Fútbol and French Food
Life has become pretty hectic over the last 2 weeks and the feeling of temporary vacation is definitely gone. When I applied to UPF I had no idea that it's consistently ranked among the top universities in Spain, which is great... until you have 2 essays, a midterm, and 2 presentations squeezed in between your poorly timed trips to France and Portugal. I successfully survived the week and everything went well, so now it's time to update you all; I'm only going to write about the weekend of January 26th-29th because to do any more would be incredibly long, so I'll write another post about the past weekend soon. In the meantime, enjoy:
A couple weeks ago I found cheap tickets to the FCBarcelona soccer match so I figured I'd go and experience the game firsthand. I'm taking a class about the marketing and cultural impacts of soccer in Spain so you can kind of say I was doing research for class, right? They won the game 5-2 against Real Sociedad but the experience of the fans alone made the match worth it. It was hilarious just watching the people around us get so invested in the game — and I learned quite a few new Catalan insults at the same time.
Just a quick history lesson: Catalonia (whose capital is Barcelona) is an autonomous community that prides itself on having a culture and language separate from that of Spain. This means that in addition to all signage being in Catalan, most of the natives speak it in addition to Spanish. While some people want complete independence, others only want more autonomy, but the central government refuses to acknowledge their referendums. The topic gets far more complicated than that, but for right now all you need to know is that BCN loves its soccer team because it's a symbol of nationalism.
On Friday I was off to France for a weekend full of too much cheese and never-ending bread. My travel companions and I are nothing if not cheap, so when we stepped off the bus in Perpignan to find a thunderstorm we still decided to walk the couple kilometers to the hotel, looking more than a little like drenched puppies when we arrived. After drying off we set out again in search of French food, only to find out that Perpignan is basically an extension of Catalonia. Street signs in Catalan, tapas in every restaurant, independence flags hanging from balconies... I felt more or less at home.
The next morning we went to a market in the town's plaza and it's there that I fell in love with southern France. The freshest food served by the nicest people, I felt for the millionth time like I'm living in a movie. After gorging ourselves on cheese (I'm tempted to call it fresh but it was several years old so we'll just say it's aged and fancy), we walked aimlessly around town and stumbled upon a castle with amazing views of the mountains. Seriously, did someone write a screenplay for my life? Because if so, they deserve an Oscar.
The next stop on the trip was Nimes, and we arrived late Saturday night with the hopes of finding more authentic French restaurants. Although the atmosphere was a little less "Catalan," I swear that the tapas menus we found at every single restaurant were mocking us. Sunday morning we were as determined as ever to cross all the stereotypical French foods off our bucket lists, so we found another open-air market and ate to our hearts' content. Nutella crepes, the best cheesy potatoes of my life, beignets, and soup are the best way to start any day — we're just going to pretend that vacation calories don't count, agreed?
On Sunday we had 9 hours to spend in Avignon, where I saw a woman selling art on the street. Aside from having the goal of eating potatoes in every country I visit (my love for their starchy goodness is never ending), my bucket list also includes buying local art on every trip, so we stopped by to look at her work. We were speaking to her in French/Spanish when she found out I'm from the U.S. and started speaking English as well. It never ceases to amaze me how multilingual Europeans are. This little old woman speaks at least three languages, meanwhile people in the U.S. are struggling with when to use of "their" or "there"; we need to step up our game ASAP.
The overnight bus dropped us off in BCN at 5 am Monday morning, bringing me back to my comfortable world of *mostly* understanding what people are saying to me. I had wholly underestimated just how nerve wracking it is to not be able to communicate easily with people. The irony of the trip was that my Spanish skills improved more over a weekend in France than they had during the last week in Spain. Traveling with an Argentinian and a Colombian means that 90% of our conversations are in Spanish, and I either have to keep up or have absolutely no clue about what's going on. When I got back to school on Monday my professors noted that not only had my speaking abilities improved over the weekend, but I had developed a more South American sounding vocabulary too...woops.
With my return from France marked one month down and five to go; I've got some exciting things in store so stay tuned to see what comes next.
