if you have an awesome guide, and cool way to make new friends.

25. Never leave your stuff out of sight. Even on a deserted beach at 3 in the morning.

26. Don’t wear flip flops to the club.

27. Stay in larger hostel rooms and make friends with your roommates. Don’t be shy about talking to them!

28. Hang out in the hostel lounge, make new friends, and take advantage of internet access.

29. No matter what kind of diet your on, always make exceptions for regional specialties.

30. Check a guidebook before you go to a new city, just so you don’t feel completely lost. It gives you a good idea of where to start, and usually some excellent restaurant recommendations, cutting out the difficult task of finding good cheap food  on an empty stomach.

31. Take overnight trains. They’re a great mode of transportation, you can actually get some sleep, and if you’re lucky you might share a car with 4 japanese med school grads and get a free back massage out of it.

32. Try to spend at least 3 nights in every city you go to. Otherwise things just feel kinda rushed. There are some exceptions to this rule of course.

33. Don’t spend more than one night in Venice. Unless you’re rich, above the age of 50, and into expensive Italian shopping, there’s not much to do once you’ve walked around the small city once.

34. Talk to the people who work at your hostel. Ask them for recommendations where to go, what to eat, and about their life stories. They’re almost always super interesting people.

35. Make friends with the Venetian gondoliers. 

36. Never get a meal on the main tourist strip of a city unless you’re desperate.

37. Always be prepared for a water gun fight. Even (or especially) in bars.

38. Consider changing your plans at the last minute. But make sure to double check prices before you do.

39. Ask any new friends you make what they do for a living. The answers may surprise you. Within 48 hours you could meet people as different (and random) as a golf course lawn manager, english teacher, and funeral home director.

40. Always bring a pair of at least somewhat nice shoes.

41. Don’t be surprised to hear random languages when you travel. Like Hebrew from a cheese vendor in Vienna.

photo courtesy of Yehuda Mivasaur

42. Expect to encounter a lot of ham.

43. When on the go a lot, grab a banana for breakfast.

44. Even if you speak the local language, don’t expect to understand the dialect.

45.Take advantage of free breakfast. Even if you simply get up, eat, and then go back to bed right afterwards.


46. Be a traveler, not a tourist.

47. If you see an accordionist, know that it’s a good sign and something must be going right.

Want Culture? Get Groceries

When I arrive in a new city, the first place I want to go is the grocery store. Okay, maybe it’s not the first place, but it’s always one of my favorite places to go. And it’s not because I need groceries all the time; I just love going to the market. 

Markets tell you so much about a place. I love to check out the local market places whenever I visit somewhere new, because unlike all the standard tourist activities you might do in a given city, markets really give you a feel for the local culture and daily life of a place. Grocery stores and market places are different everywhere. Food is such a personal thing; you can learn a lot about somewhere based on what its grocery stores stock and what kind of people shop at the stores.

Local market places and farmers markets are even better. Big open markets with a variety of stalls are my favorite (for Americans, think Pikes Place in Seattle, the Ferry Building in San Francisco, Reading Terminal Market in Phili, and Eastern Market in DC). There you can get a feel for what is truly local and often also what the immigrant community is like, based on the various specialties on display.

I’ve always loved wandering around markets, but it wasn’t until I went to Stuttgart, Germany last weekend that I realized just how much I enjoy doing that to get to know a city. In one day, I went to three markets. I didn’t really set out to do a market tour of Stuttgart, but it just kind of happened. And I must say, I had a wonderful day and learned a lot about Germany.

I arrived Thursday night to visit my friend Kari, who was living in Stuttgart for a few months. The first thing we did Friday morning was walk to the small neighborhood grocery store a few blocks her apartment to get some food for breakfast. It was a teeny little market, and several things struck me immediately as quite different from both the US and France. There was not a lot of processed or prepared foods, but there were many fresh vegetables, a lot of dried fruit, and an impressive variety of yogurts. And all the bread there was some type of whole multigrain bread. I personally couldn’t resist a little package of different breads marketed as “German bread for lovers.”  

