Euro Food Stand: The Mecca of Drunchies.Thanksgiving in my family, as in most, tends to be a very polarizing event. Tumultuous family circumstances have always led to Thanksgiving becoming more of a three-day event than a holiday, and though I love the food, I’m usually over it halfway through the first day. Thus, I was almost excited this year to realize, rather belatedly, that I wouldn’t have to “do” Thanksgiving at all. A number of restaurants, hotels, and other touristy places were holding dinners; mostly buffet style for large sums of money, and some people went to these dinners. Some people stayed home and cooked and tried to emulate Thanksgiving. I have found that this generally doesn’t end up working out too well. Someone always gets too bossy, or ends up doing all the dishes, or cannot believe that these sweet potatoes don’t have marshmallows in them, and it all degenerates into typical Thanksgiving, with too much wine being drunk and people arguing.
So, my friends and I decided that in honor of Thanksgiving, we were going to go on a full day food binge, without the turkey, stuffing, etc. We started the day with eggs, bacon, toast and Irish coffee. After lounging for a little while, for want of that altar of culture, the television that seems to always be on during American Thanksgivings, we made our way outside. We wandered through the Christmas market that has sprung up outside of Namesti Miru, the square and church that serves as the entrance hub to Vinohrady, our neighborhood. It was a pleasant enough day, rather warmer than it had been, with the sun occasionally peeking its head out from behind the clouds. We meandered through the market but, unsatisfied with our food selection there, we headed down the road to McDonald’s under the pretext of “eating American” on this American holiday. After consuming a Royale with Cheese (yes they call it that here, I think it’s a Europe-wide phenomenon, but we couldn’t resist making the Pulp Fiction references the first time we went, and we almost always get them, it’s that entertaining) and a chocolate milkshake, we headed back out to the streets. We hopped on a tram and made our way towards Old Town.
In Old Town we stopped for a couple beers at one of our favorite bars, Chapeau Rouge, a curious place decorated in a kind of modern gothic, red walled style. Sufficiently inebriated to start eating street food at two in the afternoon, we proceeded to the Old Town Square, which is filled with all sorts of wonderful treats, the two of which I consumed being a kielbasa sandwich and a waffle drizzled with chocolate sauce. I don’t think that waffles are typical Czech food, but it was just as good as the more traditional Czech sausage. This style of walking and bingeing continued, the only food of note being a smazeny syr (fried cheese), which is something like a mozzarella stick patty on a bun with mayonnaise. Don’t knock it ‘til you try it, it will change your life. We rounded out the evening with another “traditional” American food, Chinese.
All in all this experience of Thanksgiving was liberating. It made me homesick, true, because I do love Thanksgiving food, and I love having it prepared for me and lounging with my family watching television, but in the end I felt somehow more cosmopolitan, more adult, separated from the stuffiness of family and holiday tradition in a way I never knew I desired. It was a little like Thanksgiving on a sitcom, you know where nobody seems to have a family and Chandler, Ross, Rachel, Phoebe, etc. all celebrate together, or Will and Grace have a party that all their friends show up to. As fake as that situation is, I realized I was enjoying living the less glamorous version of this story, emancipated. Europe is going to my head.

A New Kind of Thanksgiving

About two weeks into the semester, I realized that the NYU in Paris students had the misfortune of going to school on Thanksgiving and, better yet, I would have to spend the next day at a conference on the European Union. I was a little upset that I wouldn’t be spending the day cooking a delicious meal for some of my friends. However, looking back Thanksgiving in Paris was much better than expected.

The NYU staff here set up a great Thanksgiving dinner for us. It just happened to be on THE EIFFEL TOWER. While I’m not one to buy into eateries for the novelty, even I will admit that this was particularly cool. NYU rented out the upper level of the restaurant, where every table had a magnificent view of Paris. First we were served pumpkin soup with croutons and chestnuts. It was delicious and was a nice French ode to thanksgiving. The carnivores were served turkey with some accoutrements that were vaguely reminiscent of a traditional thanksgiving meal, while the vegetarians were served vegetables with a garlic emulsion. The meal ended with a pumpkin tartlet with vanilla chantilly crème. After a great meal and several glasses of wine and a delicious meal, it was very clear how lucky I was to be in Paris.

