Maria Surdokas
My first stop would have to be bread. A sandwich would be a refreshing change from the cookies and chocolate I had been eating. Remembering Dr. Forni’s warnings about selecting the proper bag for the various loaves of bread, I began perusing my options. My eyes eventually stopped at the rolls. I looked next to the bin for the corresponding bread bag but found none. There were no special bread bags anywhere on the rolls display. So I turned back to the fresh loaves. Unfortunately, my heart had already set itself on the rolls. Frustrated and upset, I walked away from the bread toward the closest aisle, trying very hard to maintain my composure.
I walked up and down every aisle in that grocery store, trying to decide what to do next. I had never gone grocery shopping by myself at home before, let alone in Belgium. On that day, only my third day in Leuven, I had set off down Schapenstraat, our street, and followed the ring road until I arrived at the GB. Happily finding it without resorting to my map, I strolled inside. And now I couldn’t even manage the simple task of buying bread. How embarrassing. All I wanted was a roll or two. It shouldn’t be this hard. I happened past the Nutella and noted its aisle for later. Nutella would be easy and deliciously straightforward to put on my bread, if I could ever buy some.
Too quickly, I reached the last aisle of the store, and was obliged to loop back around. I stood once more in front of the bread. I spied on other customers nonchalantly going about their shopping, waiting for one of them to select rolls. In order to stay undercover, I glanced at the nearby refrigerated bins, pretending to be fascinated by the cheeses, lunchmeats, and spreads. Soon, I felt uncomfortable loitering around the bread for so long and took another turn around the store. This process repeated one more time before I finally caught someone buying rolls. I can no longer recall if this customer was an older man, a harried mom, or a young student like me; all I remember is observing him or her as closely as I dared. The proper bag in which to place the rolls one wishes to purchase, it turns out, is a simple plastic bag, quite like the kind I would use at home.
So, finally feeling confident, and wanting very much to leave the GB as quickly as was humanly possible, I grabbed a bag, chose two rolls, ran back to retrieve the jar of Nutella, and headed to the checkout. Checking out was not nearly as horrific as bagging rolls. I put my lonely two items on the belt, checked the total on the screen, and paid the cashier. One last trial awaited me before I could escape the store, however. The cashier asked if I had a card for the store (a bonus card of some sort). Of course, not having learned any Dutch yet, I had to ask her to repeat, in English, and when she did, I hurriedly shook my head No. I dumped my purchase into my reusable shopping bag (at least I didn't have to deal with buying a grocery bag), and finally, finally, left the store. A roll with Nutella had never tasted quite as good as it did for dinner that night.
Eventually, my grocery-buying ability improved, and I moved on to more exciting foods like chicken, potatoes, and even green beans and brussel sprouts. I never did go back to GB, however; my loyalties now lie with Delhaize, which is closer to my residence anyway.
A significant difference between Leuven and Loyola is the lack of a Boulder or Primo’s five minutes away. Considering the fact that a diet consisting only of cereal and grilled cheese will not suffice for a whole year of meals, I have had to learn to purchase and cook real food. Figuring out which items to buy, and what exactly certain items are, hasn’t been too challenging. Although things are labeled in Dutch, most are also labeled in French. That has been particularly helpful in buying meats, because even though I still don’t know my Dutch meat vocabulary, I do know these important words in French, having studied that language for about a decade and being, in fact, a French minor. In addition, many products are also labeled in German and English. Delhaize brand products often even list at least eight different languages. If you ever wanted to know the word for salt or juice in eight languages, you simply need to study the Delhaize brand packaging. Reading heating instructions is a bit more difficult, for example for frozen foods, but between reading the Dutch and the French explanations, I can put together a fairly accurate guess as to what I am supposed to do.
While being in Leuven, I have discovered that I actually quite enjoy grocery shopping and cooking for myself. It isn’t that I disliked these acitivies before coming to Belgium; I just never tried them. I’ve cooked fresh vegetables for the first time in my life here: green beans, carrots, and brussel sprouts. I pan fry chicken on a regular basis, and, of course, rely heavily on pasta. One Sunday afternoon for lunch, I made hamburgers, mashed potatoes, and brussel sprouts. I like to refer to that meal as “Epic Lunch;” it was one of my proudest moments this semester. Another weekend, I made homemade chicken noodle soup. I truly believe that I eat better in Leuven than I ever did at Loyola. I haven’t had a real cheeseburger in months, nor fried chicken. I never ate vegetables at Loyola, and even though I do enjoy a good portion of friets (French fries), as every good Belgian should, all the walking I do counteracts the grease and delicious sauces. The “freshman fifteen” could undoubtedly be avoided if said freshman simply lived in Belgium for a semester.
Learning to buy groceries and cook for myself is something that even the kitchen-equipped “dorms like palaces” at Loyola could never teach me, and the thing that will stay with me even after some of my Dutch language skills and memories fade away. I suppose it’s just one of the advantages of studying abroad. Besides successfully buying groceries, some of the moments in Leuven that have given me the greatest pleasure have been those when I have had entire encounters with Belgian people only in Dutch. It makes me feel as if I have successfully fooled them into thinking I am one of them. Even though there is somewhat of a language barrier here, English is spoken almost as often as Dutch. Shopkeepers will immediately switch languages when they notice you are not Belgian, even if, perhaps especially if, you try to speak Dutch.
One of my favorite of these encounters was with an older man at the Alma, the cafeteria-like restaurant that offers cheap prices for university students. I went to one of the stations and the man began putting together the meal (I had strategically picked a station that had only one meal option). While scooping potatoes and spooning vegetables, he spoke to me animatedly and laughingly. I just smiled and nodded along. To this day, I have no idea what he was saying, but he remained in character the entire time, right up until my shy “dank u” and departure from the station.
This experience was one of the first times I remember feeling as though I definitely belonged in Belgium. I was eating at the student cafeteria, ordering by myself, and this man was happy to see me and help me out. At least, I am assuming he was being nice and not mocking me. Since then, little by little, I have begun to feel even more in control of my life here, and that this is the place I am supposed to be.
I have decided I really like Belgium. It is my country; I can handle it. Admittedly, it did take me the greater part of the semester to get to this point. Twenty years of feeling shy and minimally self-confident doesn’t just erase itself upon stepping off a plane in a new country. Recall the almost-disaster of my first grocery shopping endeavor. After this essay, I will begin to pack; I go home for Christmas tomorrow. I am very excited to see my family again, and to return to the land of Starbucks and Chick-fil-A, but I am even more excited that after Christmas, I get to come back to Belgium. How anyone could choose to study abroad for only one semester is incomprehensible to me. Next semester I am looking forward to an even better experience than I’ve had these last four months. I will already be settled in; I know how to buy rolls, for one thing. Maybe I’ll expand my horizons by buying produce at the weekly market or learning some new recipes from my international roommates. I can’t wait.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Sunday, January 10, 2010
"New Zealand’s National Sport Through Distinctly American Eyes"
Jon Meoli
In a little under two years time, much of the sporting world will descend on New Zealand for the 2011 Rugby World Cup, and in case you haven’t been following along, America’s Eagles are one step away from qualifying. But let’s say the upcoming home and home series with Uruguay is successful and the Americans qualify to represent our region, along with Canada, on the rugby world’s grandest stage. Is anybody going to care?
In many parts of the world, rugby and soccer reign supreme, with perhaps only the truly baffling sport of cricket matching their popularity. Perhaps you can say the rest of the world just doesn’t have the ingenuity that we, as Americans, had when it comes to creating sports. We saw cricket and turned it into baseball, which at its creation didn’t take days to finish a game, though we’re getting closer and closer with every passing season. We saw rugby and created football, which has arguably surpassed baseball as our national past time. But what about the rest of the world? It’s arrogant to think that their sports are inherently worse than ours just because they aren’t shown on ESPN. So what better occasion to see what all the rugby fuss was about than a semester in New Zealand?
We arrived in Auckland right as both the domestic rugby season and the top international tournaments were beginning. Each year, the All Blacks, New Zealand’s national team, plays Australia (the Wallabies) and South Africa (the Springboks) in the Tri Nations Cup. Aside from being extremely lucrative for all involved, this tournament gives an opportunity for the three best teams in the world to play one another, with the winner usually emerging with the world’s number one ranking.
The All Blacks entered the 2009 edition of the Tri Nations as defending champions and top ranked team in the world, so expectations were high in anticipation of the Wallabies’ trip to Auckland’s Eden Park. The opening match of the Tri Nations also marked the beginning of the All Black’s defense of the Bledisloe Cup, which is a separate trophy the team competes for with the Wallabies every year. With so much at stake, our entire group bought tickets in hopes of seeing another passionate chapter of this rivalry written before our eyes.
Visions of an atmosphere akin to that of an English soccer game, complete with drunken hooligans hurling insults at one another in funny accents, filled our heads. We all had a few drinks and were buzzing with more than just anticipation on the walk to Eden Park. The area surrounding the stadium did nothing to dampen our expectations. Streets were closed down for the thousands of supporters who were making their way into the grounds, and there was an air of excitement similar to every other important sporting event I’ve been to. Nothing could have convinced me that I wasn’t in for something special . . . until I actually got inside.
As it turns out, in preparation for the Rugby World Cup, Eden Park was getting a bit of a face lift. But let me clarify the word "face lift". We aren’t talking some new bathrooms and a bigger press box. I mean face lift as Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight style. An entire section of the stadium down one of the sidelines was just concrete and steel, a bare skeleton of what should be there. Now, it’s one thing to have an open end zone at a football stadium, but an entire sideline? It was downright eerie. All of the sound seemed to pour out that side of the stadium. Hmmm, no wonder we hear of bleachers collapsing at these events.
Then again, that would imply there was a ton of sound to begin with. Maybe everyone’s energy was sucked out the giant hole in the stadium along with the sound. Maybe everyone just expected the All Blacks to win, so there wasn’t much to get excited about, but one thing is for sure--I was expecting a little more passion from the fans. I liken it to a dead crowd at Fenway for a Sox-Yankees game. It just seemed unthinkable.
That isn’t to say that it was a complete bust of an evening. If the cost of admission hadn’t been so high, I would be able to say that seeing the Haka alone was worth it. Before each match, the All Blacks gather at midfield and do the Haka, a Maori war dance. Originally, it was done as a showing of solidarity between the whites and the Maori, but in today’s more tolerant society, it is solely an intimidation tactic. If any guys that size stood face to face and beat their chests and chanted with such fury that it sounded like they were right next to me, even in the cheap seats, then I’d surely reconsider playing rugby against them.
While the Haka provided much better pre-game entertainment than anything we’d see America, the quality on the field of play was sloppy and lackluster. In the first half, an Australian player had broken away and was assured of a try (think touchdown, except you actually have to touch the ball down on the ground) before he inexplicably started running sideways and tried to pass to a teammate, who promptly dropped the ball. Additionally, I found that rugby shares a key similarity with basketball in that nothing happens of consequences until there is about five minutes left, at which point it seemed like the All Blacks started to actually try and pulled out the 22-16 victory.
Even though my first rugby experience was a letdown, I remained steadfast in at least trying to figure out why someone else might like it. The next opportunity presented was an Air New Zealand Cup match between Auckland and Canterbury in the deconstructed confines of Eden Park. The Air New Zealand Cup is the domestic rugby league, rugby’s NBA to the All Black’s “Dream Team,” and Auckland v Canterbury is one of the biggest rivalries. The University offered a special deal on tickets (free beer and a free hat) to this match-up of the most popular teams from the North Island (Auckland) and South Island (Canterbury, based in Christchurch). The league games were supposed to be wide open with higher scores and more rowdy fans, but a quick look at scene inside Eden Park proved otherwise. What was left of the stadium was barely a quarter full, and I say what was left because another part of the stadium, this time the end-zone section that we sat in for the All Blacks game, was nothing but rubble, gone that quickly from the previous game.
Those of us who were there had a good time, but again, the rugby was uneventful, with the exception of one very late and very illegal hit on Canterbury’s Dan Carter, who is also the All Blacks’ star player. Bone crunching hits sound that way in the NFL because of their pads, and this hit made a familiar sound, except there weren’t any pads involved. Auckland ended up seeing their spirited comeback fall short, with the final ten minutes exponentially more exciting than the rest of the game once again. However, nobody ever said that rugby was best enjoyed in person.
This became apparent a few weeks later, when I spent a weekend at the University ski lodge. Being the poor college students that we were, there wasn’t a TV in our lodge, but the lodge next door had one and, well, let’s just say they weren’t expecting so many of us when Ollie, our custodian, asked if we wanted to come watch the game. In an atmosphere that was much more “big game” than actually being at the game, about thirty of us, plus the unfortunate people who let us into their lodge, piled into the living room. A funny thing happened. I actually enjoyed it.