The package of Bread I bought that Kari and I dubbed "German Bread for Lovers"

A few hours later we went to the larger grocery store in town because Kari needed to restock her fridge and I needed to get some stuff for lunch on the way home the next day. The German supermarket was quite similar to the French supermarkets I’ve been to, except with more foods I like. See, Germans have a love affair with yogurt. And I also happen to have a strong love of yogurt. I like my little Stoneyfield Fruit on the Bottom yogurt cups and my thick greek yogurts, and even the occasional Icelandic yogurt/cheese thing that I forget the name of (Kiir, maybe? Something like that...). But Germans take it to a whole new level. 

In the German yogurt aisle (which takes up approximately twice the space of the American one) there are three main types of yogurt: quark, yoghurt, and kefir. First you have your quark, which is the thickest and richest of the yogurts and often eaten for dessert. Then there is regular yoghurt, (which is just the German spelling for yogurt), and that tends to be about average yogurt consistency. The final type is kefir, which is a much liquidier yogurt. They have a lot more plain yogurt than in the states and some of it comes in glass jars! And after trying it, I can now say that for whatever reason, yogurt tastes way better out of a jar. 

And then, to go with your yogurt, there is an entire aisle of muesli cereals. I love granola and muesli, so to me it was like the holy grail of cereal aisles. I had never seen so many varieties of muesli in one place before.

After that, I went to the bread aisle and almost died of whole-grain-happiness. But I’ll spare you the details on that one. Suffice it to say, despite the unhealthy rap German food gets, I found more funky hippy whole-foods goodness in Germany than France. German markets stock my kind of stuff.

I had not even been awake six hours yet when I found myself in my third German market of the day. Kari was showing me around Stuttgart, and one of our stops was the Stuttgart Markthall (Market Hall in English--really different right?). 

The Markthall in Stuttgart was my favorite place I visited there. And the place where I took the most pictures (almost all of food).  There were so many different kinds of food stalls. You had your standard farmers market stands: local produce stalls, local artisanal cheesemongers, local honey producers, etc. And then all the German butcher stands, each with it’s own collection of giant legs of smoked ham (at least I think that’s what they were) hanging overhead. And next to them, the German delis, with the most interesting and intense cream cheeses I had ever seen. 

Legs of ham (?) above the German butcher's stand

 Those egg-like things in the center are German cream cheeses. I don't know what makes the one on the right orange...

And then there were all the ethnic stands. I saw several India spice stands with a floor to ceiling selection of spices. And then Greek stands with homemade halvah and more fresh made eggplant dishes than you’d know what to do with, along with several other cultures scattered about.

Got spice?

One thing that caught my eye particularly though, were the dates. Several of the Middle Eastern dessert stands/pastry shops had display cases filled not with chocolate, but with stuffed dates. I had never seen such a display. These were gourmet dates, stuffed with everything from cheese to nuts and chocolate, I even saw some filled with candied orange peel!

It's hard to tell, but that is an entire display case full of dates.

It was there that I realized how great a cultural window markets can be. Food is such an important part of cultural identity, and everything from where people buy their food to what kinds of foods you see most provide clues to understanding the identity of a place. Even in the United States, food culture says a lot about where you are.

Kari made this point to me while we were strolling around. “One of first things I like to do when I get to a new place is go grocery shopping. Most people don’t really understand why though.” But I understand, and I agree with her. The market will be high on my to do list during the rest of my travels in Europe. 

You don’t go grocery shopping for the groceries; you go for the culture.

Gophers, Waffles, Groundhogs and Crepes

“La fête de gopher? Hunh?” That was the beginning of a big lesson in French culture I got this week, which started at dinner Tuesday when my host mother announced that today was the gopher holiday.

Or at least that’s what I thought she said. What she actually said was la fête de gaufre which means the waffle holiday. Which is, you know, only slightly less strange. So, while I was scratching my head, thinking gopher holiday, is that like groundhog day in the States? they were actually talking about waffles, not small burrowing mammals. Go figure.