The next night, after a daylong conference on the European Union, I had a dinner party at my apartment. I didn’t want to miss out on cooking a Thanksgiving meal, so I decided to make some of my vegetarian favorites. We started out with a cheese plate, followed by an arugula salad with pears, Parmigiano, and Julia Child’s lemon dressing. Then I prepared risotto with truffle oil and ratatouille. Luckily the responsibility of dessert wasn’t entirely on me and my lovely friends brought macarons and tarte aux citron. I did, however, go to the American grocery store here so I could prepare a no-bake lemon cheesecake, which was pretty good if I say so myself. The night was great. It was really nice to sit around the table and talk with friends. It felt like a real Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving in Paris was certainly a different experience, however, it was a great experience. In a way, it seems very representative of my life here: part resident, part tourist. Since I’ve been here I’ve been trying to find my footing in this odd space, and I feel like I found it at the perfect time. 

The Three Musketeers

On Thanksgiving Day, I went to work. I volunteer with an organization here in Buenos Aires called Fundación Pro Vivienda Social (www.fpvs.org – check it out!) and it was just another day at the office. It was funny trying to explain to my coworkers here about Thanksgiving. Nobody real cares about the history, it’s all about family and eating, a lot. Anyways, not that it was a stressful day, but I’m just so used to spending Thanksgiving Day relaxing with family, playing or watching some football, and maybe watching a Bond or Rocky marathon. To be honest, it was kind of strange. It was just another day. When the day ended, I headed home and got ready for dinner. The academic center here in Buenos Aires hosted a Turkey Day feast. I personally thought it was a lovely thing for them to do, and an unexpected surprise to say the least. All I really wanted for my Thanksgiving here was to be with friends and eat a lot of food. I had been planning on going out and getting a huge steak to celebrate, but when NYU announced that they’d have dinner for us at the center, it was an easy and awesome way for all of us to get together and celebrate. To be real, my expectations weren’t too high. I thought we’d have some mediocre food, but great company. When I arrived at the center, it was decorated in a lovely fashion, with classic autumn colors (even though its late spring/early summer here). It ended up being a lovely. I mean, obviously they can’t touch my mama’s stuffing (or turkey, or sweet potatoes, or green beans for that matter…) but it was not bad. There were two whole turkeys and they were carving them right there. It really was a wonderful treat. Even though the “pumpkin pie” wasn’t really pumpkin pie, I was very pleasantly surprised by the rest of the meal. The best part was that I could be together with my buddies here and just have a nice, long, enjoyable meal. While this was the first Thanksgiving without any family (being from California and going to school in New York, I usually spend it with extended family, not my parents) it was still a really nice meal.

the fam in patagonia

I figured since Thanksgiving in Argentina could not be remotely similar to Thanksgiving in the states that I might as well go for the extreme. My family had arrived the morning before, so I knew I had to plan something for them for Thanksgiving. So I invited my entire host family to come to dinner with my family, and we all went and ate at one of the best parilla restaurants in Buenos Aires (parilla is typical Argentine barbeque with a whole lot of red meat!!). The ten of us sat down at a long table and scattered ourselves out. My family doesn’t speak a lick of Spanish, and my host mom knows MINIMAL English, but we all managed to get by a 2.5 hour dinner together. Since we were feasting Argentine style, we went all out. For appetizers, we order chorizo (an Argentine specialty sausage), salads, and melted cheese blocks. For dinner, everyone besides my mom (who is vegetarian) had a big hunk of meat on his or her plate. And clearly, everyone was sipping on tasty Malbec (the best wine ever). Our meal definitely didn’t compare to a perfectly roasted turkey with gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans, biscuits, and pies, but it was unique and so perfect for the moment. My family is all about new traditions and breaking the old. They loved it. My host mom loved the idea of Thanksgiving, a day in which family and friends come together to feast and celebrate everything we are thankful for. So we all sat around the table after we finished dinner and each person said what they were thankful for. Translations were being thrown across the room at every statement, but no matter what language was being spoken, everyone’s hearts were touched. My host mom Marina hugged and kissed my mom telling her how much she loved me and how happy she is to have me in her home. I responded stating how thankful I was to have two great mothers. Everyone was thankful to be in the room together sharing the moment. It was so great to have my family together with my host family on Thanksgiving. It was really special. When we got home from dinner, Marina kept telling me how much she loves Thanksgiving and that she is so happy to have celebrated it for her first time. It was my first time eating steak on turkey day, and it was her first time going around a table saying what they are thankful for. There is a first for everything.

