11. Genius loci

The first stop on my grand spring break adventure was Ushuaia, the self-proclaimed “El Fin Del Mundo” (The End of The World) situated in the southernmost region of Argentina, Tierra Del Fuego (Land of Fire). It’s a beautiful, wind-whipped town that feels slightly desolate and always looks as though it is covered by the shadow of a giant cloud – the colors of all the buildings slightly muted and everything a shade darker than you think it should be – even if the sun is shining and there are no clouds in the sky.
 
This is the town with the strongest connection to Antarctica, being the place from which all boat cruises depart, weighed down by hundreds of flushed foreign faces eager for an expensive adventure. A small town with two giant casinos, the larger of the two directly facing the harbor as well as a large shipwreck that seems to be in perfect condition (ropes still sway in the wind and lifesavers cling to both sides) except for the network of gaping, rusted holes on one side. A place where next to faded Argentine flags, most doors have large stickers plastered on them telling you one last time that the Falkland Islands are the Malvinas and they belong to Argentina, in case you had forgotten.
 
But all this is the town itself, and this collection of neat city blocks and small details is all placed in sharp relief against a backdrop of giant snowcapped mountains that create a strange rainbow of colors – white at the top, brownish-gray in the middle, followed by a deep red that fades into green at the very bottom. These mountains are all you can see when you step out of the airport and let the cold air and wind hit you for the first time, when you walk through the sloped streets, slick and shiny black from recent rain, when you take a tour on a boat that lurches through rough water and turn around to get a good look at it all – crushing the small candy dots that are cars and the pinprick steeples of churches with two fingers while not being able to wrap an entire hand around a single mountain.
 
And every single one of these mountains – there must be more than twenty peaks that you can see if you slowly spin in a half circle at the edge of town closest to the water – they all have names. They each have a name, and the taxi driver that picked you up from the airport pointed each one out to you and told you their names in Spanish, but you couldn’t remember all of them and the German stranger that you shared a cab with wasn’t helping record the names. All the names are lost except Cinco Hermanos (Five Brothers), but even though the five jagged peaks really do make sense of the name, all the names don’t matter. They are all made of earth, all surrounding the town, both cradling it from outside disturbances and at the same time, united against it, effectively cutting it off from the rest of civilization. 

Reading Caryl Phillips’s The European Tribe, I truly felt moved by the text comparatively to Jamaica Kincaid's piece, which I felt used language too generally to make her point. I did feel as though that Philips's definition of the term "tribe" in the beginning of the text as "a racial group (especially in a primitive or nomadic culture) living as a community under one or more chiefs" served no immediate purpose when reading the piece.  Personally, I loved reading about both Casablanca and Poland. Both places, one in Northern Africa and the other in Eastern Europe, seem to hold completely different understandings of race and the outside world. However, although both countries possess troubles with money, shortages, and overall well-being of its people, Phillips seems to establish himself better in Morocco as a Westernized individual. With Casablanca occupied with many Southern Europeans, mostly French and Spanish, almost half of the Morocco inhabitants, as Philips states, live below the poverty line. Similar to Jamaica Kincaid's piece, it seems as though tourism and imperialism can, although increase the wealth of a nation, distort the distribution of the wealth--making the hotel owners and resort managers rich, and everyone else, not so much. With a movie such as Casablanca romanticizing the place Philips resides in, he cannot fathom how the American movie industry holds the ability to shape the way people view a place. Personally, I have never seen Casablanca--and I probably should, if it's on Netflix--but the image of Casablanca in my head from both seeing scenes of the movie and imaging it altogether appears luxurious, marvelous, and romantic. For the longest time, I didn't even know where Casablanca was located, but I digress.
           
When Philips travels to Poland, a place that appears both ancient and disconnected when compared to the countries of Western Europe, he discovers that the countries of Europe show more similarities than once expected. Although there used to exist a dichotomy between Western and Eastern Europe, where the Western world possessed the greatest powers in the all of the galaxies both technologically and scholarly, now, all of Europe struggles at the hands of other powers, namely America.  As Philips travels throughout Eastern Europe, he seems to suggest that even though his race affects him as meets various people in completely different circumstances, he holds a greater understanding of a "different world," one that fails to acknowledge as much of a racial difference as a place such as Poland, which still seems to stand as a homogenous pool of Whites.