Now, I googled the fête de gaufre and it appears that waffles are just a celebratory food, so I’m not really sure what we were celebrating, but I think they might have just decided to make waffles because the kids had a half day of school that day. As my host mother brought out the homemade waffles, pointing to them and saying gouffere, my confusion disappeared and was soon replaced by the pleasant feeling of a stomach full of waffle (and I mean full, they kept telling me to eat more, and when I protested saying “oh, pssh, it’s only air!”).

I tried to explain to them why I had been so confused. But explaining what a gopher is is really hard in another language. So instead I tried to explain that we have a holiday with gophers in the US (at that point the idea of trying to explain two different burrowing creatures whose names both start with G in French seemed impossible, so for my purposes groundhog day became gopher day). Apparently, that tradition must have come from Europe because my host family actually knew what I was talking about(?!). They were nodding along, especially when I mentioned the 2nd of February and predicting the length of winter, while talking about this “petit gopher” that lived in a “tunnel,” which was about as detailed as my description got.

 

After dinner, I went up to my room to do my reading for French class. It was a short essay explaining a French holiday called la Chandeleur which, as I read, I discovered happened to be on February the 2nd and originally served the purpose of predicting how much longer winter would last. There were no gophers involved though. Or groundhogs. Or even waffles. There were, however, (and I find this so very French) lots of crepes.

That’s right. In France, February 2nd is the crepe holiday. And yes, they actually have a crepe holiday. Originally the day had some sort of religious significance, now it’s mostly just an excuse to make and eat a ton of crepes. And most people own one of these mini-crepe party griddles (not even kidding about the name, they all say that on the side) with six little 4 or 5 inch spaces for crepes on them.

Now, in case you were worried, this doesn’t mean that this is the only day of the year people eat crepes. People eat crepes here all the time. February 2nd is just a day where everyone eats LOTS of crepes and the whole family sits down together to have one giant meal of crepes. 

There are two kinds of crepes--savory and sweet. Savory crepes are made with buckwheat flour while sweet crepes are made with regular wheat flour. I learned this week that it’s actually ridiculously simple to make crepes, as long as you have a griddle. There are really just 3 ingredients: flour (depending on the type of crepe you make, either buckwheat or wheat), eggs, and milk. Though I’m sure adding a pinch of salt wouldn’t hurt. All you do is mix them together and then ladle the batter onto the crepe pan and cook for a minute or two, flipping it over once it starts to brown. And then you have to make sure to eat it while it’s still hot!

On Wednesday we had a little crepe party of our own in French class (shhhh don’t tell, it was February 1st). Our professor taught us how to make the batter and cook them on a mini-crepe party, and brought in the standard toppings for us to use on our crepes. Savory crepes are usually filled with shredded gruyere cheese and ham (they eat a lot of ham in Alsace), while sweet crepes have a lot more options, though the favorites tend to be nutella or jam. Or nutella and jam. Or nutella and jam and then more nutella on top for good measure. Nutella is kind of a big deal here. Especially among the Americans.

After eating far more mini-crepes than ever necessary in one sitting, setting what I’m pretty sure was a personal record for most nutella consumed in a day, and then proceeding to go to gymnastics class (during which I surprisingly did not throw up, despite the fact my instructor decided that it was a good day to work on backflips), I came home Wednesday night to my host mom telling me that tomorrow was la Chandeleur and we would be having a special family crepe dinner. 

Let me just say right now that I think I’ve eaten more crepes in the last 48 hours than in the rest of my life combined. (Though if you’re only counting full sized crepes instead of mini-crepes that might not be true.) That being said, I’m surprisingly not sick of them yet, and dinner tonight was actually my favorite meal I’ve had so far in France.

Here’s why:

Tonight was the first time I ate with my entire host family. Most nights dinner is just me and my host parents. Everyone who lives in the house was at dinner tonight though. There are my host parents, who are actually the family grandparents, their son Philippe and his wife, their twelve year old daughter, and their two year old son. Plus me that’s 7 people at the dinner table.

