NYU in Paris: Where I Am When Not AsleepI live very close to the NYU in France building, where I work and go to school. I spend roughly 10 hours per day there Monday through Thursday, with short breaks during the day when I run out to grab food which I bring back to eat. A lot of days, when I leave the office around 8 pm, I crawl home, microwave something easy for dinner, rush through some homework, and collapse, exhausted, falling asleep instantly, between 10 pm and midnight. I’m taking a full course load and working longer hours than I ever have before during the school year. I also don’t get a lot of downtime during my job to work on homework, so I usually have to find other time to do that. I really like my job, its definitely got perks, I just often wish I had more downtime. On Friday, when we are all lucky enough to not have class or work, I always plan to do a lot of things but end up just sleeping in, facebooking, getting some homework out of the way, doing laundry and only leaving my place for the occasionally emergency baguette run to the nearby bakery. Luckily that still leaves me Saturday and Sunday to go out and see Paris and have fun with my friends. This schedule though leaves me feeling burnt out a lot, a feeling I don’t get as often in New York. That’s odd, because New York definitely has a faster pace to it, but I think the faster pace invigorates me, gives me more energy, while the slower pace of life in Paris leaves me constantly wondering where the time goes.

I’ve worked my finances down to a pretty fine science. Breakfast, when I wake up on time, is a piece of toast with nutella and jam or a bowl of cereal; when I wake up late, which is not as rare an occurrence as I’d like, breakfast is the first thing thrown out of the schedule. Lunch is paid for out of whatever pocket change I remembered to grab on the way out. Typically, this means a sandwich or quiche for 2 or 3 euro, or, if I’m celebrating something, the 5 euro menu which is comprised of the sandwich with a drink and a dessert. If I’m running really low on change, lunch is a smoothie, which can be purchased for less than 2 euro. Dinner almost every night consists of pasta and sauce. My roommate and I take turns making nearly a pound of pasta once a week and then refrigerating it so the two of us can eat off the leftovers for the rest of the week. In addition to this I usually have some cheese and bread and a salad. And maybe a glass of wine if we have a bottle open. To summarize: Four days a week I buy lunch (2-5 Euro) and a baguette (1 Euro). Weekly I buy cheese (I try a different type each week,) and salad (~4 Euro). Every two weeks I buy a bottle of wine, a loaf of sliced bread, and a bottle of milk, and a jar of sauce de Provence (the best pasta sauce you have ever had.) (15-20 Euro) (I buy the sauce, roomie buys the pasta.) Monthly, I buy jam and cereal (~6 Euro). (Roomie buys nutella.)

I usually eat out about twice a week depending on how my back account’s doing, maybe one night at a friend’s for dinner where we all bring ingredients for a big meal and on Sunday usually to one of the fantastic Japanese or North African restaurants nearby where I try not to spend more than 20 euro. I give a euro to the Church every week at Mass, and of course have incidental expenses like train tickets or rushed opera tickets. I also buy a monthly Navigo pass, the unlimited monthly metro pass which, because I know how much it costs, provides the extra kick that gets me out the door, down into the metro, and out into the city. And, when the day comes that my pay-as-you-go plan runs out, I will have to refill it. I could probably write a whole blog entry about the anxiety that comes out of the pay-as-you-go plan, but that’s for another day. Happy weekend everyone!

Soymilk (American version)

Perhaps the most surprising thing about my daily life in Paris is how much it resembles my daily life in New York. That is to say, a video of me going about my day here would look quite different from the same video in New York. The streets I walk down, my metro stop, the restaurants I go to, and the classrooms I sit in are all uniquely Parisian. But by some mysterious and highly discreet means, the various needs, tendencies, and little compulsions I carry around at home have followed me here.

I am sure there are those who, swept up in the newness and excitement of a new culture, throw habit to the wind and create a new mode of being for themselves. For better or for worse, that’s not me. The fact, for example, that delectable pastries fill the case of every patisserie I pass in Paris, has not altered my not-so-sweet tooth. I like cereal with sliced fruit and soymilk in the morning. Honest! Just as I did in my family’s home and I do now in my New York apartment, I relish the 30-40 minutes I spend brewing my coffee and assembling my breakfast. I like pouring the hot water carefully through the Melitta filter (okay, yes, I brought my own coffee filter to France…), inhaling the coffee’s aroma, and deciding what combination of cereal, yogurt, nuts, and fruit I’ll put together. And, despite many differences in French and American grocery selection, I’ve been pleased to discover that the breakfast items here are quite comparable. (In fact, credit where credit’s due…the yogurt here is better!) So, while I always admire the artfully presented pastries I pass on the street, I’m still content with my own breakfast routine.

The way I use my time in Paris is also much the same as in New York: I find I need a certain amount of time in my apartment to do boring things like wash dishes and answer emails, a certain amount to do yoga, bike, or jog, and a certain amount to talk and laugh with friends. Not so surprisingly, just as in New York I end up with little time to paint my nails (joke), watch TV (never!), or write my IAPC (that one’s gonna be a problem…). How strange, and yet how obvious, that I’m actually the same old me I was halfway around the globe.