Michelangelo first sculpted the David as a symbol of Florence's power, as proof that a small city could account for much more than expected of it. It was designed to sit atop the Duomo, serving as Florence's protector, a patron saint for the slightly more modern ages. These days, it sits majestically in a niche in the Galleria Accademia, idolized, the perfect man set in the perfect light. Copies of him are scattered throughout Florence. One sits in Piazza della Signoria, surrounded by tourists asking, "So is this the real David?" The other sits in the aptly named Piazzale Michelangelo, staring out over his city. 

 

I visited Piazzale Michelangelo this weekend with a group of friends. Although it was the second time I had been there (the first time, I climbed up even farther above the Piazza to San Miniato, but I wasn't about to make other people climb more), going this time was truly lovely. Piazzale Michelangelo is located up hundreds of steps, and offers the best view of Florence. Beforehand, myself and about 12 of my friends went to the grocery store and got food for a picnic. After making the strenuous climb, we got to enjoy the sunset over Florence with some brie, frizzantino (my favorite fizzy girly wine), strawberries, and a bunch of other snack foods.

 

At certain points, we would all stop talking and simply get lost in the streaks of pink and purple that were filling the sky on the most beautiful day so far in Florence. Although the sunset happens every day, it never ceases to amaze me, especially if you have the perfect view of one.

 

So, while I feel that the David embodied the definition of genius loci as a protector, Piazzale Michelangelo, with it's bronze copy of the David embodies this new definition as the spirit of Florence. You can stand there and admire the beauty that is Florence with a little piece of protective history accompanying you. 

The first thing that came to mind when I began thinking hard about what the genius loci of Berlin would be was boots- in particular, my Doc Marten work boots that I wear every day regardless of other clothing choices. I even wrote a whole post about them. However at the end of my musings on my boots I thought of something immediately better. Something that confuses, amuses, irritates me and makes me happy in Berlin. I feel the spirit of the city exists so much in its modern art, the scene here that I both hate and love in its over-cultured, fuck you, young blood mentality.

Having just gone to a museum in an ex-club, abandoned, war bunker called the Boros Collection, my confusion about the why of all this art continues to come up. Like Berlin itself, the art here is reasonable, sensible once explained, methodical and culturally educated. However, like the tendencies of people to not jaywalk and the absurd way the language uses prepositions, I keep wondering, when coming across a whole lot of uninspiring and slightly aesthetically pleasing contemporary pieces, whether it really makes a difference, means anything at all. There is something I don't get, maybe I'm just not cool enough to get into this club, about it, some mystery to it that intrigues so many others. This is not to say, like Berlin, there aren't fantastic/awesome/sick/mad beautiful pieces I've come across. However, like the graffiti that paints the walls all through the city, sometimes it's just there, just occupying space. I'm partial to emotionally stirring pieces, but I suppose the straight-faced German attitude isn't trying to please me.

While I've been working in a sculpture artist's studio, however, I've gotten much closer to this loci, this center of brilliance that adds the rebellious vibrancy to Berlin, and begun to understand a bit better what is going in behind the scenes, what's driving the minds. Although my boss is Danish, and produces, what I think are, aesthetically beautiful and emotionally relatable large pieces that say much about herself and her life, she is becoming a deeper part of the Berlin art scene- adding her own sacrifices and spirit to the genius loci of the place. Dynamically thinking about business, high-brow collectors, government funding (another important connection relating art to the heart of the city), and personal inspiration, there's a rational thinking that goes into art I've never encountered before, along with a spirit of hope that the modern/contemporary will prove to surpass the old reign of constraint and separation. Like the city steeped in remembrance/escape from its past, the contemporary art must walk the line between acknowledging what needs to be done and remembered and what, alternately, needs to be forgotten and destroyed.

This prompt really got me thinking. What embodies the Genius loci of Buenos Aires for me?

Maybe its Tel Aviv. The narrow streets of Recoleta, the dripping air conditioners, the not so shiny Sudans, and the white stucco apartment buildings that sit on concrete posts remind me of Tel Aviv. But I am not in Tel Aviv. People here eat bad cheese and empanadas not hummus and pita. A fast erotic Spanish flies from their mouths, not the familiar Hebrew that reminds me of home. The supermarkets have a strange smell and are lined with white and brown cartons of dulce de leche instead of Bamba and Bisli snacks.