Imagine, if you will, a small dining room where we’re all seated around the crowded table, with the mini-crepe party in the center. In the corner of the room, grandma stands over a larger, more traditional sized crepe pan on a tv table, with a stack of crepes she made earlier at her side, ready to be reheated, topped and served. Nicola, the two year old, somehow ended up in the seat closest to this pan, which is just at eye-level height for him (he’s pretty tall for two). He’s already burned his hand by reaching for it once this afternoon, but he keeps getting up from his chair and wandering back over there, wanting to touch the very hot crepe pan, despite (actually, maybe because of) the numerous calls by the adults of “pas touche!”

Meanwhile, Philippe is taking turns with his daughter ladling crepe batter on the 6 disks of the mini-crepe party, at the same time participating in parts of several loud conversations, adding the toppings of gruyere and ham to the crepes that are ready to melt the cheese, and attempting not to let anything burn. Grandma keeps coming over to the table periodically with another finished large crepe, enthusiastically unloading it onto an empty plate she sees. There is also a bottle of hard cider on the table from which Philippe somewhat overzealously refills my glass whenever he notices it getting low, which despite all the other tasks he’s doing, is surprisingly often. 

Between the noise Nicola was making (two-year-olds are very good at the whole being loud thing), a new crepe being thrust onto my plate pretty much the second I finished the last one, the madness of 7 different crepes being cooked at the same time, the constant refills of cider, and the effort to comprehend and/or participate in one of the conversations happening at any given time, I found myself thrust into a moment of beautiful chaos. The dinner was just so familiar in so many ways. Despite the fact that I could only understand about 50% of what was being said, if that, and that I was in a completely different culture than my own, in so many ways it felt like I could have been at a family celebration anywhere.

It was exactly the kind of large, loud, loving, chaotic family meal you expect on a holiday. Except this was a normal Thursday, and everyone had work and school and all their normal activities the next day. It wasn’t like Christmas or Easter where everything closes down, but they were still gathering together to celebrate this as a special occasion. And what was so great about it was that even with all the madness going on, I felt 100% included. Everyone was extremely welcoming and inviting towards me the whole time. I had conversations with members of the family I hadn’t previously had the chance to really talk to before, I got to help flip the crepes a few times, and was more than copiously fed.

After I’d eaten about as many ham and gruyere crepes as I could manage, and finally refused to have any more, I was told, “Oh, but we haven’t even started on the sweet crepes yet.” And yes, I did manage to find enough room in my stomach for one big nutella crepe. After which Philippe’s wife told me that, yes, they like to eat in Alsace, and they eat well (also meaning a lot) here. 

At the end of the meal, which naturally took over an hour and a half, the children were prepared for bed, after which their parents came back downstairs to join the grandparents and I for tea to finish up the meal. Everyone listened very patiently as I fumbled my way through several tenses of French grammar, trying to tell a story. Philippe and his wife then asked me if I would be interested in watching one of the American movies they had and offered me a couple of options.

Being handed a silly American movie to watch was the best thing I could have asked for right then. Our house doesn’t have wifi (though that may be fixed in the next week--we’ll see), which has been mostly just inconvenient, but also a major bummer because that means I can’t just watch a movie on my laptop because I can’t get on Netflix. I didn’t bring any movies with me, and there are some nights when I would rather stay in and watch a movie than trek downtown to grab a drink, especially nights like tonight when it is bitterly cold outside. And, not gonna lie, American movies are definitely somewhat of a panacea to homesickness for me. Mindless American entertainment is honestly (and somewhat sadly) one of the things I’ve been missing the most here.

So, to be told at the end of a lovely family meal that they have some American movies I could watch if I’d like, when that was all I really wanted to do with my night but was the last thing I was expecting to be able to do, on an particularly cold and windy Thursday night at the end of a long week, was pretty much the perfect ending to a wonderful evening. 

And I enjoyed my mindless movie entertainment very much.