Perhaps it was because with the TV commentary, I now had an idea of what was happening, or maybe it was just because that particular game was much better than the previous ones. It seemed like bodies were flying all over the screen and the action was much faster and more open than the slow, methodical ones before it. On top of that, everyone in the room was really into the game. For every chance, missed call, try, and conversion, a collective cheer (or groan) rose from the partisan All Blacks crowd in the room. Once again, the All Blacks won in dramatic fashion, though on the next occasion where I watched a game on TV in a hotel in Rotorua, they weren’t as lucky. But even that game was better on television, again coming down to the last second with South Africa when the aforementioned Dan Carter almost pulled off a miracle kick to win it.
That rugby is better enjoyed on a couch than from the bleachers is no indictment on the sport. The same can be said about rugby’s closest relative, American football. It was the level of play that I was more discouraged about. Part of the reason that Americans tend to ignore soccer and rugby is that we are accustomed to seeing sports played at the absolute highest level. In the four main professional sports leagues--the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB--the players are, by and large the best in the world, but the American soccer league can’t hold a candle to its European counterparts. This is why most Americans tend to pay attention to soccer during the international tournaments, and if they are regular followers, they usually pay more attention to the overseas leagues. Which leads us to rugby. It’s not that I don’t understand the game. I just find it hard to believe that when played at the highest level, a sport can still not engage an outside viewer. Regardless of opinions on the sport, if you sit someone down in front of the TV for a Brazil-Spain soccer game, it would be impossible for them to not to appreciate what he was seeing. The same cannot be said for rugby, because more often than not, the players aren’t doing much at all. It just doesn’t seem like, even at its highest quality, there is anything to appreciate.
So it’s unlikely that anyone will care if the United States makes it over here to play at a (hopefully) rebuilt Eden Park with the rest of the world at the Rugby World Cup. While they might seize the day and take the rugby world by storm, the more likely scenario is that they’ll be outclassed and outplayed by their opponents whose nations have embraced rugby in way their own never has. But if this is going to be the result, maybe it will be better that America isn’t paying attention. We only care about the best.
In a little under two years time, much of the sporting world will descend on New Zealand for the 2011 Rugby World Cup, and in case you haven’t been following along, America’s Eagles are one step away from qualifying. But let’s say the upcoming home and home series with Uruguay is successful and the Americans qualify to represent our region, along with Canada, on the rugby world’s grandest stage. Is anybody going to care?
In many parts of the world, rugby and soccer reign supreme, with perhaps only the truly baffling sport of cricket matching their popularity. Perhaps you can say the rest of the world just doesn’t have the ingenuity that we, as Americans, had when it comes to creating sports. We saw cricket and turned it into baseball, which at its creation didn’t take days to finish a game, though we’re getting closer and closer with every passing season. We saw rugby and created football, which has arguably surpassed baseball as our national past time. But what about the rest of the world? It’s arrogant to think that their sports are inherently worse than ours just because they aren’t shown on ESPN. So what better occasion to see what all the rugby fuss was about than a semester in New Zealand?
We arrived in Auckland right as both the domestic rugby season and the top international tournaments were beginning. Each year, the All Blacks, New Zealand’s national team, plays Australia (the Wallabies) and South Africa (the Springboks) in the Tri Nations Cup. Aside from being extremely lucrative for all involved, this tournament gives an opportunity for the three best teams in the world to play one another, with the winner usually emerging with the world’s number one ranking.
The All Blacks entered the 2009 edition of the Tri Nations as defending champions and top ranked team in the world, so expectations were high in anticipation of the Wallabies’ trip to Auckland’s Eden Park. The opening match of the Tri Nations also marked the beginning of the All Black’s defense of the Bledisloe Cup, which is a separate trophy the team competes for with the Wallabies every year. With so much at stake, our entire group bought tickets in hopes of seeing another passionate chapter of this rivalry written before our eyes.
Visions of an atmosphere akin to that of an English soccer game, complete with drunken hooligans hurling insults at one another in funny accents, filled our heads. We all had a few drinks and were buzzing with more than just anticipation on the walk to Eden Park. The area surrounding the stadium did nothing to dampen our expectations. Streets were closed down for the thousands of supporters who were making their way into the grounds, and there was an air of excitement similar to every other important sporting event I’ve been to. Nothing could have convinced me that I wasn’t in for something special . . . until I actually got inside.
As it turns out, in preparation for the Rugby World Cup, Eden Park was getting a bit of a face lift. But let me clarify the word "face lift". We aren’t talking some new bathrooms and a bigger press box. I mean face lift as Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight style. An entire section of the stadium down one of the sidelines was just concrete and steel, a bare skeleton of what should be there. Now, it’s one thing to have an open end zone at a football stadium, but an entire sideline? It was downright eerie. All of the sound seemed to pour out that side of the stadium. Hmmm, no wonder we hear of bleachers collapsing at these events.
Then again, that would imply there was a ton of sound to begin with. Maybe everyone’s energy was sucked out the giant hole in the stadium along with the sound. Maybe everyone just expected the All Blacks to win, so there wasn’t much to get excited about, but one thing is for sure--I was expecting a little more passion from the fans. I liken it to a dead crowd at Fenway for a Sox-Yankees game. It just seemed unthinkable.
That isn’t to say that it was a complete bust of an evening. If the cost of admission hadn’t been so high, I would be able to say that seeing the Haka alone was worth it. Before each match, the All Blacks gather at midfield and do the Haka, a Maori war dance. Originally, it was done as a showing of solidarity between the whites and the Maori, but in today’s more tolerant society, it is solely an intimidation tactic. If any guys that size stood face to face and beat their chests and chanted with such fury that it sounded like they were right next to me, even in the cheap seats, then I’d surely reconsider playing rugby against them.
While the Haka provided much better pre-game entertainment than anything we’d see America, the quality on the field of play was sloppy and lackluster. In the first half, an Australian player had broken away and was assured of a try (think touchdown, except you actually have to touch the ball down on the ground) before he inexplicably started running sideways and tried to pass to a teammate, who promptly dropped the ball. Additionally, I found that rugby shares a key similarity with basketball in that nothing happens of consequences until there is about five minutes left, at which point it seemed like the All Blacks started to actually try and pulled out the 22-16 victory.
Even though my first rugby experience was a letdown, I remained steadfast in at least trying to figure out why someone else might like it. The next opportunity presented was an Air New Zealand Cup match between Auckland and Canterbury in the deconstructed confines of Eden Park. The Air New Zealand Cup is the domestic rugby league, rugby’s NBA to the All Black’s “Dream Team,” and Auckland v Canterbury is one of the biggest rivalries. The University offered a special deal on tickets (free beer and a free hat) to this match-up of the most popular teams from the North Island (Auckland) and South Island (Canterbury, based in Christchurch). The league games were supposed to be wide open with higher scores and more rowdy fans, but a quick look at scene inside Eden Park proved otherwise. What was left of the stadium was barely a quarter full, and I say what was left because another part of the stadium, this time the end-zone section that we sat in for the All Blacks game, was nothing but rubble, gone that quickly from the previous game.
Those of us who were there had a good time, but again, the rugby was uneventful, with the exception of one very late and very illegal hit on Canterbury’s Dan Carter, who is also the All Blacks’ star player. Bone crunching hits sound that way in the NFL because of their pads, and this hit made a familiar sound, except there weren’t any pads involved. Auckland ended up seeing their spirited comeback fall short, with the final ten minutes exponentially more exciting than the rest of the game once again. However, nobody ever said that rugby was best enjoyed in person.
This became apparent a few weeks later, when I spent a weekend at the University ski lodge. Being the poor college students that we were, there wasn’t a TV in our lodge, but the lodge next door had one and, well, let’s just say they weren’t expecting so many of us when Ollie, our custodian, asked if we wanted to come watch the game. In an atmosphere that was much more “big game” than actually being at the game, about thirty of us, plus the unfortunate people who let us into their lodge, piled into the living room. A funny thing happened. I actually enjoyed it.
Perhaps it was because with the TV commentary, I now had an idea of what was happening, or maybe it was just because that particular game was much better than the previous ones. It seemed like bodies were flying all over the screen and the action was much faster and more open than the slow, methodical ones before it. On top of that, everyone in the room was really into the game. For every chance, missed call, try, and conversion, a collective cheer (or groan) rose from the partisan All Blacks crowd in the room. Once again, the All Blacks won in dramatic fashion, though on the next occasion where I watched a game on TV in a hotel in Rotorua, they weren’t as lucky. But even that game was better on television, again coming down to the last second with South Africa when the aforementioned Dan Carter almost pulled off a miracle kick to win it.
That rugby is better enjoyed on a couch than from the bleachers is no indictment on the sport. The same can be said about rugby’s closest relative, American football. It was the level of play that I was more discouraged about. Part of the reason that Americans tend to ignore soccer and rugby is that we are accustomed to seeing sports played at the absolute highest level. In the four main professional sports leagues--the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB--the players are, by and large the best in the world, but the American soccer league can’t hold a candle to its European counterparts. This is why most Americans tend to pay attention to soccer during the international tournaments, and if they are regular followers, they usually pay more attention to the overseas leagues. Which leads us to rugby. It’s not that I don’t understand the game. I just find it hard to believe that when played at the highest level, a sport can still not engage an outside viewer. Regardless of opinions on the sport, if you sit someone down in front of the TV for a Brazil-Spain soccer game, it would be impossible for them to not to appreciate what he was seeing. The same cannot be said for rugby, because more often than not, the players aren’t doing much at all. It just doesn’t seem like, even at its highest quality, there is anything to appreciate.
So it’s unlikely that anyone will care if the United States makes it over here to play at a (hopefully) rebuilt Eden Park with the rest of the world at the Rugby World Cup. While they might seize the day and take the rugby world by storm, the more likely scenario is that they’ll be outclassed and outplayed by their opponents whose nations have embraced rugby in way their own never has. But if this is going to be the result, maybe it will be better that America isn’t paying attention. We only care about the best.
"Traveler in New Zealand: A Return to Nature"
John Tucker Bowe
"There is pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea and the music in its roar;
I love not man the less, but Nature more." – Lord Byron
This is a quote that is affiliated with Into the Wild, the book by Jon Krakauer because it captures the essence of what Christopher McCandless believed. After my experiences abroad, I have been inspired to see the rest of “our” country, like the parts explored along McCandless’s adventures to Alaska. It saddens me to know that a free spirit like Christopher will never get to explore more places outside the US because if he were to ever visit a place such as New Zealand, he would be mesmerized. I am by no means nearly as renegade or an extreme traveler as Mr. McCandless because what he did actually blows my mind. After graduating college, Christopher, burned all his money, destroyed all forms of identification, making him basically a nomad. Carrying only what he could fit in his backpack and a huge sack of rice, he hitch-hiked across the country into the unknown. Now most people would consider these actions to be incredibly stupid or ridiculous, but as a student nearing my last few semesters in college with not the slightest idea of what I want to become, I find Christopher’s actions radical and courageous. No matter how inspirational I found these adventures, as a now worldly traveler, I am just starting to relate to the extreme adventures that my own family has been through.
It’s hard to picture some people, especially my parents, as intense world travelers. However, I had the privilege of growing up being inspired by my family’s love for the outdoors. In many ways, I find it a blessing, but also I know that it will be nearly impossible to top what they have been through. I grew up with my parents telling me the stories which they encountered while climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, which is one of the tallest mountains in the world. They hiked over the course of a few weeks through steep inclines, harsh winds, extreme altitudes, and fought off near frostbite. Could I ever see myself doing something like that? Probably not. After medical school, my father spent two summers, one of which my mom accompanied him, in Africa with one of his best friends who grew up there and spoke fluent Swahili. There he camped out having to fall asleep with the sounds of lions and hyenas hidden in the night, to hunt wild game for food, and to fend off native rebels from stealing his car. Do I think that I will ever get the chance to spend a summer in Africa doing what they did? Probably not. Finally, ever since I quit Scouts I have had to look at pictures and hear about my brother’s excellent adventures camping across the country, including spending two months in Philmont, New Mexico. I’ll admit that while listening to the stories of his experiences, I thought that it sounded incredible; however awesome the kayaking, fishing, camping, hunting, and nature sounded, the one drawback for me was that I didn’t know if I could hike a few miles a day with forty pounds on my back. Do I regret not trying? Of course, but I know that my chance at camping with the Scouts has passed.
Now, for once, I am the person in my family with the stories to tell and experiences to share. I’ve been very close with my family, but I guess I was kind of always the outsider when it came to the love for the outdoors. Over the last few years I have become inspired by nature and adventure, which propelled me to study on the other side of the world. Through this experience I have learned a lot about my limits and the kind of traveler I am. Spending five months in a different country no doubt changes people. For me, living basically out of a suitcase for the entire time only added to the adventure. Yes, I had a small crappy dorm room that was probably smaller than most jail cells, but I never felt like it was my home base. After the week trip to the tropical Bay of Islands, which occurred right when we got into Auckland, I jumped at the opportunity to join the ski club. Because of this, I was able to spend two different weekends at the UASC house, meeting new friends from foreign countries while skiing on dormant volcanoes. This was a place I am sure that I would have never seen if I hadn’t joined the club. Numerous weekends I rented a car and traveled to places outside of Auckland, which I would have definitely regretted not visiting if I had just stayed in the city. I went white water rafting over the tallest commercially rafted waterfalls in the world; I drove down to see where Peter Jackson filmed the “Shire” scenes from the first and last Lord of the Rings films--they were actually reconstructing some of the sets in preparation for The Hobbit. I traveled across the beautiful beaches along the Coromandel Peninsula and saw first-hand wild orcas rush the shoreline trying to catch fish a few feet from me.