The rest of the weekend I went to Patagonia with my family. We stayed in a remote hotel with only ten rooms in it in the middle of nowhere. It was on a turquoise lake in the windy mountains. We had the most amazing weekend hiking and riding horses in the solitude of the Argentine mountains. We definitely made the most of our Thanksgiving weekend taking advantage of everything around us and diving into the Argentine culture. 

Image of a skype manI woke up on thanksgiving day, thinking more than ever about the fact that I hadn't seen my friends or family in months. As I dragged my ass out of bed I went straight to my computer and saw my email box full of messages from my parents and greater family. The overall message was "where the hell have you been for the past couple months?". It seems that my time abroad has left me unable to communicate with my family. I guess they don't understand the fact that living thousands of miles away from home actually makes one feel that they are thousands of miles away from home. Thus it was time to go through the motions of endlessly skyping away in an attempt to reconnect with what I had lost. So for about the first three hours of my day I skyped literally everyone and anyone I could think of. Some conversations where brief and cordial, a quick hello to a friend or a nice sentimental moment with a cousin. Than I moved on to tackling the bigger issues, those issues being my parents and my sister. First I called my sister, who immediately signed on so we could video chat. The first few minutes of the conversation consisted of her criticizing my lack of communication, to which I responded with the same argument. After a few harsh moments of an older sister taking it out on her less qualified younger brother, we proceeded to have the best conversation we had in months. Simultaneously I got to see the proceedings of the thanksgiving dinner that I should have been in attendance for. She took the computer around the kitchen pointing out every dish that my family was preparing for the night. See the closest relatives in my family had decided to have thanksgiving at my cousins brand new vacation home in upstate maine. So instead of having to go through the hassle of trying to get in touch with my parents and my closest cousins, they were all in one room and they could literally see me. I saw the dishes coming to fruition that I had so many times enjoyed in previous thanksgiving celebrations. Is was almost as if I was in the room with them. They were all drinking wine, so I poured myself a glass of wine and even though I was on another continent for a few fleeting moments I felt completely at home again. One by one each of my family members stood in front of the computer. We joked, we drank, we laughed and we expressed emotions that we hadn't been able to share for months. If I was thankful for one thing more than anything else on thanksgiving it was my internet connection and my skype application. After about an hour of fraternizing via the internet it was time to let my family go. The rest of my thanksgiving was quite uneventful. The study abroad site provided us with a nice meal that took an argentine twist on an American tradition. Yet, we couldn't drink wine, and at one point lil wayne was playing in the back ground so somethings just didn't feel right. Unfortunately my mind was stuck in a place that it was impossible for my body to be-that place being back in the US with my family, eating real stuffing and enjoying a hefty portion of artery clogging gravy.

Lovely, serene table...A hint at the chaos: Dad sautées, Mom and my boyfriend search for a platter, my aunt nibbles something, the dog scavenges.

“Ans, will you give me a hand with these dishes, please?” My mother’s voice, calling from the kitchen, inspires in me the same sense of automatic, and yet reluctant, cooperation. Yes, I was home for Thanksgiving, washing dishes in the kitchen that I know better than any other.

Except that when I imagined my happy, though brief, return home this Thanksgiving, I wasn’t thinking of dishwashing. Or tensions with my family members, or the looming pile of schoolwork that was growing everyday I was away. Instead, I envisioned my big, warm, sunny house, filled with delicious cooking smells, my eagerly waiting family, and (after a lovely walk in Rosedale Park) a fantastic meal. And all of those things were there! Except that they were all jumbled up with the annoying, humdrum aspects of family life, which I had somehow left out of my Thanksgiving dream.