Groundhog day in France is way better than Groundhog Day in the States. Bill Murray might have enjoyed himself more if the movie Groundhog Day had taken place in France.

In conclusion: Crepes make life better. So eat more crepes.

Adjustments

I've been in Europe for 2 1/2 weeks now, but the culture shock only really started this week, once I began living here, as opposed to traveling around. It's amazing the difference between being a traveler and being a foreigner trying to reestablish yourself in a new city. Particularly a city where most people don't speak your language. Strasbourg is different from Paris that way--while most people did grow up having learned some amount of English, they're not all guaranteed to speak English, or speak it well. It really is a French city, and people expect you to speak French.

For me, aside from the whole language barrier thing, the biggest issues with culture shock here have actually some of the smallest. One problem I've been having is smiling. Apparently, in France, you don't smile at strangers. Ever. It's not like in America how it's polite to smile and then look away if you make eye contact with a stranger. If you smile at someone it means you know them, or if you don't know them, it means you think they're cute. But smiling at people is pretty instinctive for me, and not something I can just turn off. I catch myself smiling at strangers all the time, then realizing that I probably just totally confused them. A friend of mine was actually followed around by a guy she accidentally smiled at on the tram after she got off. (She was fine, don't worry.) But hey, who knew? Smiling in France is a potentially dangerous act.

And then there's the bread. I have never eaten this much bread in my life. A traditional French breakfast? Coffee and a small baguette with butter or jam. Lunch? Your standard cheap lunch from a cafe is a sandwich, but not your typical American sandwich. Picture about a foot and a half of baguette, sliced open and filled with sandwich ingredients. And then dinner is often accompanied with guess what? More bread. And if you haven't had enough bread, there's usually a pastry somewhere in there to accompany a meal.

Now, don't get me wrong. It's all really good bread and really fresh and totally delicious. But it's almost all white bread. And if you know me, you know what a natural foods nut I am. I am just dying for some excellent whole grain breads. And I've seen them in some bakery windows, and they look great! But most things come on or with white bread. I think there is actually more whole grain breads around here than most parts of France because we are so close to Germany, which is basically the land of multigrain breads. They have more types of multigrain bread than I can count there. I just need to figure out how to get more of those. At this point, I think I would have to buy a giant loaf of whole grain bread if I want to eat some.

As I said, the trials and tribulations of adapting to living in France: a lack of smiling and an overabundance of delicious white bread.

Fist world problems? Maybe.

:)

French Alliteration: Pierre and the Purple Papillon Bus

There are few things as relaxing as collapsing onto your own bed after a 10 day odyssey through 4 cities in 3 countries with an average of 6 miles walked daily, 2 to 3 lectures a day, and a total of more than 20 hours spent riding in a pastel purple charter bus. Right now all I can think about is my bed. Well, mostly the fact that it is my bed.

That’s right, at long last, I have finally arrived in Strasbourg, and am sitting in what will, for all intensive purposes, be my room for the next 4 months. And it’s not bad. I moved in with my host family just a few hours ago, and while I’ve only seen a tiny fraction of the city, I think I’m gonna like it here. But more on all that in a later post (I promise it will come in a few days, just as soon as I'm actually settled in!). 

Now let’s get back to something worthy of discussion right now: Pierre and the Purple Papillon Bus. Title of a bilingual French and English children’s book or my main mode of transport for the last 10 days?

Yup, it’s the latter (though I do seriously think it would make an excellent children’s book). We rode around in a pastel purple bus covered in butterflies (papillon means butterfly in French) driven by a 300 pound French man named Pierre who managed to maneuver the bus around tight corners and into alleys where I never dreamed busses could go.

Did I find irony and amusement in this? You betcha. Every time I got on. 