It’s the people I meet then, it’s the Latin men that embody the genius loci for me. They truly have a culture completely foreign to me. Streets, buildings, cars, I have all seen before, but the culture and breed of these latin men I have not. The cat calls and stares from grungy men on the streets blow through the city and fill it with an aura that settles into everything. It is a macho country. In contrast with the hippie cool blue from San Diego, and the tall slender fashion fem of New York, Buenos Aires is machismo, valiant, proud. I hear it in the quiet of the street during a soccer game and the cheers ringing throughout the cityscape when Boca scores a goal. I feel it in the Latin rhythms of the men and woman at the clubs, and I reed it in the history books about the military dictatorship and the Malvinas War.

Argentina has a rhythm; it has a beat that its people take share in as a 21st century effect of nationalism. In the book Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson that I had to read for one of my classes, he says that “Nation-ness, as well as nationalism, are cultural artifacts of a particular kind,” (4). The entire idea of Argentina as a country, the imagined community within the clean lines on the map that separate it from Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, and Uruguay, is made up of the black and white films of Carlos Gardel, the particular use of “vos” instead of “tú”, the Italian song in their Spanish accents, the cup of maté they drink in class, the coffee shops where old people gossip and order a plate of small toasts with marmalade, the long light brown hair and the buckled platform shoes the young woman fashion, and of course the machismo in the air.

I guess these are the things that most embody the Genius Loci of Buenos Aires and Argentina as a whole for me.

In considering what it means to have a genus loci, I found the need to regard the fundamentals of what makes Berlin so different and so awesome simultaneously. Though the prompt dictates that one example of German culture be teased out and exemplified as its star example, it is almost necessary to understand that the whole of the experience is more important to grasp the essential spirit of what is Berlin. Its spirit consists entirely of the mannerisms of each German, the music posters and grafitti that plaster the exterior of the existing historical buildings, the currywurst and the underlying Turkish influenced foods, and in the underground music culture that is present in subtle but powerful ways. If I were to understand the multifaceted being that is Berlin, each of these things need to be considered with care. 

The mannerisms of native Germans, for example, speak to the more literal and rational part of Berlin. This perspective on the world is a product of the foundations of social structure that highlights the knowledge passed down from generation to generation. Firstly, the literal translation of the German language reveals a certain logic to the organization of the German world. Words are created from the smaller pieces of the word. "Wurst" is the term for sausage, and when there is a need for specificity, "wurst" is augmented with a definer: "Curry-wurst", for example, or "brat-wurst". It is the same for most, if not all words. The literal word for an Asian-inspired acrobatic circus performance is "Chinesische Akrobatickzirkus". This literal translation and logical construction of words manifests itself in the expectations in German society. Largely very concerned with rules and regulations, it is expected that the individual follow without question the letter of the law. There is very little wiggle room when following such laws. For example, it is expected that anyone who uses public transport buy their cards. It is also assumed that if you are on the train that you have already bought the ticket, validated it, and are following the rules. For this reason, there is no regulation at the entry points upon boarding. It is based on the honor system, and while this would never work in the US, it works perfectly fine in Germany due to the global expectation that the good citizen must follow the rules. Along the same lines, the average German knows not to walk in the marked out bike lane or not to walk during the "Do Not Walk" sign to cross the street simply due to the same logic. There were many a time when I was almost run over by a biker, or received glares due to a jaywalking experience. All in all, the head space Berlin occupies is a logical, literal place. 

The music posters and graffiti covering every existing architecture exemplify another, darker aspect of Berlin I don't think the locals necessarily address. With all its rules and regulations, Berlin also has a vibrant artistic underground scene that in many ways bubbles underneath and through the rationality that is exemplified in the existing architecture. The peeling, caked on residue of this alternative movement serves in many ways to begin to try and cover and move on from a darker past that Berlin is hiding. The posters represent the revolution of this new city, the perspective of the newer members of the society that exists here. Each poster references the growing underlying music scene, one that draws many from outlying countries. I know for certain that this was a point of interest for me as well. This modernity and influx of new ideas is prevalent. It indicates a departure from the past and a move to modernity, and through all the technicolor riot of peeling paper and spray paint the new perspective is another facet of Berlin's genus loci. 