If I had known better, I probably would have brought a tent and a sleeping bag, but I didn’t have either of the two, so nearly every night away from Auckland I spent in hostels. Now the hostels in Auckland varied. They were by no means luxurious and clean, but some were better than others. I remember in one hostel in Wellington, I found a bloodstain on my pillow; needless to say, I slept without a pillow that night. Most hostels were usually nice, convenient, and cheap, but I think if I were able to camp out more often, it would have been a wilder, more Boy Scout-like experience.
I traveled to New Zealand’s South Island for two weeks on two separate occasions, and they were completely different experiences. My first trip was in the beginning of September with fourteen other friends. We rented three cars and drove from Auckland to Wellington, took the ferry to Picton, and then traveled the west coast all the way down until we finally came back up and ended up flying out of Christchurch. I had a great time, spending the nights in hostels, hiking the Franz Joseph Glacier, horseback riding between mountains, and going on a few Lord of the Rings Tours, which took my breath away. My only regret was when I saw two of my friends skydiving and bungee jumping videos; it looked so cool and even though I knew that in a right mind I would never do something like that, a part of me felt like if I left New Zealand without pushing my limits, I would regret it for the rest of my life.
My second trip to the South Island was different because my parents had come to visit me and were paying for this part of my trip. Like I said before, my parents are outdoor enthusiasts, so they had our whole trip planned out. We were in a program called “Active New Zealand,” and like the name indicated, we were always doing something crazy. First, off the coast of Kaikoura, we went snorkeling with huge seals swimming literally feet from us. I was terrified of the seals, but I was even more on edge about actually seeing something that would eat the seals. In the Queen Charlotte Sound, the three of us went on two arduous day mountain biking treks and then went kayaking the last day. Over the next few days we went kayaking again, exploring caves, and jumping off cliffs, but when we got to Queenstown, the trip escalated. November 2nd and November 3rd are probably the most extreme 24 hours of my life. On 3 o’clock on the 2nd , my dad and I jumped off a 43 meter bungee at the site of the World’s first bungee jump.
The next day there were no clouds in the sky and the temperature was in the 70’s. I skydived from 12,000 feet into the Remarkable Mountain Range, which is the location where Peter Jackson filmed all of his Misty Mountain sequences in the Lord of the Rings. My reaction to this was pure jubilation, and to this moment I cannot imagine doing anything cooler in a more beautiful setting. Afterward, I was running solely on adrenaline, so I immediately signed up for the Nevis Bungee Jump. This jump was 134 meters, which is over three times as high as my first jump and one of the highest in the world. Was I crazy? Yes, and I immediately knew it when I saw where I was jumping off from; it was a little gondola hovering over a huge valley of rocks--absolutely terrifying. One of the things about bungee jumping is that you cannot hesitate, or you’re done. Therefore I didn’t. Once I completed the jumps, I remember feeling of overwhelming accomplishment, like I have never felt before in my life. It’s like after a big test or finally solving a looming problem, only escalated.
Now I would be kidding if I told you that these experiences didn’t change me--they did. For Christ sake, the next week when I got back into Auckland, I bungeed backward off the Auckland Bridge and loved it. The best thing I can say about my time in New Zealand is that it pushed me. I know it’s probably irrelevant, but while I was there I even watched scary movies like The Sixth Sense, Signs, and Paranormal Activity--when I was younger I was scared of Batman the cartoon!
Lord Byron's quote at the top of this writing tells of a person who truly appreciates nature. I tried to emulate that philosophy, along with the simple pleasures that Christopher McCandless loved, during my time traveling New Zealand. When looking back at my time abroad, I know that I have come back a changed person. I have done and seen activities there that I only dreamed I would be able to do. I pushed myself by facing my fears and surpassing all of my expectations. I know that I will probably never have the chance to do all the crazy things my parents did when they were younger, but now I know, if given the chance, I will be jumping all over opportunities. Most importantly, however, I was able to truly appreciate nature in New Zealand. If I were to describe myself as a traveler in New Zealand, I would probably say that I tried to see and do everything; in that sense, I am an accomplished traveler.
"There is pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea and the music in its roar;
I love not man the less, but Nature more." – Lord Byron
This is a quote that is affiliated with Into the Wild, the book by Jon Krakauer because it captures the essence of what Christopher McCandless believed. After my experiences abroad, I have been inspired to see the rest of “our” country, like the parts explored along McCandless’s adventures to Alaska. It saddens me to know that a free spirit like Christopher will never get to explore more places outside the US because if he were to ever visit a place such as New Zealand, he would be mesmerized. I am by no means nearly as renegade or an extreme traveler as Mr. McCandless because what he did actually blows my mind. After graduating college, Christopher, burned all his money, destroyed all forms of identification, making him basically a nomad. Carrying only what he could fit in his backpack and a huge sack of rice, he hitch-hiked across the country into the unknown. Now most people would consider these actions to be incredibly stupid or ridiculous, but as a student nearing my last few semesters in college with not the slightest idea of what I want to become, I find Christopher’s actions radical and courageous. No matter how inspirational I found these adventures, as a now worldly traveler, I am just starting to relate to the extreme adventures that my own family has been through.
It’s hard to picture some people, especially my parents, as intense world travelers. However, I had the privilege of growing up being inspired by my family’s love for the outdoors. In many ways, I find it a blessing, but also I know that it will be nearly impossible to top what they have been through. I grew up with my parents telling me the stories which they encountered while climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, which is one of the tallest mountains in the world. They hiked over the course of a few weeks through steep inclines, harsh winds, extreme altitudes, and fought off near frostbite. Could I ever see myself doing something like that? Probably not. After medical school, my father spent two summers, one of which my mom accompanied him, in Africa with one of his best friends who grew up there and spoke fluent Swahili. There he camped out having to fall asleep with the sounds of lions and hyenas hidden in the night, to hunt wild game for food, and to fend off native rebels from stealing his car. Do I think that I will ever get the chance to spend a summer in Africa doing what they did? Probably not. Finally, ever since I quit Scouts I have had to look at pictures and hear about my brother’s excellent adventures camping across the country, including spending two months in Philmont, New Mexico. I’ll admit that while listening to the stories of his experiences, I thought that it sounded incredible; however awesome the kayaking, fishing, camping, hunting, and nature sounded, the one drawback for me was that I didn’t know if I could hike a few miles a day with forty pounds on my back. Do I regret not trying? Of course, but I know that my chance at camping with the Scouts has passed.
Now, for once, I am the person in my family with the stories to tell and experiences to share. I’ve been very close with my family, but I guess I was kind of always the outsider when it came to the love for the outdoors. Over the last few years I have become inspired by nature and adventure, which propelled me to study on the other side of the world. Through this experience I have learned a lot about my limits and the kind of traveler I am. Spending five months in a different country no doubt changes people. For me, living basically out of a suitcase for the entire time only added to the adventure. Yes, I had a small crappy dorm room that was probably smaller than most jail cells, but I never felt like it was my home base. After the week trip to the tropical Bay of Islands, which occurred right when we got into Auckland, I jumped at the opportunity to join the ski club. Because of this, I was able to spend two different weekends at the UASC house, meeting new friends from foreign countries while skiing on dormant volcanoes. This was a place I am sure that I would have never seen if I hadn’t joined the club. Numerous weekends I rented a car and traveled to places outside of Auckland, which I would have definitely regretted not visiting if I had just stayed in the city. I went white water rafting over the tallest commercially rafted waterfalls in the world; I drove down to see where Peter Jackson filmed the “Shire” scenes from the first and last Lord of the Rings films--they were actually reconstructing some of the sets in preparation for The Hobbit. I traveled across the beautiful beaches along the Coromandel Peninsula and saw first-hand wild orcas rush the shoreline trying to catch fish a few feet from me.
If I had known better, I probably would have brought a tent and a sleeping bag, but I didn’t have either of the two, so nearly every night away from Auckland I spent in hostels. Now the hostels in Auckland varied. They were by no means luxurious and clean, but some were better than others. I remember in one hostel in Wellington, I found a bloodstain on my pillow; needless to say, I slept without a pillow that night. Most hostels were usually nice, convenient, and cheap, but I think if I were able to camp out more often, it would have been a wilder, more Boy Scout-like experience.
I traveled to New Zealand’s South Island for two weeks on two separate occasions, and they were completely different experiences. My first trip was in the beginning of September with fourteen other friends. We rented three cars and drove from Auckland to Wellington, took the ferry to Picton, and then traveled the west coast all the way down until we finally came back up and ended up flying out of Christchurch. I had a great time, spending the nights in hostels, hiking the Franz Joseph Glacier, horseback riding between mountains, and going on a few Lord of the Rings Tours, which took my breath away. My only regret was when I saw two of my friends skydiving and bungee jumping videos; it looked so cool and even though I knew that in a right mind I would never do something like that, a part of me felt like if I left New Zealand without pushing my limits, I would regret it for the rest of my life.
My second trip to the South Island was different because my parents had come to visit me and were paying for this part of my trip. Like I said before, my parents are outdoor enthusiasts, so they had our whole trip planned out. We were in a program called “Active New Zealand,” and like the name indicated, we were always doing something crazy. First, off the coast of Kaikoura, we went snorkeling with huge seals swimming literally feet from us. I was terrified of the seals, but I was even more on edge about actually seeing something that would eat the seals. In the Queen Charlotte Sound, the three of us went on two arduous day mountain biking treks and then went kayaking the last day. Over the next few days we went kayaking again, exploring caves, and jumping off cliffs, but when we got to Queenstown, the trip escalated. November 2nd and November 3rd are probably the most extreme 24 hours of my life. On 3 o’clock on the 2nd , my dad and I jumped off a 43 meter bungee at the site of the World’s first bungee jump.
The next day there were no clouds in the sky and the temperature was in the 70’s. I skydived from 12,000 feet into the Remarkable Mountain Range, which is the location where Peter Jackson filmed all of his Misty Mountain sequences in the Lord of the Rings. My reaction to this was pure jubilation, and to this moment I cannot imagine doing anything cooler in a more beautiful setting. Afterward, I was running solely on adrenaline, so I immediately signed up for the Nevis Bungee Jump. This jump was 134 meters, which is over three times as high as my first jump and one of the highest in the world. Was I crazy? Yes, and I immediately knew it when I saw where I was jumping off from; it was a little gondola hovering over a huge valley of rocks--absolutely terrifying. One of the things about bungee jumping is that you cannot hesitate, or you’re done. Therefore I didn’t. Once I completed the jumps, I remember feeling of overwhelming accomplishment, like I have never felt before in my life. It’s like after a big test or finally solving a looming problem, only escalated.
Now I would be kidding if I told you that these experiences didn’t change me--they did. For Christ sake, the next week when I got back into Auckland, I bungeed backward off the Auckland Bridge and loved it. The best thing I can say about my time in New Zealand is that it pushed me. I know it’s probably irrelevant, but while I was there I even watched scary movies like The Sixth Sense, Signs, and Paranormal Activity--when I was younger I was scared of Batman the cartoon!
Lord Byron's quote at the top of this writing tells of a person who truly appreciates nature. I tried to emulate that philosophy, along with the simple pleasures that Christopher McCandless loved, during my time traveling New Zealand. When looking back at my time abroad, I know that I have come back a changed person. I have done and seen activities there that I only dreamed I would be able to do. I pushed myself by facing my fears and surpassing all of my expectations. I know that I will probably never have the chance to do all the crazy things my parents did when they were younger, but now I know, if given the chance, I will be jumping all over opportunities. Most importantly, however, I was able to truly appreciate nature in New Zealand. If I were to describe myself as a traveler in New Zealand, I would probably say that I tried to see and do everything; in that sense, I am an accomplished traveler.
Rocky, Dirt Miles
Paige Godfrey
“Dad, lift me on your shoulders! I can’t see!” I whined.
My little sister and I were the shortest people in the overly crowded room. Everyone was pushing and shoving, frantically trying to make their way to the front, with little regard for the children they were knocking over. The adults were giants, towering over us like the Eiffel Tower as they stood on their tip-toes to ensure we couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. I was getting restless and tired and wanted nothing more than to sit outside with a swirly, vanilla ice cream cone in my hand. Just then, I was swooped up under the arm pits and held up to see what all the mystery was about.
“Where is it, dad? What am I looking at?”
“It’s right there. Right in front of you, Paige.”
There it was. The thing everyone was going crazy about, taking pictures of, tilting their heads and sighing over. I was instantly disappointed. Why were we forced to travel across the world to see an 8x10 sized painting of some lady whose eyes were always staring at you? The let-down increased my craving for ice cream.
