It's St. David's Day! Eat My Leek!

I want to wish everyone safe travels and issue a reminder to hold on to your possessions on busy trains, in hostels, in market places, etc. A lost or stolen passport is a proper pain. Make sure also that you carry the appropriate papers to get back ‘home’ to London. Some immigration officers can be difficult.

CELEBRATE TODAY not because spring break begins at 4.45pm [by the way, the next person who wishes me a ‘good’ break will be banned from my office for the rest of the term, which means no coffee talks!], but also because it is our first national day of the year. The UK is a land made up of four ‘home nations’, the dominant English, the haggis-eating Scots, the singing Welsh, and the green and orange Irish. Each has a patron saint and a ‘national’ day, but there is no unified national day, i.e., no British JULY 4th. David is Wales’ patron saint and March 1st is his day; next comes the famous ‘Patrick’ who was a Romanised Briton [possibly Welsh] on March 17th; the dragon slayer, St George England follows on Shakespeare’s birthday, April 23rd; and, ostracised at the other end of the year is Andrew of Scotland [Nov. 30th] who, condemned to death for his religious beliefs, deemed himself unworthy to be crucified on an upright cross as Jesus was and so he died on a ‘saltire’, a cross on its side [an ‘x’]. now Scotland’s national symbol.

Today is a special day for about 3 million Britons, the Welsh. It is St David’s day and down in the valleys, in the central mountains, along the Irish sea coastline and in the north-western castellar landscape, the welsh are celebrating. Men will wear the leek [the national vegetable] and kitchens will be busy turning out welsh cakes. Wales is unique in several ways: the dragon is its national symbol, Brains its most famous beer, it is the only country conquered by the Romans [who soon left] not subsequently taken over by a ‘barbarian’ tribe, it has NO PLACE IN THE UNION FLAG  [an amazing slap in the face], it is officially bilingual, it is the home of the Arthurian legends, it provided the country with the Tudor dynasty, it just won rugby’s triple crown, it is famous for male voice choirs and dissenting Protestantism [chapels] and, in some areas, the Welsh had to live under strict sabbatarian laws meaning that it was not the most fun place in the world to live.

Remember when you pick travel destinations, there is no place like home. VISIT WALES and try some Brains.

-Bill

Cross Cultural Education: Travel

Many of you are traveling for break this week!  The London Center has come up with some phrases that may help you in the countries you're visiting:

I'm staying in a hostel, but my friend booked it and can't remember what it's called.  Is there an internet cafe nearby?
Italian: Io rimango in un ostello, ma il mio amico prenotato e non ricordo come si chiama. C'è un internet cafè nelle vicinanze?

Oh no!  I think I left my passport on the train!  Where's the nearest US embassy?
Greek:  Ω, όχι! Νομίζω ότι άφησε το διαβατήριό μου στο τρένο! Πού είναι η κοντινότερη πρεσβεία των ΗΠΑ;

 I'd like to buy this bag, but 1,000 Moroccan dirham is too expensive!
Arabic:                          وأود أن شراء هذه الحقيبة، ولكن 1000 الدرهم المغربي مكلفة للغاية!

What's the local delicacy at this restaurant?  I've heard the squid is very good!
Spanish:  ¿Cuál es el plato típico de este restaurante?  He oído que el calamar es muy bueno!
(all translations are from Google Translate, so I'm not sure if they're any good)

 ***

We also have some culinary tips:

• Spain: try the paella, the chorizo and manchego
• Holland: hema rookworst, bitterballen, and patat met
• Italy: pasta (though it may indicate that you're a tourist), gelato, and thin crust pizza
• Greece: baklava, as many olives as you can carry and moussaka
• Ireland: mashed potatoes, roast potatoes and Taytos
• Germany: wurst, schwarzewald gateau and Berliners
• Switzerland: fondue, roesti and bretzeln

***

And some common sense:

• If you're in Venice and the directions to your hostel involve getting on the bus, your hostel isn't in Venice.
• Even if you sound silly trying the local language, they'll respect that at least you're trying.
• If it's your hen do, have it in Orkney at your own risk.
• Losing your passport may extend your break, but not in the good way.  It will also extend your wallet in ways you hadn't thought it able.
• The weather in London will probably be better than it has been previously this semester.
• For the post card and souvenir competitions: more pornographic/erotic doesn't always equal more tacky.
• Those crazy Europeans drive on the other side of the road.  Who does that?!?!