As for the food, the prevalence of such traditional foods such as currywurst and enormous selections of beer, the appearance of various Turkish restaurants in strategic spots in the Berlin landscape serves to remind the individual that certain amounts of diversity is present here as well. Though i have an understanding that most of the places I frequent on my daily commute to where ever I need to go that most of the strangers I run into on the street are Arian in nature, there is an underlying presence of Turkish and Somali immigrants. The division between these two groups, however, has been made uncomfortably clear to me in ways, as having dark hair, darker skin, and dark eyes has set me off from the majority of the local residents. While I have never felt overtly uncomfortable for this in New York, the mild discomfort about feeling different for how I look simply because of genetics is a very different aspect of Berlin that may not necessarily be obvious, but is nevertheless a large part of what makes Berlin the way it is. 

Berlin has a genus loci, but due to the multifaceted nature of the city, these facets cannot necessarily be captured in one exemplary artifact of this society. A budding, new city, Berlin has yet to experience what it is like to have one singular entity encompassing the whole. But, in all its fragmented glory, these aspects capture it quite well. 

Sitting in the dining area of our hostel at a table with a blue and white checkered table cloth, my travel companions and I take a slow start to the morning, eating our bread and assorted jams, drinking coffee, writing in our journals. My friend suddenly comes out and says: “it’s like, almost stressful not being able to capture this place when I write. It’s just so beautiful and unique and I want to include every detail, but even then I feel like it wouldn’t be enough.” I responded asking whether or not that is the entire challenge of writing, when writing about a place. Sometimes it does feel impossible, especially when there are so many wonderful things surrounding you, so many special experiences detailing one’s journey, and so many to come. I experienced the same stress of wanting to remember everything, every detail, absorbing all the wonderfulness around me within only my first moments of arriving in Valparaíso, Chile, one of my destinations during my spring break.
 
The city is located on the coast of Chile, and is an important seaport and cultural center for the country. It is known to be the “San Francisco of South America,” and although there are certain parallels between the two cities, I find this to be an unfair comparison. There are steep, winding hills with raised sidewalks made of stone steps, brightly colored houses, and a view of the sea, all like San Francisco, but it’s still so different. Making the hike back up to our hostel on one of these rigid hills, in between the houses you can get a glimpse of the other hills that lie beyond, and the pop-colored rainbow of structures, lingering in the fog from the sea, effortlessly resting on dangerous dirt edges; it seems that only a huff and a puff would be enough to blow them off the cliff. Thus I think it could be easy to say that the genius loci, the spirit of this place, is embodied in all of these beautiful houses up on the hills, the guardians of the sea. But then I could say that the smell of the sea embodies that the town is a port, or that the people who live in the houses embody the town as a whole. And a loop could continue forever.
 


So then I turn to look at my own experience in the city, instead of viewing what the entire location has to offer as a generalization, I think of what it offered me in my short time there. And I discover that I think my first inkling was right… it is in the houses. But it’s also in the people in the houses, the smell and sight of the sea, everything… but specifically it is in the hostel I stayed in, ‘my house’ when I was a temporary Chilean living in Valparaíso.
 
La Maison de la Mer, or “the house of the sea” in French, is owned and run by a wonderful, spirited old man who originally is from Normandie, but has lived in Valparaíso for over 40 years now. And his Spanish is perhaps the most beautiful I have ever heard, where instead of rolling his r’s, he uses his natural, closed-throat hack for r’s… an elegant mix of my two second languages, so fluently spoken. He explained to my friends and I that he has lived there long enough to be able to speak perfect Chilean Spanish, but he chooses to keep his strong French accent, just as he said we should keep our porteño accent, so as not to lose where we come from.
 
There were days when we would spend hours in the garden (pictured above, with a lovely, little framed view of some houses on a distant hill), relaxing, playing cards, talking, eating. I would sometimes have little conversations with the owner in my lost French, and explained to him I knew more Spanish than I did his native tongue, malheureusement (“unfortunately”). Upon our departure, I left him a note in French saying that when I come back to this very unique city, I plan on spending my time at La Maison once again.
 