Now you may wonder: is that really so strange? Charter busses often have funny designs on them, and maybe there are a lot of oddly colored busses in Western Europe. Well, after 10 days of travel across many roads and tourist hotspots, I can safely tell you our bus stood out like a sore thumb. That did make it quite easy to find though, so that’s a plus. However, there was always that slight unavoidable cringe you felt when standing on a crowded Parisian street and the purple papillon bus drove up. We weren’t just that group of obviously American college kids, we were that group of obviously American college kids getting on the gaudiest tourist bus in Paris. It was at once both a point of pride and shame. But I did grow to have a certain fondness for that purple papillon bus. But mostly for Pierre. Which is why it seems fitting that my post to close out the traveling seminar part of my study abroad experience should be an ode to Pierre.

I have this theory that Pierre moonlights as a getaway car driver for heists across Europe. He’s far too good at his job to be just a bus driver. No one has that much dexterity behind the wheel by accident. And the way he’s always just sitting there calmly, amused by us Americans, but never saying anything--it’s not actually the language barrier between him not knowing any English and us not being particularly good at French like he wants us to assume, Pierre is actually fluent in 10 languages and 14 distinct regional dialects found across Europe. Oh, and he has a photographic memory so keeps perfect mental map of all the major cities of Europe, including back alleys and a mental record of what the maximum size vehicle is that can fit down each street. 

I swear, there’s definitely more to Pierre and the Purple Papillon Bus than meets the eye. I can’t say I will miss the hours spent riding around in that bus, but I do say goodbye to Pierre and the bus with a certain degree of affection.

Now that I've written it out, I think maybe this story would make a better action movie than children’s book. Pierre would be a pretty stellar action hero. Either way, neither story is being written tonight. At long last my journey of more miles than I have the mental capacity to attempt to calculate right now is over, and the next adventure starts in the morning.

Right now?

Bedtime.

Things I’ve Learned While Traveling Through Europe

This is the first post in a series highlighting what I've learned through experience and observation while in Europe this semester. Some things are practical, many are just plain silly, and all are based on actual events, though not all of them happened directly to me.

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Rule #1:

Street food is good, particularly crepes in France, waffles and oliebollen (dutch donuts) in Holland, and fries anywhere.

Rule #2:

Don’t stand in bike lanes in Amsterdam. Ever. And if someone shouts “bike!” you dive out of the way.

They will run you over. And you are severely outnumbered by them.

Rule #3:

Be open to trying different foods, because the wurst can often be the best. At least in Aachen, where the Hanswurst restaurant proved to be super cool and fun, thanks to an awesome waiter. 

It was a self service restaurant, and the waiter liked us so much he actually served us at the table :)

Rule #4:

Watch out for homicidal pigeons. They aim to take out bicyclists.

Rule #5:

The red light district in Amsterdam is million times less sketchy before 10pm. If you want to check it out, definitely go before then. And don’t get lost there. Bad idea.

Rule #6:

Don’t let drunk people wander by the water. The paths go right up to the water, and no one wants to dive in and rescue you from the Seine.

Rule #7:

Eat a hearty breakfast. Hotels make good breakfasts.

Rule #8:

Try the local specialties of food and beverages.

Rule #9:

Have a map of the city you’re in with your hotel circled on it with you. It will come in handy.

Rule #10:

Learn at least the minimal necessary phrases to get by in whatever country you’re in. Unless you’re in Holland--they pretty much all speak fluent English in addition to Dutch. Things like “Do you speak english?”, “I don’t speak ______”, “I would like ______”, “How much?”, "Where is the _______?", “Thank you”, “Toilet”, “Wine”, and “Beer” should get you by ok.

Rule #11:

Don’t be surprised if you see super heroes roaming Europe. Spider Man and Super Man sometimes walk around Amsterdam and “Batman Live” is playing in Cologne. 

Rule #12:

Make friends with your waiters and especially your bartenders. They tend to be cool people and tell you fun, interesting stories and good places to go.

Rule #13:

Listen to prophetic German grandfathers. If one starts following you and your friends through the street at an ambling pace, and then comes up to you in front of a more than 1,000 year old cathedral and strikes up a conversation, telling one of your friends that he will remember where she is from and she will be famous 1,000 years from now, and then walks away, you should believe him. And make sure to snap a picture before he disappears.