Bill’s First European Adventure: Hans, the 2 Susies and Martin Heidegger!

Like you, I was a study abroad student in my early 20s – just a few years ago now! Except, I guess that it wasn’t really a study abroad experience as I was full time in a British university and we didn’t have any “fall break”, but we did have a huge Easter break. We also had “winter break”, which lasted about 5 weeks between the beginning of December and the middle of January.

So, what to do in my first ‘break’ period when studying abroad? The answer came in the shape of two buddies on the university basketball team, Paul and Jeff. Paul had bought a second-hand Volkswagen beetle [named “Hans” – Paul was an American of German extraction and was training for the Lutheran priesthood] and he, Jeff [from Boston], Chris [an anthropology student from Berkeley who impressed me throughout the trip by reading Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit [Being and Time] in the back of the beetle, and I took off on a trip to Morocco.  Morocco was a pretty exotic destination way back then for four inexperienced North American travellers. We didn’t have credit cards, nor had ATMs been invented way back in the Neolithic 1960s. We carried our cash - francs, pesetas and sterling – with us. We kept to the back roads through France and Spain as the European motorway – first invented by Hitler in the 1930’s – had not spread far from the land of its birth. In France, we stayed in that great chain of French Hotels – the Hotels de la Gare – which are conveniently located adjacent to the railway station in every middle- sized French town. I thought at the time that, if I were a business student and not an Egyptologist [which I was, believe it or not], I would do a thesis on the business acumen of the “De la Gare” family. What foresight to have established a hotel in such proximity to the railway station in just about every French town! In Spain we stayed in pensiones: hostels hadn’t been invented yet.

We had a great time in Paris where we met two young women, both called Susie, from the University of South Carolina who were studying in Lyon. The wine flowed and a good time was had. We discovered that the French approach to plumbing – public urinals for the messieurs – and the all too familiar “hole in the ground” indoor toilets – was both more liberal and more primitive that was our custom. And none of us had ever seen a bidet before! The British at least – god bless them – had sit-down toilets; long may Mr Thomas Crapper, the inventor of the modern water closet, be remembered and praised for his invention. As I was from French Canada, I was the designated French speaker and interpreter. I remember my embarrassment and confusion in central France when I asked for “pain” in a “boulangerie” and the serving women didn’t understand me. In retrospect, it wasn’t the Quebecois accent.  Rather it was my cultural ignorance: just asking for “bread” in a bread shop didn’t work; one has to know the names of the different kinds of loaf on sale. So my 15 years of French were all to no avail because the French were far more sophisticated about bread than we lamentable, one-dimensional, sliced-bread eating North Americans. Later on, when the Volkswagen broke down in freezing weather in a snowstorm on the outskirts of Paris, I had to hitch a lift along the highway to get to a garage and ask for a replacement “distributor cap”. Except that I didn’t know the French term for “distributor cap”: it is not, for example, the “chapeau du distributeur” as it should have been; nor was it “le distributor cap” as the weekend is “le weekend”; instead it was, and probably still is, “le tete du delco”, a piece of French trivia that I have never forgotten because of the pain and anxiety it caused me at the time.
Spain was decidedly more foreign than France was, but nothing could have prepared us for Morocco. We visited Tangiers, Rabat and Fez. The first two were reasonably “modern” cities, but it
 was hard to know if we were in the 14th century or the 20th century in Fez. Fez was distinctly “untouristy” and made us aware of the enormous cultural gap that existed between Moroccans of the interior and North Americans.  I remember feeling uncomfortable in Fez: although we were humble students, we were westerners and incomparably better off than most of the people in Fez.

