update: spring break

Hola! Buenas días! 

I’m writing this on the train from Valencia to Barcelona! It’s so fun being back in Spain and seeing how much spanish I remember from the summer I spent in Salamanca (none). It’s the strangest feeling trying to switch between two foreign languages. It feels like your brain is trying to do backflips, or maybe a better comparison is what it feels like when I try to raise an eyebrow (which I cannot do and have always been irrationally jealous of people who can) - I screw my face up in all these strange positions, and end up little else but a bright red face, and in the case of speaking spanish, a lot of spit. The prideful creature that I am, I decided that I would take on spanish like a game. I only had about three verbs to work with - tengo, quiero, soy - and a veeryyy shaky knowledge of some semblance of grammar. The challenge was muy grande (see what i did there?) and it was actually quite fun. In Valencia in particular the service-sector, so like waiters, store keepers, hotel staff, speaks much less english than that in Paris (which is composed almost entirely of fluent english speakers), so every request really did turn into quite the task. None of this stuffy Paris attitude of perfecting my disaffected, slightly bored face coupled with rapidly spoken french (striking the right cord you see, proving that I was both a super cool fluent foreigner but I didn’t even care about how cool I was). Instead ordering dinner became a series of stuttering, pointing, gesticulations and laughter. Que bueno! 

So, if you have skipped the entire introductory paragraph up to here, (by this point no doubt you are an avid-Ariella-in-Paris follower and have realized that the first part is always usually jibber jabber) I will state again: I’m on spring break mothafoookah! Naturally, since Sciences Po gives us our spring break the last week of February, when the weather is nice and balmy, my friends and I decided to head up north to Krakow! T-Shirt Contest anyone??... chuckle chuckle. Krakow. It was truly the first Eastern European city I’ve been to, excluding Berlin which I would not place in the same category (and where we stopped over for a day on the way to Krakow -I’ll try to post pictures later this week). It also is one of the only Eastern European cities that was not bombed to smithereens during WWII. While I don’t have much basis for comparison, I can say that Krakow is absolutely STUNNING and probably has one of the most beautiful midieval churches that I have ever been inside. My friends and I spent the first day walking around the city and found our way to the old castle. Needless to say, we practised bowing through the royal court for a good half-hour in the rain until the castle closed and we were oh-so-politely “bowed” out. Polish food is absolutely amazingly potato-y delicious meaty goodness with which we identified just one teensy problem: while it puts a smile on your face, it certainly does not on your digestive system... let’s just say that I really missed my “special” tea while in Poland. 

Now on a much more serious note, I’d like to put in a little bit about going to Auschwitz and Birkenau. We took the better part of our Sunday to make our way out to the camps, 45 minutes outside of Krakow. The 3 hour long tour was given to us by a grandchild of concentration camp survivors, and the details, images, stories, and preserved documents from the third reich were absolutely horrifying. While auschwitz is preserved almost in its entirety, Birkenau was burned and dismanted so while we spent less time there, the giant field empty except for rows of standing chimneys, gave you a true sense of the enormity of these concentration camps. There’s an extremely moving memorial that was constructed next to a half-destroyed gas chamber at Birkenau as well. Just writing about this brings me back, I can feel the gloom and sense of disbelief that felt like almost knocked me off my feet throughout our time there. I’m so happy that I got the chance to learn more about the holocaust and maybe get an inkling of knowledge of the depravity that went on there. 

However, it was a nice relief, and felt like an unbelievable luxury, to head out to spain. Even if our trip did not make the most sense - going from Berlin and Krakow down to Spain - we were certainly ready to get to warmer weather, and hopefully participate in more spring break like activities (sangria being a primary goal). We explored Madrid, and Camilla and I got to meet up with CC grad Jenny Natelson for a delicious lunch of calamari sandwiches and tinto verano. Valencia was beautiful and grandiouse and now I am off to find some long lost CC boys in Barthalonahhh. I’ve been having too much fun with the lisp, it makes me feel like my bad spanish is more authentic because I’m willing to jump right into sounding just as much like a toothless grandma as the locals. Solidarity, you know?  

That’s all I got for esta momenta (...its like im trilingual, sabes?)

Until next time, 

Ciao ciao amigos !