Boarding a plane became a part of my routine when I was around ten years old. By the time I was fifteen, I was able to recite the safety procedures, word-for-word, in the same monotone voice as the stewardess. Traveling was certainly a benefit that came along with growing up with divorced parents. They were constantly competing with each other to see who could excursion on the best vacation. It was islands and tropical getaways with mom and historical, educational experiences with dad. These trips were always inspiring and enlightening. Being able to see a part of the world aside from my small town in New Jersey never failed to be eye-opening. Yet my genuine eye-opening experiences didn’t arise until I began traveling on my own.
I stepped off the plane onto a rocky, dirt runway. That’s what I saw for miles and miles, stretching out into the horizon--rocks and dirt. It was beautiful if you looked at it from the right angle. Destination: Yauri, Peru. It was a town far out in the middle of nowhere. Nowhere I’ve seen before. A town devoid of television, telephones, cars, traffic and loud noises. A town rich with poverty and empty with nothing but hearts of gold. I was instantly welcomed into the town, into their homes and into their families. And that’s exactly how I felt when I left--like a part of their families. Being in Peru for two short weeks was enough time for me to help build a children’s shelter and garden for elders, and to play with orphan kids, experiencing a new culture. But being in Peru for two short weeks was not enough time for me to realize the hardships of the community. It was not enough time for me to feel a sense of accomplishment or achievement. As I walked back up the stairs to the plane, I turned around to see a gathering of the incredible people I met waving goodbye on the rocky, dirt runway. When the plane door shut behind me, it shut out a part of the world that needed my help. I put on my headphones, and we took off.
I have never regretted hiking Machu Picchu, climbing the Eiffel Tower, or lying on the beach in the Bahamas. But the more I began to travel in high school and college, the more my perception of the world began to change. I came to the realization that I could travel the world, visit every continent and every country, but it would never give me enough time to truly immerse myself in another culture. That’s when I knew that studying abroad would provide the ideal opportunity for me to become acclimated with a new culture, rather than seeing a glimpse of it through a typical week long vacation.
“You’re going to come back so tan! You have to learn how to surf! Is your school on the beach?” Australia: The Outback, blond, shaggy-haired surfers, kangaroos, beaches and koalas. Everything seems so fun and carefree. The standard image is postcard perfect, and the only potential flaw is the unbearable summer heat, which really isn’t a flaw at all when you add the ocean to the picture. After doing research on the Australian city, Melbourne, where I would reside for five months abroad, I knew that these Australian icons were simply stereotypes. I was aware that my destination would look more like a New York City concrete park. And still, in the back of my mind, the images of beaches and the hot summer sun were engraved. I imagined my day as waking up in the morning, going to class and then jumping on the next bus to the beach. I imagined a blue sky with nothing but sun, not a cloud in sight. I imagined palm trees and tropical plants lining the city streets. But my imagination led me astray, because what I imagined is opposite from what I found.
I stepped off the plane wearing soft gym shorts and a t-shirt, holding my sweatshirt. It was winter in Australia, but how cold could it possibly get during Australia’s winter? After all, it is Australia. The airport was comfortable. My attire seemed suitable for the temperature. That was until the winter air hit my skin. It was freezing. Goosebumps instantly rose up on my arms and legs as chills ran up and down my spine. The sky was layered with dark, heavy rain clouds. The atmosphere was gray and moist. It was everything I wasn’t expecting Australia to be.
The short bus ride from the airport to campus was filled with skyscrapers, polluted streets and over-sized billboards. “Is this Australia or New Jersey?” I kept questioning myself. But I didn’t let my first impressions overtake my thoughts on the country. I remained open-minded and unbiased towards everything Australia stood for. After a few short weeks, I began to feel like a part of Australia’s culture. I began to feel like an Australian.
Upon arriving in any new country, my first instincts are to point out any differences I notice from home. It’s natural to pick apart little things and compare them to what you are used to. I remember traveling to Spain when I was in middle school. It was the first time I was old enough to recognize the difference in language, driving on the left side of the road, the food, the culture. The whole experience was a culture shock, but one to learn from. The first thing to catch my eye in any unfamiliar place is the landscape--peaks and valleys of mountains, rolling hills, flat desert land, everything. Arriving in Australia was different. For the first time in my twenty years of traveling, I felt like I was home. It was as if the United States floated across the ocean while I was on the plane and traded spots with Australia. The city of Melbourne was just as I had expected- a mini version of New York. People coming and going, rushing from place to place, grabbing a bite on their lunch breaks and living life the way I had always known it to be lived.
Melbourne is an intricate city. The skyscrapers and big, concrete buildings disguise the green botanical gardens, which are located next to the clean river that flows through the city. Cobble stone streets lay hidden in alleys, and trees spring out of nowhere along the sidewalks. It’s beautiful once you take a chance to sit back and take in everything it has to offer. The diversity in Melbourne is simply intriguing. You cannot easily pick an individual out of a crowd and label him or her the “average Australian.” The city is one of the most multicultural places I’ve ever been, which makes it much more interesting. It is a city filled with cultures from all the countries I’ve visited before, and more, rather than a single “Australian culture.” My first few weeks felt as if I was vacationing in New York City, just miles away from home. It wasn’t until I talked to native Australians and traveled around the country that I realized I wasn’t in the United States anymore.
One of the most important lessons I’ve been taught lately in life is that a person can learn more from experience than from a McGraw-Hill text book. After two weeks of living in Australia, I made the effort to meet native Australians and opened myself up to asking them important questions. I was like a little kid running around asking question after question, curious about the world. From this, I learned about the Australian perception of the USA, how Aussies view the world, the lifestyles of Australians, and Australian history. There was so much to learn, and there is still so much to be learned. Once I finally got over the masked reality of Australia being a perfectly landscaped country full of beaches and gorgeous coast lines, I took my first journey to the beach. My first glance at the ocean, and I instantly fell in love with the country. You can look at endless pictures and postcards or watch hundreds of Australian advertisements, but the beauty of the land won’t mean anything until you experience it yourself. The smell of the crisp air, the image of the white waves crashing against crystal blue water, the feel of the white powdery sand between your toes and the taste of the salty sea breeze is just the beginning of a never ending explanation. Yet the landscapes I experienced at the ocean were incomparable to how I felt and what I saw when I journeyed to the Outback.
It was an average spring day in Australia. The air was warm with a cool breeze. The blazing orange-yellow sun shone high against the dark blue sky. The birds’ songs echoed throughout the land. Once the sun began to sink into the horizon, I headed towards a cliff with nothing and no one but myself. It was a long walk--miles upon miles of long rocky, dirt earth below me. I was alone with the occasional company of a lonely kangaroo hopping bye. I hiked to the top of the cliff to find nothing but a personal sized rock to act as my bench. And that very bench became my home. I sat there for hours and hours looking off into the horizon. Millions of thoughts raced through my mind, leaving me entirely thoughtless. The earth stood still. Time stopped. There was nothing in sight but red rocks and dust. Not a tree was in view, not even a single blade of grass. It was an evening filled with nothingness. Nothing in sight, nothing in mind. That very moment was the best moment of my life. That’s when I knew I loved Australia.
You can travel for a week, two weeks or even a month. You can visit tourist traps, museums or even monuments. I’ve seen the Mona Lisa, Eiffel Tower, Machu Picchu and Big Ben. Yet staring at these icons does not compare to how I felt when I was staring at the horizon over a desert filled with nothing. My perception of Australia may have been of the stereotypical surfer hanging out on a beach, surrounded by palm trees and kangaroos, but when I first got here, Australia failed to live up to the images I was expecting. Now, a few weeks after arriving, the image of nothing but rocky, dirt miles of nothingness is what I have come to love.
“Dad, lift me on your shoulders! I can’t see!” I whined.
My little sister and I were the shortest people in the overly crowded room. Everyone was pushing and shoving, frantically trying to make their way to the front, with little regard for the children they were knocking over. The adults were giants, towering over us like the Eiffel Tower as they stood on their tip-toes to ensure we couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. I was getting restless and tired and wanted nothing more than to sit outside with a swirly, vanilla ice cream cone in my hand. Just then, I was swooped up under the arm pits and held up to see what all the mystery was about.
“Where is it, dad? What am I looking at?”
“It’s right there. Right in front of you, Paige.”
There it was. The thing everyone was going crazy about, taking pictures of, tilting their heads and sighing over. I was instantly disappointed. Why were we forced to travel across the world to see an 8x10 sized painting of some lady whose eyes were always staring at you? The let-down increased my craving for ice cream.
Boarding a plane became a part of my routine when I was around ten years old. By the time I was fifteen, I was able to recite the safety procedures, word-for-word, in the same monotone voice as the stewardess. Traveling was certainly a benefit that came along with growing up with divorced parents. They were constantly competing with each other to see who could excursion on the best vacation. It was islands and tropical getaways with mom and historical, educational experiences with dad. These trips were always inspiring and enlightening. Being able to see a part of the world aside from my small town in New Jersey never failed to be eye-opening. Yet my genuine eye-opening experiences didn’t arise until I began traveling on my own.
I stepped off the plane onto a rocky, dirt runway. That’s what I saw for miles and miles, stretching out into the horizon--rocks and dirt. It was beautiful if you looked at it from the right angle. Destination: Yauri, Peru. It was a town far out in the middle of nowhere. Nowhere I’ve seen before. A town devoid of television, telephones, cars, traffic and loud noises. A town rich with poverty and empty with nothing but hearts of gold. I was instantly welcomed into the town, into their homes and into their families. And that’s exactly how I felt when I left--like a part of their families. Being in Peru for two short weeks was enough time for me to help build a children’s shelter and garden for elders, and to play with orphan kids, experiencing a new culture. But being in Peru for two short weeks was not enough time for me to realize the hardships of the community. It was not enough time for me to feel a sense of accomplishment or achievement. As I walked back up the stairs to the plane, I turned around to see a gathering of the incredible people I met waving goodbye on the rocky, dirt runway. When the plane door shut behind me, it shut out a part of the world that needed my help. I put on my headphones, and we took off.
I have never regretted hiking Machu Picchu, climbing the Eiffel Tower, or lying on the beach in the Bahamas. But the more I began to travel in high school and college, the more my perception of the world began to change. I came to the realization that I could travel the world, visit every continent and every country, but it would never give me enough time to truly immerse myself in another culture. That’s when I knew that studying abroad would provide the ideal opportunity for me to become acclimated with a new culture, rather than seeing a glimpse of it through a typical week long vacation.
“You’re going to come back so tan! You have to learn how to surf! Is your school on the beach?” Australia: The Outback, blond, shaggy-haired surfers, kangaroos, beaches and koalas. Everything seems so fun and carefree. The standard image is postcard perfect, and the only potential flaw is the unbearable summer heat, which really isn’t a flaw at all when you add the ocean to the picture. After doing research on the Australian city, Melbourne, where I would reside for five months abroad, I knew that these Australian icons were simply stereotypes. I was aware that my destination would look more like a New York City concrete park. And still, in the back of my mind, the images of beaches and the hot summer sun were engraved. I imagined my day as waking up in the morning, going to class and then jumping on the next bus to the beach. I imagined a blue sky with nothing but sun, not a cloud in sight. I imagined palm trees and tropical plants lining the city streets. But my imagination led me astray, because what I imagined is opposite from what I found.
I stepped off the plane wearing soft gym shorts and a t-shirt, holding my sweatshirt. It was winter in Australia, but how cold could it possibly get during Australia’s winter? After all, it is Australia. The airport was comfortable. My attire seemed suitable for the temperature. That was until the winter air hit my skin. It was freezing. Goosebumps instantly rose up on my arms and legs as chills ran up and down my spine. The sky was layered with dark, heavy rain clouds. The atmosphere was gray and moist. It was everything I wasn’t expecting Australia to be.
The short bus ride from the airport to campus was filled with skyscrapers, polluted streets and over-sized billboards. “Is this Australia or New Jersey?” I kept questioning myself. But I didn’t let my first impressions overtake my thoughts on the country. I remained open-minded and unbiased towards everything Australia stood for. After a few short weeks, I began to feel like a part of Australia’s culture. I began to feel like an Australian.
Upon arriving in any new country, my first instincts are to point out any differences I notice from home. It’s natural to pick apart little things and compare them to what you are used to. I remember traveling to Spain when I was in middle school. It was the first time I was old enough to recognize the difference in language, driving on the left side of the road, the food, the culture. The whole experience was a culture shock, but one to learn from. The first thing to catch my eye in any unfamiliar place is the landscape--peaks and valleys of mountains, rolling hills, flat desert land, everything. Arriving in Australia was different. For the first time in my twenty years of traveling, I felt like I was home. It was as if the United States floated across the ocean while I was on the plane and traded spots with Australia. The city of Melbourne was just as I had expected- a mini version of New York. People coming and going, rushing from place to place, grabbing a bite on their lunch breaks and living life the way I had always known it to be lived.