When I got home the night before the holiday, my family was its usual disorganized self. Who wants what for dinner? Two people want Japanese take-out, two want to-go food from Whole Foods. Who’s driving where? And can someone get the shallots Mom forgot, as well as extra lemons? WHAT? Your recipe called for orange juice? That wasn’t on the list! It felt like any old weekend (plus a lot of extra food prep); I might just as well have gotten there via NJ Transit, rather than the eight-hour flight and much costlier ticket…

Like every other Thanksgiving, we ate about two hours later than planned, and everyone was pretty tired. The day after, also true to form, was the best: sunny, cool weather, a day off of work for my dad, and delicious leftovers for dinner, without any of the fuss! By that point, too, I had mostly come to terms with the fact that my four-day visit home wasn’t going to be so much more magical than Thanksgivings’ past. It got me thinking: after being away long enough, do we start to romanticize home in the same we once romanticized the lives awaiting us abroad? The trap seems the same: with so much distance from a place, one ends up ascribing to it certain traits (coziness, merriment, relaxation) and ignoring all the others. Paris is not only beautiful, historic, elegant, and fashionable: it is also sometimes inefficient, cold, conservative, and image-obsessed. So why should the place I come from be any different? It, too, has its pluses and minuses, and my visit home was a good reminder. Though it is my apartment in New York and not my family in New Jersey that I’ll be returning to in December, I know not to expect that life’s imperfections will have disappeared in my absence. Doesn’t change my giddy anticipation, though :o)

Thanksgiving MealMy first Thanksgiving not spent in the States or with my family was spent with a new family: my London one. However, unlike many of the other NYU sites, NYU in London did not organize a Thanksgiving meal for us so we were left up to our own devices. My group of friends had been planning to make our own dinner for sometime so we had set ourselves a challenge. The day before was spent buying up all the ingredients, which are harder to find than you might expect. Day of Thanksgiving was a new experience because I've never had class on Thanksgiving before. My friends and I sat in the class, waiting to get out while our professor kept making jokes about it. When we were finally released, we all rushed home to start cooking in our various kitchens.
Now, the cooking. Here was a lesson in making doing with what you have. We all lacked certain equipment that we had been used to. For instances, I was to make mashed potatoes but had the worst masher in the world. I also did not have a large enough pot to boil all the potatoes so I had to do them in shifts. The problem with that was by the time I got around to peeling and cutting all of the potatoes from one shift, they were no longer as hot as they were and therefore, were harder to mash. Needless to say, from peeling, cutting and mashing, my arms were dead tired, 4 hours later when food started to arrive in my kitchen. Even with the help of 5 people, the potatoes just weren't mashed to the point I wanted them. However, everyone was working off of lesser equipment and therefore were very understanding of less than perfect items on all cases. Effort was very much appreciated.
We outdid ourselves in terms of amount of food. We had a turkey, a 10 pound turkey, rolls, corn, green beans, and pumpkin pie among many other things. People who had seen the table were amazed and impressed by the volume of food we had made. It took us all about 4 hours to make the meal so when we finally got down to eating it...well, let's just say I don't think I appreciated food as much as I did then. After we'd all stuffed ourselves silly, we decided to go out. Yet another thing I've never done on Thanksgiving.
Of course with Thanksgiving, comes the holiday season, perhaps my favorite time of the year. Christmas music and movies suddenly take over my life. This year, the coming of the holiday season also means that my time in London is slowly coming to an end. It's not something I like thinking about. I've a got myself a new sort of family here and despite the fact that we're all pretty much going back to the same school, it won't be the same. Thanksgiving here took on a different meaning. Not only did I help make a huge dinner, but I had new things to be thankful for, like being in London and modern appliances.

My sentiments exactly: Granted I'm not the one being eaten...

I never really grew up with a traditional Thanksgiving every year. Instead, given the year, circumstances, location, Thanksgivings for me were always quite varied. One year it might be the typical Thanksgiving meal, decked out with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, pie (the “essentials”) with the entire family together. Another year it might be at an Army Mess Hall-think high school cafeteria but with surprisingly delicious Thanksgiving food with just my parents (siblings being away in college or living independent adult lives). I even recall one Thanksgiving when my mom was away helping to take care of my brother’s baby daughter, so my dad and I went to a local Korean restaurant (completely empty with some very confused looking waiters). Then once I went to college, my parents were always too far for me to visit so I would be one of those students stuck in the city trying to scrape together a Thanksgiving meal with any other students also stranded in the city. So the fact that this year I wouldn’t be having a “traditional Thanksgiving day” didn’t really faze me.