We spent more time in Spain on the return trip. On New Year’s eve in Valencia, I ran into a guy I played football with in Montreal. We had both graduated from college about 7 months previously. In France, we stopped in Lyon to meet the two “Susies”, the girls from South Carolina we had met in Paris on the way down.  Then “Hans” broke down: first the windshield wipers went, then the distributor cap. We were all glad to see the white cliffs of Dover. Although we had only been in England since September, it was now our “home”. I bought a copy of Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit. And, no, I haven’t finished it and wouldn’t know even where it is.

No doubt many of you will feel the same after returning from spring break. Have a great time and be careful out there. In my next blog I might just get around to telling you about my first ever spring break, also with the two Susies!

-Bill

The Many Forms of Travel

Travel- what can I say about it?  We all do it.  We travel to work, we travel to study, we travel for pleasure.  Travel to work is the one where we look for patterns.  You see the same people from day to day on your train or bus or in the street.  And when the pattern varies, you notice.  Perhaps so much so that you comment on it, for example, if your train leaves 2 minutes earlier than it is scheduled to leave so that even though you thought you were going to be on time you actually ended up having to wait 20 minutes for the next one, or if your bus is rerouted because the police have blocked off a sizable portion of the Walworth Road due to some undisclosed event.  Traveling to study is pretty obvious.  All our students got on a plane to come to the ICLC.  It's something interesting and different, and, unique compared to the other 2 kinds of travel, it's perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.  Traveling to study is a springboard for a lot of traveling for pleasure for many of our students, too.  This is the kind where you have to hope that no patterns form and that each place is interesting and different.  I have noticed a few themes in study abroad inspired travel for pleasure.

There is the study abroad student who is determined to go to as many places as possible.  As a result, when their 4 months of study are done, they have also packed in trips to Paris, Dublin, Rome, Prague, Munich, Athens, Barcelona and Amsterdam.  And that's not including break week or trips with the ICLC.  This type of travel requires an enormous amount of energy and a love of waking up early/sleeping in airports.  I commend that dedication!

The next type of student travel is the one to family or friends in Europe.  This often takes students to places which are less tourist driven than the cities previously mentioned.  They might have cousins in Marseilles or friends studying in Marrakesh.  In this type of travel students often get a much more local experience by visiting someone who lives there.  They eat in small restaurants off the main roads and visit markets that they may not have found on their own.  And your hosts may even be your guides to take you to the highest point in Bratislava or introduce you to contemporary Estonian folk music.

Another type of travel that takes students to less obvious destinations is the mission to discover their European roots.  This has taken me to Ireland, France and Germany.  I have seen it take other students to Holland, Denmark, Brittany and Glasgow.  This type of travel can be tricky because it may be focused around a small or little known landmark, such as a house, farm, shop or street.  While finding these particular spots may end up being fruitless (my mother and I traveled all the way to Strasbourg before she admitted that she wasn't sure what her mother's house number had been as a child, though she was pretty sure she might be able to recognize it is she saw it in the row of buildings that all looked the same to me) getting there is usually a story in itself.  What makes this kind of journey even more difficult is not knowing whether the place you are looking for is actually still there or not.  My great-grandfather's family farm had been replaced by a shop that specialized in ceramic tiles.

The other type of student travel is the the UK based journey.  Some students prefer to get to know the ins and outs of London on their weekends or to save money on day trips to places like Brighton, Oxford and Cambridge.  Some students have family in the UK who they spend the day with and some use these day trips to case out possible graduate schools. 

I think most students fall under more than one of these categories at one stage or another during their stay over here.  Just to make it more interesting, the ICLC has competitions for break week.  There is a competition to bring back the tackiest souvenir and the postcard competition in which the card must be written in the native language of the country it is from and posted into the ICLC.  There are also the competitions that are judged at the end of the semester for photography and travel writing.  More details will be posted about the competitions.  Good luck and happy travels!

-Claire (not Elsie, she's away in Finland)