Melbourne is an intricate city. The skyscrapers and big, concrete buildings disguise the green botanical gardens, which are located next to the clean river that flows through the city. Cobble stone streets lay hidden in alleys, and trees spring out of nowhere along the sidewalks. It’s beautiful once you take a chance to sit back and take in everything it has to offer. The diversity in Melbourne is simply intriguing. You cannot easily pick an individual out of a crowd and label him or her the “average Australian.” The city is one of the most multicultural places I’ve ever been, which makes it much more interesting. It is a city filled with cultures from all the countries I’ve visited before, and more, rather than a single “Australian culture.” My first few weeks felt as if I was vacationing in New York City, just miles away from home. It wasn’t until I talked to native Australians and traveled around the country that I realized I wasn’t in the United States anymore.
One of the most important lessons I’ve been taught lately in life is that a person can learn more from experience than from a McGraw-Hill text book. After two weeks of living in Australia, I made the effort to meet native Australians and opened myself up to asking them important questions. I was like a little kid running around asking question after question, curious about the world. From this, I learned about the Australian perception of the USA, how Aussies view the world, the lifestyles of Australians, and Australian history. There was so much to learn, and there is still so much to be learned. Once I finally got over the masked reality of Australia being a perfectly landscaped country full of beaches and gorgeous coast lines, I took my first journey to the beach. My first glance at the ocean, and I instantly fell in love with the country. You can look at endless pictures and postcards or watch hundreds of Australian advertisements, but the beauty of the land won’t mean anything until you experience it yourself. The smell of the crisp air, the image of the white waves crashing against crystal blue water, the feel of the white powdery sand between your toes and the taste of the salty sea breeze is just the beginning of a never ending explanation. Yet the landscapes I experienced at the ocean were incomparable to how I felt and what I saw when I journeyed to the Outback.
It was an average spring day in Australia. The air was warm with a cool breeze. The blazing orange-yellow sun shone high against the dark blue sky. The birds’ songs echoed throughout the land. Once the sun began to sink into the horizon, I headed towards a cliff with nothing and no one but myself. It was a long walk--miles upon miles of long rocky, dirt earth below me. I was alone with the occasional company of a lonely kangaroo hopping bye. I hiked to the top of the cliff to find nothing but a personal sized rock to act as my bench. And that very bench became my home. I sat there for hours and hours looking off into the horizon. Millions of thoughts raced through my mind, leaving me entirely thoughtless. The earth stood still. Time stopped. There was nothing in sight but red rocks and dust. Not a tree was in view, not even a single blade of grass. It was an evening filled with nothingness. Nothing in sight, nothing in mind. That very moment was the best moment of my life. That’s when I knew I loved Australia.
You can travel for a week, two weeks or even a month. You can visit tourist traps, museums or even monuments. I’ve seen the Mona Lisa, Eiffel Tower, Machu Picchu and Big Ben. Yet staring at these icons does not compare to how I felt when I was staring at the horizon over a desert filled with nothing. My perception of Australia may have been of the stereotypical surfer hanging out on a beach, surrounded by palm trees and kangaroos, but when I first got here, Australia failed to live up to the images I was expecting. Now, a few weeks after arriving, the image of nothing but rocky, dirt miles of nothingness is what I have come to love.
Rou Jia Mo, Wo de Pengyou (Muslim Burger, My Friend)
Kevin Jones
Maybe it’s because I’ve attended Loyola for my first two years of undergraduate work, a campus that is a 10-minute walk from a coffee shop and an hour’s walk from the nearest Chipotle, but I could not be more impressed with the amount of food that is located right outside of the willow tree-line property we attend in Beijing. Our campus has 15,000 students, and as I am constantly reminded by an embarrassed Chinese roommate, it’s a teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy campus for China. Regardless, the square block we populate is surrounded on all four sides by over 100 restaurants, cafes, bakeries, and people just standing outside with a grill trying to make a buck.
If I walk down the six flights of stairs from my room after 6 p.m., make a left out of the building, pass by the school store, the basketball courts, and finally the guard who checks everyone’s temperature as they walk in with a broken thermometer, I’m harassed immediately by a smell combination of skunky body odor and burnt hair. Its English name is stinky tofu, and Chinese people absolutely flock to it. A man seems to have fashioned his own George Foreman to grill the delicacy, and he does it directly in front of our gate. No one says anything, not to him, or the woman hawking jewelry right next to him. Across the street from this pair is a man toting a metal trashcan with a coal fire in the bottom. The whole contraption sits in a wagon. Overtop of the fire he has a covered pan in which he makes popcorn. The man next to him is leaning against a glass case, that has also been placed in a wagon. The glass case is full of warm, unpeeled, whole potatoes on a stick. Next to him is a woman selling books as far ranging as Bill Clinton’s My Life, to Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, to Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History in Time. She also has her supplies in a wagon, but her wagon is connected to a bike. I’ve only seen a police officer drive by once when she’s been there, but when it happened, she took off like those books were heroin and she had two strikes.
I make it to a restaurant. Today I’ve chosen one of my favorite Muslim eateries, a place aptly named “Big Orange Muslim place” because it’s one of the larger restaurants on East Gate, serves Muslim food, and is decorated like the inside of Little Caesar’s. Chinese food is diverse and, usually, delicious. China has 52? 56? 57? I always forget ethnic minorities, each with a different language and different cuisine. On the East Gate this proves itself in Muslim food with over four restaurants that refuse to serve beer or pork on one block. My favorite dish, Da Pan Ji (literally "big plate chicken") is served with garlic, potatoes, onions, and various spices including Zanthoxylum seeds which give my entire mouth a vibrating and numbing sensation. Of course, the meal also includes chicken. Actually, an entire chicken. Head, feet, liver, heart, everything. And, to top it off, instead of cutting the actual meat, or, at least, what we would consider the edible meat, off the chicken in slices, the cook/butcher just cuts directly through the bone. It’s kind of like chicken nuggets without the exterior breading. And if the chicken nuggets weren’t in any particular shape. And if the nuggets still had bones in them. OK, maybe it’s not that much like chicken nuggets. It’s fine though; I just pick up a piece of chicken with my kuai zi (chopsticks), pray that it’s a piece of meat, not an organ, and bite down tenderly. If I hit bone, I just spit. Anywhere. It’s like a steak house with peanut shells; just throw ‘em.
If I don’t make it sound delicious, I apologize; it truly is. And, it’s a fun experience. It does, however, understandably, take a couple tries to get used to.
Right outside the Muslim restaurant is a stand that sells rou jia mo, affectionately termed “Muslim burgers.” They are lamb. I know this for two reasons. 1) It’s a Muslim restaurant, so it can’t be pork, and 2) The lamb is on a rotisserie spit in clear view of the patrons. My consistent order is liang ge (2) and the server, an 18-year-old girl who works 16 hour days, takes a butcher’s knife in one hand and a gardening trowel in the other and slices the meat so it lands perfectly in the hand shovel and tosses it elegantly into a shallow metal bowl. She says a series of words that I have yet to understand but have taken to mean, “Do you want everything on this?” To this, I almost always nod my head and wave my hand irregularly over the fixins she has in front of her. She puts in lettuce, onion, la jiao (which is a type of spice from crushed up peppers and pepper seeds), scallions, tomato paste, and something that looks like chocolate sauce that is absolutely, without a doubt, not chocolate sauce. She takes her trusty butcher’s knife in one hand, and trades her shovel for a 2 pronged fork and flips and spins the entire batch slicing and turning and slicing in a blur of movement and clank of metal. Voila. She takes two buns from the steamer that keeps them warm and stuffs each full with product. She then asks for 7 kuai. 1 dollar. I gladly relinquish it.
The next day, after a three hour class, we’re released into the afternoon air like a pack of scrambling hyenas, all of us trying to pounce on the nearest bowl of jiaozi (dumplings), plate of gong bao ji ding (kung pao chicken), or street food chicken wrap egg thing. This time, we go out the West Gate and turn right. To hungry eyes that haven’t had American food in three months, this is almost more temptation than we can bear. West Gate is on the Western side of our campus, and, coincidentally, is the location to get any Western chain offered in China. Turn left, and it’s KFC and McDonald’s, go straight, and it’s Subway and 7-11. After three months, even convenience store burgers look good. But, today, we press on; we know what we want.
We pass the 24-hour noodle place that usually tastes like the noodles have been sitting out for at least 23 of the 24, pass the China Construction Bank, one of the occupationally-themed, government-owned banks of China to match Agricultural Bank, Merchant’s Bank, and Communications Bank, and stop at the stand to buy some drinks. It looks like a snack shack: made of wood with an open window rather than a door. An ice cream freezer sits in the front, refrigerators stocked with drinks are in the back, and packages of cookies and chips are to the left. To the right, however, are various cuts of meat. Tun (pronounced with a harsh Twar sound in Beijing, and most closely related to kabob in English) sit out with cubes of meat pushed down onto a foot long toothpick. What looks like octopus legs lie directly next to the meat. None of it is covered in any way. We buy our drinks (I have taken a liking toward a peach flavored soda with some Chinese name) and leave. We’ll be back later.
We head to Jiaozi, Baozi, the first restaurant I ate at in Beijing, and even after a bout with food poisoning from the establishment (I ate there four out of five meals), I can’t stop myself from going back. Outside the door is a grill with what appears to be a cylindrical tower of wood placed over top of a pile of coals. The owner, or at least the guy who greets us at the door every single time, no matter which hour of the day, is a round faced man in his mid twenties. He is perpetually smiling. There are only five tables in the ten foot wide, fifteen foot long restaurant and the bistro doesn’t have a door, rather six inch strips of plastic that hang from the top of the jamb and fall to the floor. We step through, and, as always, I get the sensation we’re going through a dirty carwash. The tile is dimpled with little craters; whether that was the original style or a product of time, I try not to think about. Regardless, dirt is caked in each and every valley. We sit down at a table and glance at the menu, written entirely in Chinese placed on the wall at the far end of the room. It’s a force of habit; we’ve known how to say jiaozi since day one. It’s hard to survive in China without knowing the word.
We turn to the man and order two trays for everyone in the party. He repeats the order to confirm and goes over to the cylindrical tower of wood which is used to keep the premade jiaozi warm. He grabs the order and brings it to us immediately, placing a stack of steaming, circular trays in the middle of the table. He goes to roll more dumplings at a countertop next to our table; not hesitating at all to replenish his depleted stock. A stack of ceramic bowls is at the end of our table. I give one to everyone, then grab an open beer bottle that’s also sitting at the end of the table. I pour some of its contents into the dish: vinegar. I pass the bottle around and in turn I receive a cookie jar full of la jiao and spoon some into the vinegar. I grab my chopsticks and stir the concoction, take my stick out and suck on the end to confirm the spiciness. Perfect. I ask the owner for some da suan, and when he returns with the bulb of garlic, I break a clove off for everyone and start peeling the skin off my own.
A TV is on in the upper left corner playing Lamb Lamb, a Chinese version of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, and I take my chopsticks and pluck a dumpling. They always stick to the bottom of the tray because the base is woven wood that allows the steam from the heater to go through the entire tower of trays, keeping every jiaozi warm. I dunk the dumpling in the sauce, take a tiny bite of garlic, and pop the dough and meat into my mouth, biting down tenderly. It’s like magic. The bitter of the vinegar, the spice of the la jiao, and the garlic of the garlic combine with the salt used in the jiaozi recipe and it’s like a volcano on tastebuds. My lips unconsciously curl into a smile. I eat the last 19 jiaozi that come in my two trays, barely looking up or talking to the friends I’m with. This is my moment to savor. When it’s over, my eyes are still closed as I happily ask the jolly host/waiter/owner for the bill. 8 kuai. The unconscious smile remains on my face.
We walk outside, back to the snack shack. We can hear the crackling of oil from the minute we walk through the plastic drapes and we can see steam rising from the fryer as we approach. A woman stands behind a circular griddle. A tub of batter sits next to her and she spoons some out onto the hot metal and lets it seep out to the edges. It looks like she’s making a crepe until she cracks an egg on top and uses the ladle to make sure every inch of the frying dough is covered. She lets it sit for a second before taking something that looks like chicken out of a bag and placing it on the burner. She pauses again, this time for a minute or so. She takes a metal spatula out and slides it quickly under the dough. She asks, “yao jiao ma?” and I answer “yao” because I love the spice, even though I can still feel it tingling on my lips from my dumpling dipping sauce. She spoons some crushed peppers onto the chicken, puts the chicken on the crepe, takes a piece of lettuce from the bench sitting next to her, places it on the chicken, folds the crepe in on itself, puts the whole thing in a plastic bag, spins the bag for good measure, and hands it to me. 3.5 kuai.
Sold.
Maybe it’s because I’ve attended Loyola for my first two years of undergraduate work, a campus that is a 10-minute walk from a coffee shop and an hour’s walk from the nearest Chipotle, but I could not be more impressed with the amount of food that is located right outside of the willow tree-line property we attend in Beijing. Our campus has 15,000 students, and as I am constantly reminded by an embarrassed Chinese roommate, it’s a teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy campus for China. Regardless, the square block we populate is surrounded on all four sides by over 100 restaurants, cafes, bakeries, and people just standing outside with a grill trying to make a buck.
