Friends, Neighbors, Countrymen,
What a weekend it has been! Thursday night, I went out to this place called Giraf Café with a group of people that my Polish and Croatian friends met the other day and we a blast. The place was really chill and we just sat outside and had drinks and laughed about silly things until we cried. The Filipina girl (who is such a gem) tried to text the Canadian guy from the Australian’s phone and had a hard time with the touch screen, so she ended up accidentally saying that he should meet us at the pan, instead of meeting us at the pub. Somehow that devolved into he was probably lost, roaming the city, looking for pandas and giraffes, never to be seen, again. The poor Filipina was harassed about that, for the rest of the weekend, but she’s been a good sport.
Friday, we, of course, had class from 8:30-12:45, then, went to the university cafeteria for lunch. It’s funny how university cafeteria food is universally awful, no matter where in the world you find yourself eating it. There’s no flavor to it and it is all carbs and fat. Now that I am more aware of what I am putting in my body than I was as a college freshman, I am not at all surprised that people gain weight in college. Gross. On the plus, though, I have somehow become part of a social group at the conference that is, in fact, so large, that we don’t all fit at one table. When we split into two groups, I found myself sitting with my Polish BFF (because we are together, most of the time) and two people I had not yet met, an Albanian girl and a Russian guy, both of whom had interned at the Council of Europe and knew Strasbourg, so they filled us in on where to go and what to see, while we are here. The Albanian girl ended up sitting next to me in class that afternoon and we bounded over our general nerd tendencies and gossiping about boys. :P
Friday evening, my Americans and I had an extra class for the Santa Clara program taught by a lawyer for the European Court of Human Rights which was very interesting and gave me some insights into how much has changed in global politics, and particularly in the Council of Europe/European Union since I graduated from college and why my European friends looked at me like I was a little crazy when I was confused about the case studies we did in the UN Human Rights Protection System seminar (because I was trying to figure out what effect a decision from the Human Rights Council, for instance, would have on the actual protection of an individual’s rights from their state, if the state is the violator). These courts are actually gaining some real legitimacy and power in the international community and it’s fascinating to learn about how that process is occurring, right now, here in Strasbourg, and in other regional courts around the world, as well as at the UN level.
That being said, more class on Friday evening was a little rough, but I had a delightful dinner with the Albanian girl and my new Italian friend. These two met at the airport and became fast friends. The Italian guy knew the Croatian guy from a conference they attended together in Venice and we’ve all just kind of become one big, happy family, haha. Anyway, the Italian guy recognized the owner of this Egyptian kabab place we went to when he and the Albanian were at the airport because the Egyptian guy owns a pizza place in Rome where the Italian guy used to go, all the time, before he moved to Spain. They apparently talked at the airport and the Egyptian guy told my friends that they were welcome at his kabab restaurant, anytime, and that if they asked for him, he would make them something special.
Sidebar: This was the 3rd or 4th time, last week, that I had Middle Eastern food for dinner, I’m kind of in love with it, right now, which is not what I expected to happen in France, but it seems to be better for me than traditional French food, so I’ll take it.
Back to my story… my new friends invited me to join them and it sounded like fun and I had nothing else to do, so I happily agreed. We went to the kabab place and asked for the owner. As it turns out, his cousin is also at the conference, because she works for Boutros Boutros-Ghali and he sends her, every year, because he knows that she likes to come to visit her family. This young woman (who has the most adorable children, ever), helped me pick out what to eat (I had a kefta sandwich that was amazing) and then told us about living through the revolution in Egypt while we ate. She said that she and her sister went to Tehrir Square to see the protesters, but they couldn’t tell their mother because she would be very worried. She also told us about her friend, an artist, who had been a part of the original facebook activists, who was disappeared and later found murdered because of his involvement. It was a sad story, but it underscored the reason we are all here, at the International Institute for Human Rights, quite poignantly, I think.
Anyway, we ate our sandwiches and then the owner brought us pizza that he made especially for us (the restaurant doesn’t even serve pizza) because my Italian friend knew him from his pizza restaurant in Rome. The pizza had a chorizo-like sausage, red peppers, and onions (I think) on it, and it was the best pizza I have eaten since I arrived in Europe about 6 weeks ago. It’s probably the best pizza I’ve had in longer than that, but that’s as far back as I can remember. The owner and his family joined us and sat and chatted, but, except for the cousin from the conference, they spoke very little English, so I just sat and smiled and listened to them and my new friends speak Italian. Italian is fairly close to Spanish, so I was actually able to pick out words and phrases, but I feasted like a queen and enjoyed the evening and was, in some ways, delighted that I wasn’t expected to participate in the conversation, unless some actually spoke to me in English. For some reason, the restaurant owner decided that I was blond and kept calling me “blond girl” in Italian, even though my friends told him that I am a redhead, not a blond. He told them that he was not wrong, though, because I have blond eyebrows. It was very strange, but very funny.