And so, in the end, I physically and visually consider the genius loci to be the beautiful hostel I stayed in for those few days. But when I left Valparaíso, I think I realized that the true spirit of the place, for me, was that it isn’t just a city I can say I have visited, and recount my stories for you here, but rather a place where my stories will continue, because that place is a place of return. And I cannot wait to be back.

Having just returned from possibly the worst weekend trip of my life, I can't think of any place to write about but Nkawkaw, the town where the annual Easter Paragliding Festival is held, the town where I spent my weekend.
 
To preface my post I am still bitter about the experience. I feel like our posts are made out to all be incredibly positive about maybe even sugarcoat some of our memories. My weekend, while not a good one, has been the biggest learning experience for me since I got to Ghana three months ago. I appreciate the structure of the program, the location, the excursions, and the people so much more now that I've experienced what they might be trying to protect and shelter us from. From last weekend at the rural homestay to this weekend in Nkawkaw I am beginning to fully understand how incredibly different the regions of Ghana are from one another. From Accra and its neocolonial atmosphere to Nkawkaw and it's rural spirit- I think the "real" Ghanaian experience we have all been looking for was found this weekend. Uncensored and laid out before us, Nkawkaw and the mountain of Kwahu opened up my eyes to life in Ghana without a chaperone.
 
The spirit of Nkawkaw during the Easter Festival ­was like any American Festival with music blaring and people walking around drunk by one in the afternoon. We got off the bus in the heart of the town and I could feel the ground beneath me shaking from the bass of the speakers. Speakers stacked taller than myself, stages set up as we progressed down the one road town, and food stands lining the way, we found ourselves in an out of body experience as everyone started grabbing, pulling, hissing, kissing, and groping our bodies. My friends and I had crashed a party that we were so clearly not invited to. The Genius Loci of Nkawkaw was that it was a place for Ghanaians and only Ghanaians. As we walked the streets during the day and during the party at night we only saw one other "Obruni" (white person, foreigner) and it was a boy about our age frantically asking if we had seen three other white girls. We hadn't, and neither had he, he immediately ran away screaming for them even louder. The danger of the situation suddenly felt real and the animosity and hatred that we felt fill the air became even thicker as we found ourselves caught in a mosh pit that had formed in the middle of the street. In the end we had all been inappropriately grabbed in numerous parts of the body, my roommate was held down and robbed, my friends purse was slashed by a machete and if a fight hadn't broken out behind us we could have been trapped in there even longer.
 
The smells, architecture, and environment aren't what make up the Genius Loci of Ghana. If that were the case, nobody would want to come here due to the open gutters, shantytowns, and trashed streets. Instead, it's the people, food, and rhythm that draw outsiders in and welcomes us with open arms. As I mentioned above, this depends on the region in which you're staying. Accra has been incredibly warm and open to foreigners, while the eastern region we went to for the homestay and Nkawkaw was less so. The people are what set the experience here in Ghana. Their smiles, laughs, loud voices and dance moves send a vibe of energy through anyone that passes through. My experience this weekend really proved that statement to be true. Had the festival been held in Accra, the locals would have been much more open to having us around. Luckily one woman named Rose took us in for the night and helped us stay safe while in Nkawkaw.  It was her own spirit that helped reflect the town in a more positive image than it could have been.
 
In the end we spent the night in a locked cement room without mattresses because the locals had found out we were staying in there and the possibilities of someone breaking in where quite high. We were unable to leave that night because we were told that once we got into a taxi the driver would take us to a remote place and rob or hurt us. We felt trapped and unsafe and it was only Rose and her smiles and reassurance that helped get us through the night.  We told Rose that she was our guardian angel and that without her we don't know what could have happened. Its people like Rose who embody the Genius Loci of Ghana; the helping people who understand and sympathize and are willing to lend a helping hand without any expectations of payment. Rose helped me turn an awful and dangerous weekend into a learning experience in which I was able to learn more about myself and about Ghana through.
 
Oh, and in the end we didn't get to paraglide because it started raining. Getting our 100 cedi refund back is a whole other story!
 