If I walk down the six flights of stairs from my room after 6 p.m., make a left out of the building, pass by the school store, the basketball courts, and finally the guard who checks everyone’s temperature as they walk in with a broken thermometer, I’m harassed immediately by a smell combination of skunky body odor and burnt hair. Its English name is stinky tofu, and Chinese people absolutely flock to it. A man seems to have fashioned his own George Foreman to grill the delicacy, and he does it directly in front of our gate. No one says anything, not to him, or the woman hawking jewelry right next to him. Across the street from this pair is a man toting a metal trashcan with a coal fire in the bottom. The whole contraption sits in a wagon. Overtop of the fire he has a covered pan in which he makes popcorn. The man next to him is leaning against a glass case, that has also been placed in a wagon. The glass case is full of warm, unpeeled, whole potatoes on a stick. Next to him is a woman selling books as far ranging as Bill Clinton’s My Life, to Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, to Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History in Time. She also has her supplies in a wagon, but her wagon is connected to a bike. I’ve only seen a police officer drive by once when she’s been there, but when it happened, she took off like those books were heroin and she had two strikes.
I make it to a restaurant. Today I’ve chosen one of my favorite Muslim eateries, a place aptly named “Big Orange Muslim place” because it’s one of the larger restaurants on East Gate, serves Muslim food, and is decorated like the inside of Little Caesar’s. Chinese food is diverse and, usually, delicious. China has 52? 56? 57? I always forget ethnic minorities, each with a different language and different cuisine. On the East Gate this proves itself in Muslim food with over four restaurants that refuse to serve beer or pork on one block. My favorite dish, Da Pan Ji (literally "big plate chicken") is served with garlic, potatoes, onions, and various spices including Zanthoxylum seeds which give my entire mouth a vibrating and numbing sensation. Of course, the meal also includes chicken. Actually, an entire chicken. Head, feet, liver, heart, everything. And, to top it off, instead of cutting the actual meat, or, at least, what we would consider the edible meat, off the chicken in slices, the cook/butcher just cuts directly through the bone. It’s kind of like chicken nuggets without the exterior breading. And if the chicken nuggets weren’t in any particular shape. And if the nuggets still had bones in them. OK, maybe it’s not that much like chicken nuggets. It’s fine though; I just pick up a piece of chicken with my kuai zi (chopsticks), pray that it’s a piece of meat, not an organ, and bite down tenderly. If I hit bone, I just spit. Anywhere. It’s like a steak house with peanut shells; just throw ‘em.
If I don’t make it sound delicious, I apologize; it truly is. And, it’s a fun experience. It does, however, understandably, take a couple tries to get used to.
Right outside the Muslim restaurant is a stand that sells rou jia mo, affectionately termed “Muslim burgers.” They are lamb. I know this for two reasons. 1) It’s a Muslim restaurant, so it can’t be pork, and 2) The lamb is on a rotisserie spit in clear view of the patrons. My consistent order is liang ge (2) and the server, an 18-year-old girl who works 16 hour days, takes a butcher’s knife in one hand and a gardening trowel in the other and slices the meat so it lands perfectly in the hand shovel and tosses it elegantly into a shallow metal bowl. She says a series of words that I have yet to understand but have taken to mean, “Do you want everything on this?” To this, I almost always nod my head and wave my hand irregularly over the fixins she has in front of her. She puts in lettuce, onion, la jiao (which is a type of spice from crushed up peppers and pepper seeds), scallions, tomato paste, and something that looks like chocolate sauce that is absolutely, without a doubt, not chocolate sauce. She takes her trusty butcher’s knife in one hand, and trades her shovel for a 2 pronged fork and flips and spins the entire batch slicing and turning and slicing in a blur of movement and clank of metal. Voila. She takes two buns from the steamer that keeps them warm and stuffs each full with product. She then asks for 7 kuai. 1 dollar. I gladly relinquish it.
The next day, after a three hour class, we’re released into the afternoon air like a pack of scrambling hyenas, all of us trying to pounce on the nearest bowl of jiaozi (dumplings), plate of gong bao ji ding (kung pao chicken), or street food chicken wrap egg thing. This time, we go out the West Gate and turn right. To hungry eyes that haven’t had American food in three months, this is almost more temptation than we can bear. West Gate is on the Western side of our campus, and, coincidentally, is the location to get any Western chain offered in China. Turn left, and it’s KFC and McDonald’s, go straight, and it’s Subway and 7-11. After three months, even convenience store burgers look good. But, today, we press on; we know what we want.
We pass the 24-hour noodle place that usually tastes like the noodles have been sitting out for at least 23 of the 24, pass the China Construction Bank, one of the occupationally-themed, government-owned banks of China to match Agricultural Bank, Merchant’s Bank, and Communications Bank, and stop at the stand to buy some drinks. It looks like a snack shack: made of wood with an open window rather than a door. An ice cream freezer sits in the front, refrigerators stocked with drinks are in the back, and packages of cookies and chips are to the left. To the right, however, are various cuts of meat. Tun (pronounced with a harsh Twar sound in Beijing, and most closely related to kabob in English) sit out with cubes of meat pushed down onto a foot long toothpick. What looks like octopus legs lie directly next to the meat. None of it is covered in any way. We buy our drinks (I have taken a liking toward a peach flavored soda with some Chinese name) and leave. We’ll be back later.
We head to Jiaozi, Baozi, the first restaurant I ate at in Beijing, and even after a bout with food poisoning from the establishment (I ate there four out of five meals), I can’t stop myself from going back. Outside the door is a grill with what appears to be a cylindrical tower of wood placed over top of a pile of coals. The owner, or at least the guy who greets us at the door every single time, no matter which hour of the day, is a round faced man in his mid twenties. He is perpetually smiling. There are only five tables in the ten foot wide, fifteen foot long restaurant and the bistro doesn’t have a door, rather six inch strips of plastic that hang from the top of the jamb and fall to the floor. We step through, and, as always, I get the sensation we’re going through a dirty carwash. The tile is dimpled with little craters; whether that was the original style or a product of time, I try not to think about. Regardless, dirt is caked in each and every valley. We sit down at a table and glance at the menu, written entirely in Chinese placed on the wall at the far end of the room. It’s a force of habit; we’ve known how to say jiaozi since day one. It’s hard to survive in China without knowing the word.
We turn to the man and order two trays for everyone in the party. He repeats the order to confirm and goes over to the cylindrical tower of wood which is used to keep the premade jiaozi warm. He grabs the order and brings it to us immediately, placing a stack of steaming, circular trays in the middle of the table. He goes to roll more dumplings at a countertop next to our table; not hesitating at all to replenish his depleted stock. A stack of ceramic bowls is at the end of our table. I give one to everyone, then grab an open beer bottle that’s also sitting at the end of the table. I pour some of its contents into the dish: vinegar. I pass the bottle around and in turn I receive a cookie jar full of la jiao and spoon some into the vinegar. I grab my chopsticks and stir the concoction, take my stick out and suck on the end to confirm the spiciness. Perfect. I ask the owner for some da suan, and when he returns with the bulb of garlic, I break a clove off for everyone and start peeling the skin off my own.
A TV is on in the upper left corner playing Lamb Lamb, a Chinese version of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, and I take my chopsticks and pluck a dumpling. They always stick to the bottom of the tray because the base is woven wood that allows the steam from the heater to go through the entire tower of trays, keeping every jiaozi warm. I dunk the dumpling in the sauce, take a tiny bite of garlic, and pop the dough and meat into my mouth, biting down tenderly. It’s like magic. The bitter of the vinegar, the spice of the la jiao, and the garlic of the garlic combine with the salt used in the jiaozi recipe and it’s like a volcano on tastebuds. My lips unconsciously curl into a smile. I eat the last 19 jiaozi that come in my two trays, barely looking up or talking to the friends I’m with. This is my moment to savor. When it’s over, my eyes are still closed as I happily ask the jolly host/waiter/owner for the bill. 8 kuai. The unconscious smile remains on my face.
We walk outside, back to the snack shack. We can hear the crackling of oil from the minute we walk through the plastic drapes and we can see steam rising from the fryer as we approach. A woman stands behind a circular griddle. A tub of batter sits next to her and she spoons some out onto the hot metal and lets it seep out to the edges. It looks like she’s making a crepe until she cracks an egg on top and uses the ladle to make sure every inch of the frying dough is covered. She lets it sit for a second before taking something that looks like chicken out of a bag and placing it on the burner. She pauses again, this time for a minute or so. She takes a metal spatula out and slides it quickly under the dough. She asks, “yao jiao ma?” and I answer “yao” because I love the spice, even though I can still feel it tingling on my lips from my dumpling dipping sauce. She spoons some crushed peppers onto the chicken, puts the chicken on the crepe, takes a piece of lettuce from the bench sitting next to her, places it on the chicken, folds the crepe in on itself, puts the whole thing in a plastic bag, spins the bag for good measure, and hands it to me. 3.5 kuai.
Sold.
Now Leaving the EU
Lisa Preti
I hop off the metro and run up the stairs, emerge from the underground and am greeted by the hustle of Christianhavn, one of Copenhagen’s boroughs. It is 5 o’clock, and true to Danish form, just about everyone is shutting down shop for the night and heading home. The streets are filled with bikes, cars, and pedestrians--rush hour at its finest. The lane next to me on the sidewalk is heavy in volume, riddled with bikes whizzing past each other at an alarming rate. Bike bells, which serve the same purpose as car horns, can be heard as aggressive pedalers pass leisurely bikers. The further I walk from the center of Christianhavn, the less traffic I see and hear. My destination resides about three blocks from the metro station. I am headed for Christiania, Denmark’s very own “free state,” where it is possible to leave responsibilities, generic civilization, and even the European Union, behind.
I walk through the archway that leads me into Christiania. A man peacefully playing Bob Marley’s "Buffalo Soldier" on his acoustic guitar welcomes me. To my left is a small coffee shop. Ahead there is a concert venue; from the outside it looks like just the façade of a run down building, but on the inside there is an intimate stage and dance floor, and tables to sit at and enjoy the music.
I walk further and reach the top of Pusher Street, notoriously famous, and of late, infamous for its liberal sale of marijuana. Upon reaching Pusher Street, one may not initially realize the activities that casually take place there. The first indication that something less than innocent is happening are the numerous signs that read “NO PHOTO!” and picture cameras with slashes through them, ironically placed as nonchalantly as no smoking signs. There is an open-air market at the top of the street selling hemp clothing, hats, gloves, and a plethora of cannabis paraphernalia. Just a few meters away there is another open-air market; only this market is unique, as the vendors sell marijuana as casually as if they are selling hotdogs. There are a multitude of stands where buyers of all ages can walk up, purchase the strand of their choice, and make the transaction without a fear of penalty. Pusher Street is Christiania’s most densely populated area throughout the day, decorated with tourists and locals alike. Farther down Pusher Street, local Christianites enjoy a beer and each other’s company. There is a bakery open 24 hours a day and a woodwork shop.
Some people identify with Christiania as a place to safely and quickly purchase marijuana; if asked to describe it, most would say Pusher Street is the only area they could shed light on. Pusher Street is just one street in an 85-acre neighborhood. It is hardly an accurate representation of what Christiania is actually all about.
Christiania was born in 1971, when a group of hippies moved into the closed army barracks that once stood there. Their aim was the run a free state, a society based on putting the responsibility of the well-being of the community on the people who live there. Hundreds of free spirits flocked to this “free town,” and helped establish the laid back lifestyle that still exists there today. One aspect of Christiania was its liberal drug culture, and after a few failed attempts to shut it down, Christiania was named by the Danish Parliament s the city’s “social experiment.” The title became permanent in 1983, and though there had been more controversy of late, Christiania has existed since then relatively unchanged. Those who live in Christiania recognize it as a free state and a separate entity from Copenhagen, and thus do not associate itself as a member of the European Union.
I walk past Pusher Street, meandering through the dogs that roam freely throughout the streets, minding their own business. As I walk, Pusher Street disappears behind, as do the voices and the traces of marijuana as well. I see a wall tagged with the words: “NO RACISM” and “NO NAZIS.” I walk past one of Christiania’s restaurants, well-renowned within the community and in Copenhagen as well. I enter Christiania’s residential area; quaint yet quirky homes built close together, symbolizing the community the residents represent. The homes remind me of something I may find in an adult fairy tale--they are painted bold colors and contorted into different shapes. Some have spiral staircases leading to their second story front doors. Because there are only walking streets, and no cars allowed, every home has at least one bike leaning up against its side.
I follow a dirt path up a small hill. The path is lined with golden leaves, and the setting evening sun shines through the trees. Walking along the path, I notice more houses appear out of nowhere. A glance into a window shows a woman and a man watching television, about to sit down for dinner. It is so easy to lose sight of the fact that people live their everyday lives here, they raise their children here. Christiania covers 85-acres, and though this may not seem overwhelmingly large, where I stand may as well be 85 miles away from Pusher Street.