NYU in Florence did prepare a pretty lavish Thanksgiving meal for any students who were smart enough to RSVP. And feeling like I should share in this very American holiday with other Americans, I attended. For a day where you’re supposed to remember all that you are thankful for, I couldn’t help but think to myself, “Man, Americans can be quite gluttonous… My Italian family would be utterly shocked.” But… the food was so good! Props to NYU. And one thing I was truly thankful for that day.

Of course, that isn’t all I’m thankful for… the list could go quite long, so I’ll just say at the risk of sounding cliché… I’m grateful for another atypical Thanksgiving in a land far from home, but still had all the right trimmings (good food, better moments, and the best of friends).

My Not So Traditional Thanksgiving Dinner

This was my first Thanksgiving that I had ever spent away from home. I knew from the moment that I applied to go abroad Fall semester that this was a day that I would have to face sooner or later but it didn’t make it any easier, to be away from my family, friends and traditions of this holiday that I love so much.

Anyways, knowing that this was going to be a rough time for me, I decided well in advanced to make myself as busy as possible so that I wouldn’t have much time to think about missing real Thanksgiving in the U.S. This included a full day of errands to run, and class to attend. The day was to end with a Traditional Thanksgiving dinner, as promised by NYU in Paris, atop the Eiffel Tower and the next was to begin with a trip to Prague with two of my girlfriends for the remainder of the weekend.

I have to say, the entire weekend ended up being a great success! The dinner was absolutely wonderful and I was really impressed with NYU. They basically rented out the entire restaurant (the one that is on the first level, not the one at the very top) and somehow managed to get them to cook us a French version of Thanksgiving dinner. The food was great although perhaps not quite traditional! I sat at a huge table with my all of my closest friends in the program and enjoyed delicious wine and food.

Although the dinner was not the same as being at home with my family, I came to realize that I was having a once in a lifetime experience and I ended up having a wonderful time. How many other people can say that they ate their Thanksgiving dinner on the Eiffel Tower?

The next morning, my two friends and I left bright and early to go to Prague and we had a wonderful time. This was the first trip I went on outside of France, so I was really excited about it and Prague was the perfect place to pick. I felt like because it is a small city, especially relative to Paris, it was easy to see the sites get a general feel of the city within the time constraints of the weekend. Not to say that our days weren’t jam-packed but this just made for a really fun weekend and just the type of distraction that I was looking for!

food and friends
Last weekend while traveling, I got really sick: fever, chills, fatigue—the whole nine yards. The flight back was awful; I was colder than I’d ever been, even bundled up in a hoodie. I was exhausted—barely able to walk from the terminal to the taxi stand. I fell asleep in the cab on my way to my apartment. The fatigue lasted all week. I missed Spanish class Monday, left halfway through, and didn’t go again Wednesday or Thursday. Basically I didn’t leave my room save for the occasional trip to the bathroom or kitchen—it was awful. Tuesday, facebook alerted me that 6 of my Madrid friends were attending some thanksgiving potluck. I clicked it to see more, and I found out the party was in my apartment! I’d been sleeping so much, I hadn’t really talked to my roommates. I made it out to the kitchen and asked my roommate what the plans were, and she laughed and told me she wasn’t going to invite me to a party in my own apartment! I laughed too—the high tech world is kind of ridiculous.

Even though dinner wasn’t until ten that night, friends started showing up around five to use our kitchen. Since a lot of our friends are living in homestays, we had a pre-thanksgiving cooking party. I wasn’t planning to cook anything but I got into the spirit of things and since I wasn’t contagious, I decided to run down to the store. I ended up throwing together some delicious yet easy to make oreo cream cheese truffles. I put them in the fridge to cool.

Mid way through cooking, people got impatient and started snacking on the truffles straight out of the fridge; they were a hit! Once everything was ready we moved it all to the living room and put it out buffet style. We threw together all the plates and silverware we had in the apartment and began to eat. We had everything: from the turkey and the corn to the sweet potato pie and the stuffing…I was thrilled—the mashed potatoes tasted just as good as they do every year.

Madrid is a really cool place, but I think I’m pretty much ready to go home. Therefore, I really appreciated having a fun thanksgiving in Madrid with friends, even if I couldn’t be home to celebrate thanksgiving with my family.