 

 
I can’t help it; you never abandon your first love.  Given the out of “a place you visited this semester,” I had to give in, and give myself to the genius loci of another country, another continent… a subcontinent.
My diary from my first trip reads like a love letter to the city.  Even though it stole my wallet and phone this time around; the first time I arrived, Mumbai stole my heart.  Or should I say, I tossed in out across the rocks and into the Arabian Sea like an offering to Mumbaidevi.  I relinquished it listening to a boy describe his favorite place in the world- The Sea Link, the Queen’s Necklace, sitting on the wall looking out over the sea, watching the monsoons roll in and wash the city clean.  I walked around the city trailed by a Guju boy’s daydreams, through the city that held the dreams of an entire nation.
I was hesitant about India my first few months there, not sure how I felt about the madness.   Bombay seduced me, Mumbai held me- the city of schizophrenia, with all of humanity’s sorrows and joys contained in its twenty five million inhabitants.  Within its bounds, the dreams of nation are created and dashed.  The seat of power may be Dehli, but the seat of Bollywood is in this mega city, straddling seven islands and ever expanding.  The more people, the more dreams dragged through the dust from every corner of the subcontinent to fill its slums and mansions.  It’s heady mix into which I fell head-first;  I was a goner long before I wandered past the graceful Gothics of the Raj, picked up Shantaram, that outsider, underworld guide to the city.  I breathed in that sweet polluted air, full of dust and auto rickshaw exhaust and God only knows what else, and decided I never wanted to go home.
It was the first time in four months that I was totally, blessedly anonymous.  I could have been a tourist, I could have been a prostitute, I could have been a college student. From my seat in the Irani café on the corner, with my chai and biscuits and Indian friends, I was simply someone that everyone had seen before, and would probably see again, a small fleck in the great mass of humanity that writhed and seethed its way down the crowded streets, through local trains with shallow air.  It is a profoundly human city, marked on every inch with an intense desire to live and somehow carve out an individual space on those crowded seven islands.  Whatever it was in its former life, Mumbai or otherwise, this place has reinvented itself so many times, is the product of so many lives, that the conglomerate name of Bombay will always seem more appropriate: Portuguese, British, Marathi, Gujarati, layers of ownership and distortion across the centuries.
When I arrived in New York, five days after leaving the dusty cities I would dream about for years after, that famed city felt too empty.  I felt like I was walking school corridors during summer holidays, the clean swept empty echoing space.  A little haunted. A few bodies here and there on clean empty streets hurrying to get out of the heat, improperly dressed.  Covered in mendhi and still carrying my Indian accent with my jetlag, New York felt like a city abandoned.  I craved the dust, and the millions of people who stirred it.

(Image is my own, taken leaving Mumbai with just enough money for the taxi, relieved of my phone and debit card, with 40 hours of travel ahead of me.)

 
I had a wonderful Spring Break.  I spent eight days in Bangkok, Thailand with one of my closest friends who I hadn’t seen in over a year, and then spent three days relaxing alone in Sri Lanka.  However, the best part of leaving Abu Dhabi was coming back and feeling at home. 
 
I realized it almost immediately, as I walked out of the plane and into the terminal of Abu Dhabi airport.  The smell of oud hit me and I saw women in abayas and sheilas, and men in their kanduras.  I breathed out deeply and thought “ahhhhh, finally- I’m back!” 
 
When I got into the taxi and told him to head to “Sama Tower near NMC Hospital on Electra Street” I had the biggest smile on my face.  No more traffic jams like the ones I experienced in Asia and no more crowded street corners or shabby buildings.  I looked out over the never ending desert to one side and the Arabian Gulf to the other.  There was space!  And not just horizontally.  As we got closer to the city I began to see the tall buildings, the vertical expansion of this wonderful country.  Though nothing like Dubai’s, the skyline of Abu Dhabi is a fantastically organized and beautiful site.  It is a kind of comfortable synthetic.  Everything is manufactured: the five lane roads, the huge sculptures on the highway, the wasteful fountains, and even more abstractly, the social system.  Yet I’ve grown to love it all and I feel happy to call it home, it all feels right. 
 
This comfortable synthetic extends into my living space too.  The furniture is still dorm-like, but higher quality than I am used to, and I keep my room spotless and bed constantly made- just like the manicured strips of grass and the nearly spotless streets outside.  Abu Dhabi feels put together as well as dynamic.  It is ever changing, new initiatives are being introduced in every field or space imaginable, but the foundation is still this ‘comfortable synthetic.’ 
 