The number of people living in Christiania is somewhat stagnated, as the size of it cannot grow and thus the population has capped. It is a competitive process to live in this neighborhood, and the citizens must approve one trying to move there before he or she is admitted. Homes in Christiania often stay within families; parents pass the homes down to their children and so on. On a recent study tour to Christiania, my friend was given a walking tour by one of the locals, an original Christianite. She explained that when she and her husband could no longer lived there, her son, a business executive who lived outside of Christiania, would inherit the house. She also shed important light on the very basis of what Christiania stands for. This woman has lived in Christiania since its birth; she has seen the drug civilization grow and become an integral part of what goes on in her home community. She does not, however, identify Christiania with the marijuana culture. To her, Christiania is about so much more than the hash; it’s about the idea of living in a community where each person is responsible for its upkeep. They pay taxes, run businesses, and live the same lives as those who reside outside the protective walls.
Those who buy hash from Christiania and leave immediately after are connected with it on a very superficial level. Similarly to the Empire State Building in New York City, marijuana is not the only reason to visit Christiania. The Empire State Building is an extremely significant part of Manhattan, but it by no means defines it. Manhattan is rich in culture and has so much more to offer than what goes on in that building. Its grandeur and presence in the city is impossible to ignore, but is just the very tip of the iceberg as far as things to see there. Christiania is known for its liberal sale of marijuana, but has so much more to offer. It’s aesthetically beautiful, surrounded on one side by a pristine lake that separates Christiania from the noise and hubbub of city life. It is a peaceful oasis in the middle of a capital city, and by no means provides pleasure only to those who smoke marijuana. The entire mentality of Christiania is acceptance; they would allow anyone willing to abide by their rules to live there if space allowed. Though some people are strongly against the sale and use of marijuana, they respect this practice and don’t push their feelings on anyone living outside of their community; they keep the drug culture confined within their walls. They are not drug addicts or pushers of serious drugs; the sale or use of hard drugs is illegal in Christiania. It is also illegal to steal or to carry a weapon. The people of Christiania are by no means barbaric or uncivilized; they are simply a group of free spirited people unwilling to let go of the 1970s, yet more than willing to share them with anyone who is interested.
As I finish my walking tour of Christiania I feel as though I have entered another dimension. I have never experienced anything quite like what goes on there, and have to remind myself that just outside this oasis was the fast-paced, noisy city life that I have become accustomed to. I admire those who live in Christiania; free souls who were brave enough to start their own community, and intelligent and crafty enough to have it succeed. Running a state is no easy task, yet the people of Christiania have made it work for over thirty years now. It is fascinating to see how such a culture has evolved from the process of creating a state; the people who live there are undoubtedly a different set of people that live five minutes outside it’s walls. To them, Christiania is about peaceful rebellion, about striving in a community not run by “the establishment.” I take one more walk down Pusher Street, heading towards the exit. Two totem poles stand erect at the top of Pusher, and through them the busy streets of Copenhagen appear. Attached to the two totem poles is a sign that reads in cursive, “Now Entering the EU.” Back to reality, I think, as I step underneath the sign. Just as quickly as a time traveled back to the 70’s, it is 2009 once again.
I hop off the metro and run up the stairs, emerge from the underground and am greeted by the hustle of Christianhavn, one of Copenhagen’s boroughs. It is 5 o’clock, and true to Danish form, just about everyone is shutting down shop for the night and heading home. The streets are filled with bikes, cars, and pedestrians--rush hour at its finest. The lane next to me on the sidewalk is heavy in volume, riddled with bikes whizzing past each other at an alarming rate. Bike bells, which serve the same purpose as car horns, can be heard as aggressive pedalers pass leisurely bikers. The further I walk from the center of Christianhavn, the less traffic I see and hear. My destination resides about three blocks from the metro station. I am headed for Christiania, Denmark’s very own “free state,” where it is possible to leave responsibilities, generic civilization, and even the European Union, behind.
I walk through the archway that leads me into Christiania. A man peacefully playing Bob Marley’s "Buffalo Soldier" on his acoustic guitar welcomes me. To my left is a small coffee shop. Ahead there is a concert venue; from the outside it looks like just the façade of a run down building, but on the inside there is an intimate stage and dance floor, and tables to sit at and enjoy the music.
I walk further and reach the top of Pusher Street, notoriously famous, and of late, infamous for its liberal sale of marijuana. Upon reaching Pusher Street, one may not initially realize the activities that casually take place there. The first indication that something less than innocent is happening are the numerous signs that read “NO PHOTO!” and picture cameras with slashes through them, ironically placed as nonchalantly as no smoking signs. There is an open-air market at the top of the street selling hemp clothing, hats, gloves, and a plethora of cannabis paraphernalia. Just a few meters away there is another open-air market; only this market is unique, as the vendors sell marijuana as casually as if they are selling hotdogs. There are a multitude of stands where buyers of all ages can walk up, purchase the strand of their choice, and make the transaction without a fear of penalty. Pusher Street is Christiania’s most densely populated area throughout the day, decorated with tourists and locals alike. Farther down Pusher Street, local Christianites enjoy a beer and each other’s company. There is a bakery open 24 hours a day and a woodwork shop.
Some people identify with Christiania as a place to safely and quickly purchase marijuana; if asked to describe it, most would say Pusher Street is the only area they could shed light on. Pusher Street is just one street in an 85-acre neighborhood. It is hardly an accurate representation of what Christiania is actually all about.
Christiania was born in 1971, when a group of hippies moved into the closed army barracks that once stood there. Their aim was the run a free state, a society based on putting the responsibility of the well-being of the community on the people who live there. Hundreds of free spirits flocked to this “free town,” and helped establish the laid back lifestyle that still exists there today. One aspect of Christiania was its liberal drug culture, and after a few failed attempts to shut it down, Christiania was named by the Danish Parliament s the city’s “social experiment.” The title became permanent in 1983, and though there had been more controversy of late, Christiania has existed since then relatively unchanged. Those who live in Christiania recognize it as a free state and a separate entity from Copenhagen, and thus do not associate itself as a member of the European Union.
I walk past Pusher Street, meandering through the dogs that roam freely throughout the streets, minding their own business. As I walk, Pusher Street disappears behind, as do the voices and the traces of marijuana as well. I see a wall tagged with the words: “NO RACISM” and “NO NAZIS.” I walk past one of Christiania’s restaurants, well-renowned within the community and in Copenhagen as well. I enter Christiania’s residential area; quaint yet quirky homes built close together, symbolizing the community the residents represent. The homes remind me of something I may find in an adult fairy tale--they are painted bold colors and contorted into different shapes. Some have spiral staircases leading to their second story front doors. Because there are only walking streets, and no cars allowed, every home has at least one bike leaning up against its side.
I follow a dirt path up a small hill. The path is lined with golden leaves, and the setting evening sun shines through the trees. Walking along the path, I notice more houses appear out of nowhere. A glance into a window shows a woman and a man watching television, about to sit down for dinner. It is so easy to lose sight of the fact that people live their everyday lives here, they raise their children here. Christiania covers 85-acres, and though this may not seem overwhelmingly large, where I stand may as well be 85 miles away from Pusher Street.
The number of people living in Christiania is somewhat stagnated, as the size of it cannot grow and thus the population has capped. It is a competitive process to live in this neighborhood, and the citizens must approve one trying to move there before he or she is admitted. Homes in Christiania often stay within families; parents pass the homes down to their children and so on. On a recent study tour to Christiania, my friend was given a walking tour by one of the locals, an original Christianite. She explained that when she and her husband could no longer lived there, her son, a business executive who lived outside of Christiania, would inherit the house. She also shed important light on the very basis of what Christiania stands for. This woman has lived in Christiania since its birth; she has seen the drug civilization grow and become an integral part of what goes on in her home community. She does not, however, identify Christiania with the marijuana culture. To her, Christiania is about so much more than the hash; it’s about the idea of living in a community where each person is responsible for its upkeep. They pay taxes, run businesses, and live the same lives as those who reside outside the protective walls.
Those who buy hash from Christiania and leave immediately after are connected with it on a very superficial level. Similarly to the Empire State Building in New York City, marijuana is not the only reason to visit Christiania. The Empire State Building is an extremely significant part of Manhattan, but it by no means defines it. Manhattan is rich in culture and has so much more to offer than what goes on in that building. Its grandeur and presence in the city is impossible to ignore, but is just the very tip of the iceberg as far as things to see there. Christiania is known for its liberal sale of marijuana, but has so much more to offer. It’s aesthetically beautiful, surrounded on one side by a pristine lake that separates Christiania from the noise and hubbub of city life. It is a peaceful oasis in the middle of a capital city, and by no means provides pleasure only to those who smoke marijuana. The entire mentality of Christiania is acceptance; they would allow anyone willing to abide by their rules to live there if space allowed. Though some people are strongly against the sale and use of marijuana, they respect this practice and don’t push their feelings on anyone living outside of their community; they keep the drug culture confined within their walls. They are not drug addicts or pushers of serious drugs; the sale or use of hard drugs is illegal in Christiania. It is also illegal to steal or to carry a weapon. The people of Christiania are by no means barbaric or uncivilized; they are simply a group of free spirited people unwilling to let go of the 1970s, yet more than willing to share them with anyone who is interested.
As I finish my walking tour of Christiania I feel as though I have entered another dimension. I have never experienced anything quite like what goes on there, and have to remind myself that just outside this oasis was the fast-paced, noisy city life that I have become accustomed to. I admire those who live in Christiania; free souls who were brave enough to start their own community, and intelligent and crafty enough to have it succeed. Running a state is no easy task, yet the people of Christiania have made it work for over thirty years now. It is fascinating to see how such a culture has evolved from the process of creating a state; the people who live there are undoubtedly a different set of people that live five minutes outside it’s walls. To them, Christiania is about peaceful rebellion, about striving in a community not run by “the establishment.” I take one more walk down Pusher Street, heading towards the exit. Two totem poles stand erect at the top of Pusher, and through them the busy streets of Copenhagen appear. Attached to the two totem poles is a sign that reads in cursive, “Now Entering the EU.” Back to reality, I think, as I step underneath the sign. Just as quickly as a time traveled back to the 70’s, it is 2009 once again.
Koffie Onan
Amanda Stoll
“Double latte with caramel no whip,” “medium coffee two sugars with skim milk,” “two decaf - one with whole milk one with Splenda.” These are common phrases I hear each morning while waiting in line for my daily iced coffee lite and sweet. The employees scramble behind the counter - toasting bagels, refilling coffee machines, and yelling through mini microphones to customers at the drive-thru window. I use my debit card so that I do not have to fuss with coins and change, as everyone is in a hurry. My order is ready and yelled out by the teenage worker who places it on the counter and moves on to the next order without stopping to see if I have retrieved my iced coffee. I am out the door and back to my car within five minutes since I arrived. My day, like thousands of other Americans, has begun with a trip to my local Dunkin’ Donuts.
After following this daily ritual since my high school years, imagine my alarm when I arrived in Leuven, Belgium and found no chain coffee shops! How was I going to get my morning caffeine fix that I so desperately needed as I ran to class? I visited a few local coffee shops in Leuven but hardly any offered ‘take away’ cups, and when asking about iced coffee, I received looks of confusion, disbelief, and disgust at this concept. At first, I panicked. I did not want to accept this foreign culture where I could not carry out my normal routine. “How do these people live like this?” was a common phrase exchanged among me and a few of my American friends who shared this same love for our daily, complicated coffee order.
After about two weeks, I started to get over this initial culture shock. I realized that I could, indeed, survive without drinking coffee in the morning. I had to--I did not have time during the 20 minutes I allotted myself to get ready before class to make my own and I was not about to give up one moment of sleep. Besides, transporting coffee while on bike in Leuven would prove quite a difficult challenge. And so I gave it up, cold turkey, although not by choice. One afternoon my Belgian friend, Katrien, asked if I would like to go get coffee with her at her favorite place. Although I had accepted my lack of iced coffee fate, I was always looking for opportunities to try a new place, hoping this one might be the one that followed the American way of life. With this optimism I joined my friend in a bike ride down Parijstraat to Koffie Onan.
As soon as we locked our bikes and crossed the cobblestone street, I knew this was not going to be like any Starbucks I frequented in the United States. Outside of Koffie Onan were a few tables surrounded by wicker chairs for those customers brave enough to face the ever-changing Belgian weather. There was also a large sign in the shape of a coffee cup advertising the coffee and latte of the week. A bell jingled as Katrien pushed open the door and we entered the shop. I was completely taken aback when the shop owner, whose name I later learned was Pieter, addressed Katrien by name with a smile and asked about her studies. This was quite a contrast to my American coffee experience in which my face is only associated with my usual daily venti iced coffee lite and sweet. Katrien and Pieter shared a short conversation while I looked over the menu, deciding what to order. I went with the latte of the week, Irish cream.
After paying for my coffee, I stood next to the counter preparing to quickly gather my order and get out of the way for other customers. Anke, another employee, who I later learned was Pieter’s wife, leaned over the counter and told me, “You can select a chocolate piece and sit down if you’d like.” I looked to the left and found a side table sporting sugar, cream, and a bowl of mini chocolate bars; with every order, one receives a free chocolate at Koffie Onan. This is another small, but meaningful difference between this coffee shop and America--in America, nothing is free. If you get a complimentary anything, the retailer has raised the price to cover this so-called gift. However, at Koffie Onan, the price for a coffee, two euro fifty, is the same as most other Belgian coffee shops. The chocolate is an actual gift, because this family run coffee shop really does care about its customers.