Because we started late and sat and talked and ate for hours, we didn’t leave the restaurant until almost 1AM, we had planned on going to a bar, afterwards, but when we realized the time, we decided to come back to the dorm and take the bottle of wine I had in my room outside to share, instead. We found my Polish friend when we got back and sat on the front stoop of the dorm and talked to everyone who walked by. We had had a minority rights lecture, that day, and were talking about who raised their hands when the professor asked who belonged to a minority, in the room. I said that I thought about it because I’m a redhead and this delightful Brazilian guy turned around and told me that we no longer count (in his words, “It’s ova.”) because one of us went flying around New York City in the arms of Spiderman, so now we are sex symbols, all over the world. I tried to argue that lots of minorities are also sex symbols and he tried to convince me that, with Spiderman’s protection, we are certainly not vulnerable, to which I responded that vulnerability is not an internationally-recognized element of the definition of minority, but he wasn’t having it and I decided to concede because he did keep telling me that I’m a sex symbol and that I have beautiful hair. :{P
As we were sitting there, my Polish friend (who, as I think I told you before, teaches Human Rights Law at a law school in Warsaw) decided to TRY to teach my Italian friend and I, some Polish tongue twisters to improve our pronunciation in Polish. It was very, very hard and I decided that I have a lot of respect for anyone who can learn Polish as a non-native speaker because of all of the different kinds of soft consonant sounds that language requires you to be able to make. We sat and talked and laughed until about 3:30 in the morning when we decided that it was time for bed.
On Saturday, I got up at around 10:45 to pull myself together and go shopping with my Albanian friend, because I needed to get a French phone number so we could communicate, later that night, after I had a dinner party with my Americans. I ran into my Italian friend in the dorm and we went for coffee and decided that we do laundry together after I shopped and he went to Germany to pick up the bike he rented for the month. We couldn’t find any place open for coffee, except this little Turkish restaurant, so we sat down to have espressos. While we were sitting there, the Albanian, and then, later, the Croatian happened to pass by and sat down to join us. After we had our (terrible by all of our standards) coffee, the Albanian girl and I went shopping to get my SIM card and some other things, then I came back to the dorm, found my Italian, and started the laundry. It was funny because he had never used a dryer, before, because in Italy and in Spain (where he lives, now), he just hangs his clothes out in the sun to dry. I told him that his clothes might shrink in the dryer, but that I wasn’t sure, so he should dry at his own risk (don’t worry, though, as far as I could tell, nothing bad happened).
In the meantime, I had to shower and get ready to go to a potluck at my professor’s apartment. I had no idea where it was and, while I’m sure I could have figured it out on my own, I was relieved that I ran into my friend from Chicago in the dorm and we agreed to go together. The Italian and I had a little trouble figuring out the dryer situation, so that took longer than I expected and, of course, my clothes weren’t dry when I went to pull them out, so I pulled out a pair of jeans, put them on, and left everything else in his capable hands to go to the party. As I was leaving my room, I ran into my next door neighbor, who is from California, too, but is here with a different school. I asked if he had plans for the evening and he said, not yet, so I got his number and told him I would let him know what we were doing, later.
We went to the party and there was lots of good food and wine and we generally had a lovely time. At around 10:30, we left the party and I went to meet up with my new CA friend and his classmates at this little bar area along the river. We sat and had drinks and then they decided that they wanted to get something to eat, but he and I wanted to keep drinking so we went to try to meet up with my ragtag band of international superstars. We ended up back at Giraf Café and ordered the “Giraf” of beer which is a 3L beer dispenser similar to what you would get if you ordered a yard, in Chicago. After we finished the Giraf with that crowd, my neighbor and I went back to the river to look for his classmates. We didn’t really find any of them, but decided we would stay and check out the bars that are actually on the boats docked there. We paid 3 euros as a cover charge and then we boarded the boat and went down into the cabin of the boat, which turned out to be a very small nightclub. We got drinks and sat on a bench at the back of the dance floor that gave us a good view of the whole place. We sat there and made up stories about people on the dance floor and generally enjoyed ourselves, then wandered back to the dorm at around 3:30AM.
Obviously, having been out until the wee hours of the morning two nights in a row, in addition to not getting enough sleep, the rest of the week really took it out of me. On Sunday, my friends rented some bikes and rode them to Germany (which is apparently only about 15 minutes away, by bike), but I decided to sleep in, so I didn’t get up until about 3PM. When I did finally pull myself together, I met up with my Italian friend, because he still had all of my clothes, since I had left the laundry for him to pull out of the dryer when I went to the party at our professor’s apartment, the night before. Of course, the fact that all of my clothes were in his room became a running joke about what they were doing there, haha. It gets better, though, he is a total gem and had folded most of my clothes and put them back in my suitcase, which saved me from having wrinkled clothes and saved a lot of time, so he’s obviously my favorite Italian, this week. ;{P We met up with our other friends and decided and to get dinner. The Albanian girl speaks Turkish (among several other languages, she’s AMAZING) and had made friends with some Turkish people who own a kabab place near where we are staying, so we went there and, in addition to the food we ordered, they also served us these little appetizers that were like spicy couscous nuggets wrapped in lettuce before our meal and then traditional Turkish tea, after dinner.
As you can imagine, I’m delighted that I have become friends with all of these people, but, from a very self-interested perspective, the Albanian girl is a REAL find. I’m obviously sticking with her, as much as possible for dinner. J
Anyway, class is over and I have more adventures to find, so I should get going. I promise more exciting tales to come!
Hugs and Kisses!
Emily
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