This atmosphere has pushed my productivity through the roof and it motives me and I thrive in it.  Though I loved and enjoyed Spring Break, I felt drained and separated from the actions here.  I get so many stimuli from the incredibly different local culture, the various foreigners, my internships, and NYU-AD’s classes and my friends.  I feel like I am constantly progressing and learning and for someone with so few geographical roots like myself, that feeling is what makes a ‘home’.

Though I’m sure it’s been mentioned in passing, I don’t think I would be adequately portraying my time in Buenos Aires if I did not devote significant homage to meat. For those who aren’t aware, Argentina is known for its beef. With ample pampas (fields), Spanish conquistadors brought cows to Argentina in the 16th century and it’s history ever since.
 
Parilla’s are the restaurants where steak is consumed. Many are very casual, unlike the refined image of a steakhouse in the United States. The typical steaks are not prepared with any sauce or seasoning, they let the flavor of the meal speak for itself. There is sometimes a chimichurri sauce, which is a finely minced mix of tomato, onion and pepper. My initial trips to the parilla were confusing because the names for cuts of beef are, obviously, different here. My two favorite cuts are bife de lomo, which is filet mignon, and entraña, which is skirt steak. Sides are usually a salad, French fries, Spanish tortilla and proveleta, which is a large piece of grilled cheese. Yes, that’s as sinfully delicious as it sounds.
 
An asado, the Argentine version of a barbeque, is a sacred tradition in their society. It’s a long process of cooking meats and spending time with friends and family. My homestay brother gave me the lowdown on the process. It starts with a trip to the butcher shop and each person has their preferences of cuts and meats. His asado included three different cuts of steak including shortribs, chorizo, blood sausage and what I think was intenstines, but it tasted good so I was nervous to ask. Hours before eating, the meat is put on the grill. The grills here are ingeniously designed with the grate on a crank to move it closer and further from the fire depending on how the meat is cooking. Guests usually trickle in and keep the griller company, drinking wine, beer, Coke or water depending on the time of day and mood. The meats cook in phases so the meal is drawn out, the griller periodically bringing around the different meats as they cook. Every asado I’ve attended has lasted hours and always ended with deep sleep.
 
Meat is a part of Buenos Aires. I smell steak when I walk down the street and it puts me at ease. Being a butcher here is a point of pride and is an important part of their society. Not queasy to the sight of raw meat, I peer into the meat shops with fascination at the skillfully cut flanks. The asado is such a welcoming, group activity. For men to be the griller is a point of pride, a total indication of their machismo culture. Argentina is known for having excellent beef and in my weathered experience, it doesn’t disappoint. 

The photo is from an asado I attended in rural Salta (northwest Argentina) prepared by true gauchos.

“I am on my way home.” It slipped out of my mouth without me even noticing that I just called Florence home. The moment I got back from a trip to Prague last weekend, I felt so happy to be walking among the familiar streets and places. However I noticed that this weekend, when I was traveling back from Barcelona, I started to feel this comfort of “home” on the bus to the airport before I even left for Italy. This is because the spirit of Italy isn’t the location or buildings, it is the people and their attitudes. I caught the last bus to Girona airport in Spain for my late flight to Pisa. I noticed that everyone around me was speaking Italian instead of Spanish and they all had their PINKO canvas bags. The bus ride was excruciatingly hot and the bus driver refused to turn the air on. That is when all the Italians started to make a fuss and making fans out of magazines or standing up to air off. I heard so many “mama mia’s” and Italian curse words. As soon as my friend got up to talk to the bus driver again, everyone started clapping. I couldn’t help but smile because the Italian spirit is present in this bus and I felt included. 

When I first came abroad I had a hard time understanding the people in Italy. However, instead of understanding it, I have just started to accept them for how they are because this is the genius loci of Florence. Being stared at for wearing sandals on a cold day, or yelled at by an old lady whose trying to push her way to the front of the line is just part of the everyday life. It is considered normal to see teenagers intensely making out in public. Cappuccino's and cheese are never consumed in the afternoon. Nobody picks up after their dog; they expect the rain to clean the streets. Almost everyone smokes cigarettes. There is rarely parking in Florence, therefore everyone has a motorino. Unless I look lost and confused, they don’t treat Americans any differently. Nobody works on Sundays. While all of these quirks of Florentine people bothered me when I first arrived, I now have gotten so used to these strange habits because without it the city would be very different. The town is small enough that everyone knows each other and stops their friends on the street. I feel included in this warmth and I am going to miss this unique lifestyle when I go back to New York.