My latte was presented to me with a foamy swirl in a mug with a spoon and a tiny cup of cream all placed on a wooden serving tray. Also on my tray was a frequent visitor card with one punch--after ten punches your next coffee is free. This reminded me of the buyer cards the coffee stand on campus back at Loyola Maryland had started sporting last semester--a kind similarity connecting my two worlds. Katrien and I sat sipping our coffees for over an hour. This was quite different from the American way of choking down a quick cup of coffee before rushing off to your next activity. Coffee breaks here are not to prepare you to multitask all day or to cure that hangover from last night; they are for enjoyment and relaxation. Equally, Anke and Pieter did not try to hustle us along, even after we had finished and were sitting talking, quite unlike the United States where employees are anxious to please the next paying customer. In America, it is not acceptable to sit in coffee shops, simply shooting the breeze, for an extended period of time. People who do this are considered lazy, and are negatively judged by both other customers, typically on their Blackberry carrying on five different conversations and spilling their coffee to-go as they rush to their next important meeting, as well as employees in constant motion to clean tables and take new orders. This attitude is not found in Belgium. Katrien and I sat enjoying the taste of our drinks and our conversation, just as many people seated around us did.
I asked Katrien, “Why is Koffie Onan your favorite coffee place in Leuven?” She responded by telling me, “The coffee is good, but you can get good coffee a lot of places. I really like it here because of Pieter and Anke, they’re always interested in hearing what I’ve been up to and it makes for such a nice time!”
In America, I base my coffee shop choice on proximity, efficiency, and crowds; to hear Katrien define her choice based on the staff was definitely different from my own experience. It reminded me of one of the readings, “Yearning for the Sun” by Frances Mayes. In this interview, Frances explains that her love for Italy is based on the individuals she encounters there. “What keeps us coming here forever is the people – that was the beginning. After that I always came to Italy anytime I could” (A Sense of Place, p. 33). Of course, this strong connection with a particular place because of the people there can be found in America as well, such as in hometowns or a small college campus, but it is not found in the chain coffee shops that exist throughout the United States. I would have no problem going to the local Starbucks rather than Dunkin’ Donuts if the line was too long, whereas in Leuven, Katrien always prefers Koffie Onan because of the special bond she has formed with the individuals there.
It has become the tradition of myself and three of my friends to frequent this coffee shop every Sunday after mass. Pieter and Anke call me by name now and are always interested in hearing about my culture shock moment, sometimes moments, of the week. I tell them stories, such as when I was almost killed by a bus while peddling to class on my bike, and they help me with my Dutch homework. In addition to our story sharing, Anke and Pieter educate me on the Belgian lifestyle. The first thing I asked about was the coffee culture here, as it varies drastically from America. They explained to me the pride Belgians have in their coffee as they host one of the largest coffee ports in the world, Antwerp. They also have different coffee based on the three regions that make up the country of Belgium and each region is partial to the heritage that influenced their coffee selection. For example, in northern Belgium one will find strong, bitter coffee as influenced by the French, as opposed to some of the milder tastes found in the southern areas. This new friendship that I have built with these two individuals, the owners of a coffee shop, is one that is not typically found in the United States, and I very much enjoy my new appreciation of quality time spent around a cup of coffee.
When I do not have a pile of reading to do for my classes, I enjoy sitting at Koffie Onan, observing others around me. As explained by Tim Cahill in “Working-Class Hero”, “You have to let everything happen around you and try not to make whatever happens happen solely because you’re there” (A Sense of Place p. 14). I agree with this statement in that sometimes I like to just sit back and observe without interacting with the customers and employees at Koffie Onan. In Leuven, Belgium, every so often I find myself in a room of people, none of whom are speaking my native language, and I feel very alone and isolated. However, in Koffie Onan, with its small, comfortable atmosphere, I am completely content listening to the Dutch language and watching how people interact. A couple at the corner table deep in discussion, an elderly man reading the newspaper by the window, it all culminates the coffee culture that exists in Belgium.
I enjoy Koffie Onan not only for its cultural aspects and cozy atmosphere but for its view of the Oude Market. Known as the longest bar in Europe, I can observe the busy outside world on this street from my coffee table. Men and women biking home with groceries on the back of their bikes and Dutch students eating waffles outside the various snack shops. This image, incredibly stereotypical, is a reality from the window of Koffie Onan. After being here for three months, I no longer feel like I am observing this world as a foreigner, completely removed and lost. Rather, I am looking out on the streets that I have come to know as my home and am continually learning more about this new culture into which I am being adopted. Koffie Onan was one of the most meaningful steps in my integration process because it allowed me to observe Belgian lifestyle in a small dosage. I have developed from culture frustration into a new phase of cultural exploration can now appreciate the slow pace and friendly atmosphere that exists here, in Leuven, at Koffie Onan, as well as throughout the country of Belgium.
“Double latte with caramel no whip,” “medium coffee two sugars with skim milk,” “two decaf - one with whole milk one with Splenda.” These are common phrases I hear each morning while waiting in line for my daily iced coffee lite and sweet. The employees scramble behind the counter - toasting bagels, refilling coffee machines, and yelling through mini microphones to customers at the drive-thru window. I use my debit card so that I do not have to fuss with coins and change, as everyone is in a hurry. My order is ready and yelled out by the teenage worker who places it on the counter and moves on to the next order without stopping to see if I have retrieved my iced coffee. I am out the door and back to my car within five minutes since I arrived. My day, like thousands of other Americans, has begun with a trip to my local Dunkin’ Donuts.
After following this daily ritual since my high school years, imagine my alarm when I arrived in Leuven, Belgium and found no chain coffee shops! How was I going to get my morning caffeine fix that I so desperately needed as I ran to class? I visited a few local coffee shops in Leuven but hardly any offered ‘take away’ cups, and when asking about iced coffee, I received looks of confusion, disbelief, and disgust at this concept. At first, I panicked. I did not want to accept this foreign culture where I could not carry out my normal routine. “How do these people live like this?” was a common phrase exchanged among me and a few of my American friends who shared this same love for our daily, complicated coffee order.
After about two weeks, I started to get over this initial culture shock. I realized that I could, indeed, survive without drinking coffee in the morning. I had to--I did not have time during the 20 minutes I allotted myself to get ready before class to make my own and I was not about to give up one moment of sleep. Besides, transporting coffee while on bike in Leuven would prove quite a difficult challenge. And so I gave it up, cold turkey, although not by choice. One afternoon my Belgian friend, Katrien, asked if I would like to go get coffee with her at her favorite place. Although I had accepted my lack of iced coffee fate, I was always looking for opportunities to try a new place, hoping this one might be the one that followed the American way of life. With this optimism I joined my friend in a bike ride down Parijstraat to Koffie Onan.
As soon as we locked our bikes and crossed the cobblestone street, I knew this was not going to be like any Starbucks I frequented in the United States. Outside of Koffie Onan were a few tables surrounded by wicker chairs for those customers brave enough to face the ever-changing Belgian weather. There was also a large sign in the shape of a coffee cup advertising the coffee and latte of the week. A bell jingled as Katrien pushed open the door and we entered the shop. I was completely taken aback when the shop owner, whose name I later learned was Pieter, addressed Katrien by name with a smile and asked about her studies. This was quite a contrast to my American coffee experience in which my face is only associated with my usual daily venti iced coffee lite and sweet. Katrien and Pieter shared a short conversation while I looked over the menu, deciding what to order. I went with the latte of the week, Irish cream.
After paying for my coffee, I stood next to the counter preparing to quickly gather my order and get out of the way for other customers. Anke, another employee, who I later learned was Pieter’s wife, leaned over the counter and told me, “You can select a chocolate piece and sit down if you’d like.” I looked to the left and found a side table sporting sugar, cream, and a bowl of mini chocolate bars; with every order, one receives a free chocolate at Koffie Onan. This is another small, but meaningful difference between this coffee shop and America--in America, nothing is free. If you get a complimentary anything, the retailer has raised the price to cover this so-called gift. However, at Koffie Onan, the price for a coffee, two euro fifty, is the same as most other Belgian coffee shops. The chocolate is an actual gift, because this family run coffee shop really does care about its customers.
My latte was presented to me with a foamy swirl in a mug with a spoon and a tiny cup of cream all placed on a wooden serving tray. Also on my tray was a frequent visitor card with one punch--after ten punches your next coffee is free. This reminded me of the buyer cards the coffee stand on campus back at Loyola Maryland had started sporting last semester--a kind similarity connecting my two worlds. Katrien and I sat sipping our coffees for over an hour. This was quite different from the American way of choking down a quick cup of coffee before rushing off to your next activity. Coffee breaks here are not to prepare you to multitask all day or to cure that hangover from last night; they are for enjoyment and relaxation. Equally, Anke and Pieter did not try to hustle us along, even after we had finished and were sitting talking, quite unlike the United States where employees are anxious to please the next paying customer. In America, it is not acceptable to sit in coffee shops, simply shooting the breeze, for an extended period of time. People who do this are considered lazy, and are negatively judged by both other customers, typically on their Blackberry carrying on five different conversations and spilling their coffee to-go as they rush to their next important meeting, as well as employees in constant motion to clean tables and take new orders. This attitude is not found in Belgium. Katrien and I sat enjoying the taste of our drinks and our conversation, just as many people seated around us did.
I asked Katrien, “Why is Koffie Onan your favorite coffee place in Leuven?” She responded by telling me, “The coffee is good, but you can get good coffee a lot of places. I really like it here because of Pieter and Anke, they’re always interested in hearing what I’ve been up to and it makes for such a nice time!”
In America, I base my coffee shop choice on proximity, efficiency, and crowds; to hear Katrien define her choice based on the staff was definitely different from my own experience. It reminded me of one of the readings, “Yearning for the Sun” by Frances Mayes. In this interview, Frances explains that her love for Italy is based on the individuals she encounters there. “What keeps us coming here forever is the people – that was the beginning. After that I always came to Italy anytime I could” (A Sense of Place, p. 33). Of course, this strong connection with a particular place because of the people there can be found in America as well, such as in hometowns or a small college campus, but it is not found in the chain coffee shops that exist throughout the United States. I would have no problem going to the local Starbucks rather than Dunkin’ Donuts if the line was too long, whereas in Leuven, Katrien always prefers Koffie Onan because of the special bond she has formed with the individuals there.
It has become the tradition of myself and three of my friends to frequent this coffee shop every Sunday after mass. Pieter and Anke call me by name now and are always interested in hearing about my culture shock moment, sometimes moments, of the week. I tell them stories, such as when I was almost killed by a bus while peddling to class on my bike, and they help me with my Dutch homework. In addition to our story sharing, Anke and Pieter educate me on the Belgian lifestyle. The first thing I asked about was the coffee culture here, as it varies drastically from America. They explained to me the pride Belgians have in their coffee as they host one of the largest coffee ports in the world, Antwerp. They also have different coffee based on the three regions that make up the country of Belgium and each region is partial to the heritage that influenced their coffee selection. For example, in northern Belgium one will find strong, bitter coffee as influenced by the French, as opposed to some of the milder tastes found in the southern areas. This new friendship that I have built with these two individuals, the owners of a coffee shop, is one that is not typically found in the United States, and I very much enjoy my new appreciation of quality time spent around a cup of coffee.
When I do not have a pile of reading to do for my classes, I enjoy sitting at Koffie Onan, observing others around me. As explained by Tim Cahill in “Working-Class Hero”, “You have to let everything happen around you and try not to make whatever happens happen solely because you’re there” (A Sense of Place p. 14). I agree with this statement in that sometimes I like to just sit back and observe without interacting with the customers and employees at Koffie Onan. In Leuven, Belgium, every so often I find myself in a room of people, none of whom are speaking my native language, and I feel very alone and isolated. However, in Koffie Onan, with its small, comfortable atmosphere, I am completely content listening to the Dutch language and watching how people interact. A couple at the corner table deep in discussion, an elderly man reading the newspaper by the window, it all culminates the coffee culture that exists in Belgium.
I enjoy Koffie Onan not only for its cultural aspects and cozy atmosphere but for its view of the Oude Market. Known as the longest bar in Europe, I can observe the busy outside world on this street from my coffee table. Men and women biking home with groceries on the back of their bikes and Dutch students eating waffles outside the various snack shops. This image, incredibly stereotypical, is a reality from the window of Koffie Onan. After being here for three months, I no longer feel like I am observing this world as a foreigner, completely removed and lost. Rather, I am looking out on the streets that I have come to know as my home and am continually learning more about this new culture into which I am being adopted. Koffie Onan was one of the most meaningful steps in my integration process because it allowed me to observe Belgian lifestyle in a small dosage. I have developed from culture frustration into a new phase of cultural exploration can now appreciate the slow pace and friendly atmosphere that exists here, in Leuven, at Koffie Onan, as well as throughout the country of Belgium.
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