My parisian food experience can be summed up thusly: The first bite into the end of a fresh baguette that has the perfect amount of crunch mixed with the perfect amount of softness in the interior just below the perfect crust.  The best way to eat it is just plain but sometimes a bit of chocolate, jam or cheese inside doesn’t hurt.  It can be a snack or a (super cheap) whole meal.  There are laws that dictate the price of French bread (une baguette de tradition can basically never be above one euro and thirty centimes).  And there is a difference between a baguette de tradition and just a baguette.  A baguette is much longer and thinner and less chewy than a baguette de tradition.  Less chewy may seem like a good thing but I actually prefer the consistency of the tradition to the somewhat softer interior of the plain old baguette.

Not only do the French have special laws regarding baguettes, they also give out a prize every year to the boulangerie with the best baguette!  (There are giant stickers (depicted above) on the windows of the winners so you know where to find the best baguette from each year – I have no idea who gets to choose the prize-winning baguette from year to year but I would kill for that job). 

There are even special baguette bags which are made of paper bags and covers about half of either type of baguette, leaving the other half out in the open to tempt you on your walk to your picnic where you will supposedly be sharing this baguette. On these bags there is a picture of either one or two baguettes (depending on how many baguettes will fit).  Sometimes, you are not given a bag at all but are simply handed the baguette with a small piece of pastry paper wrapped around the center.  (This way makes it even more difficult to not eat the entire thing on the spot).
 
We had been told before coming to Paris that no one eats on the street while walking somewhere or while they are on the metro.  This is one part of Parisian culture to which I cannot become accustomed (and which I also find not to be entirely true).  I have seen many people (perhaps other Americans) munching on the delicious ends of baguettes as soon as they walk out of a boulangerie.  (I am absolutely guilty of this).  It’s very difficult to resist the freshness especially since you are completely enveloped by the smell of fresh bread as soon you step anywhere near most boulangeries.

As I ate a sandwich on the metro last night on my way home, I wondered how it was possible that I was living in a country where people might find my in-transit-sandwich-eating weird but were somehow okay with violently making out with each other in public parks.  The French, perhaps, are very much accustomed to the tantalizing smell of baguettes that permeates so much of their beloved city…or maybe it’s a major aphrodisiac.  I’m gonna go with the latter.  

Before coming to Florence I was told by everyone who had studied here that finding the secret bakery is a must. I had no idea what a secret bakery could possibly mean or be, but I was on a mission to find it. I was given no directions or address, but was told that I would know when I was close; “you’ll find it with your nose,” everyone said. I was up for the challenge. On my first night here, my roommates and I decided to see what nightlife here is like. I knew the secret bakery didn’t open until 3 am, so I carefully watched the clock as we danced and met new people. A quarter to 3 I managed to gather my friends, insisting that we find out what was so secret about this bakery. At first I got a few eye-rolls but finally everyone agreed and we were on our way. As we walked down the cobblestone streets I asked all passer buyers if they knew where this bakery was. Everyone looked at me the same way. It was as if I was asking about something that didn’t exist. “che cosa?” was the response I got from most, but I was on a mission. I had convinced myself and everyone I was with that we would be able to find it if we just followed our noses. And that’s exactly what we did. Our noses literally led us to the famous secret bakery. A line of at least forty people wrapped around the block, everyone speaking in hushed voices. We were told to keep quiet and only whisper if necessary. (It turns out that a special license is required for restaurants and stores to be opened past 11 pm and since this specific bakery doesn’t, it’s supposed to be a secret). After waiting in line for 20 minutes it was finally my turn. When my chocolate croissant was ready I quickly took a bite. The chocolate oozed out of the hot pastry. My friends thanked me for taking them to this hidden treasure. The secret bakery instantly became our ‘late night’ spot. Although we’re never exactly sure of the exact address, we manage to find it by following the delicious smell. When I look back on my semester in Florence, the secret bakery will definitely play a large role. I am determined that by May I will be able to share this secret with others, and provide them with a address!