Like De Botton, who came to the same realization as he moodily strolled down a beach, it turns out I “inadvertently brought myself with me” on my travels (Art of Travel, 19).

Le Pain Quotidien

Daily life in Paris has proven to be much less predictable then life in New York. In New York, I got up every day at 9 am, failed to eat breakfast, and went to class. After class, I would work out, eat dinner, waste some time, and do my work. Paris, however, is extremely different. During the week I wake up any time between 6:30 am and 12 pm. I go to class, do some work at school, and maybe have lunch with a friend. Then at some point during the day, I try to get something to make for dinner.

I think that daily routines are important. Many times, in New York, having a routine kept me sane. In Paris, it has been harder to establish any real kind of structure. In a way, that sort of fits. The French lifestyle is so much more laid back than the lifestyle we experience in New York. It generally consists of 2-hour lunches, 4-day workweeks, and copious amounts of wine.

In an effort to give myself some structure, I’ve started giving myself little tasks that I need to get in before the end of a given day. Although it does sound a little bit obsessive compulsive, it’s really helped me settle into life here. So, every morning I wake up, make coffee or tea, and go out and buy a baguette for dinner. Later, I’ll go to Monoprix, where I’ll buy something for dinner and maybe a bottle of wine if I’m going to a friend’s apartment. During the week, I make sure to do some yoga before I go to bed, in an effort to counteract my bread and cheese consumption (and I have to note that it’s been effective thus far).

When I came here, I imagined living a life like I did in New York: interning, going to school, and casual dinners with friends. Despite not living the life I imagined, I’m very comfortable in my daily life. I’m also coming to terms with having less structure. Its amazing how much you miss when your programmed to function a certain way. For the first time ever, I’m really observing the people and places around me and discovering beauty in the every day.

The Pont de Grenelle, with the mini Statue of LibertyThree mornings a week, I walk twenty-five minutes from my apartment in the fifteenth arrondissement to school, in the sixteenth. I could take the metro, but it probably wouldn’t save any time, and anyway most of my walk is along and then across the Seine, with a great view of the Eiffel Tower for part of the way. That sounds really glamorous. It’s not, exactly. I do walk most of the way with the Seine to my left, but there’s an RER train station and then a lower walkway between myself and the river (Of course, I could take the lower walkway, right next to the Seine, and I sometimes do; that adds a few minutes and two more sets of stairs to my commute, though.). On my right side, I am significantly closer to a highway. And most of the time I’m in a rush, looking at my feet or the next traffic light, and not the Eiffel Tower looming ahead of me.

I usually cross the Seine at the Pont de Grenelle. Aside from the miniature Statue of Liberty on one of its sides, the Pont de Grenelle is a pretty basic newer Parisian bridge: built of greenish metal, with multiple lanes of traffic and a bus stop at one end. Every so often, though, I notice something strange on the Pont de Grenelle during my walk to school. Once there was a small film crew set up at the far end, near the bus stop, and they had temporarily prevented pedestrians from passing until the shot was finished. Another time, I passed a man in an ankle-length off-white tunic walking across in the opposite direction; every so often he would tap on the bridge’s metal railing, and a flock of pigeons, who were following him, would land on the spot he had tapped. And then last week, on my way to class, I saw an older woman in a red polo on the other side of the bridge, leading six miniature ponies across. Though I was running late, I couldn’t help turning around once I was off the bridge to watch them: after leaving the bridge, the woman waited for the sign to walk, and then led her six miniature ponies across a major intersection, while the cars of commuters waited.

Vinohrady Pavilion: My Albert is in the basement of this beautiful old converted pavilion building. There are a lot of basement supermarkets here.One of the most familiar and yet alien quotidian experiences in Prague is that of grocery shopping. It’s such a regular, comforting action. It feels like home, domestic, regular, thrifty. At home I do the same thing when I walk into the grocery store, pick up a little blue basket (I suppose sometimes it’s red at home but here, the grocery store I frequent, Albert, has all blue) and walk into the produce section. I’ve found that the grocery stores here have the same basic layout as at home, produce first, then dairy, etc. then the dry goods. Freezer sections are somewhat lacking here, which is always a bit startling because my default “too tired to really cook” dinners are usually frozen food of some kind.

But there are a lot of things that are strangely different despite the familiar layouts. When I go looking for snack food, every time I seem to hope that Nabisco products will suddenly be gracing the shelves. Groceries are generally cheaper here, like everything else, but not so much so that you don’t consider the generic brand before going for the name brand. Sometimes here, unlike at home, (that is assuming that you, like me, are not particular about the amount of processing, etc.) you really need to buy the more expensive brand in order to get a product that actually has some taste. I’ve learned not to buy large quantities of milk, as it’s not homogenized here and seems to go bad within a couple of days. I’ve learned that it is impossible to get good tomato sauce, that peanut butter is ridiculously expensive no matter where you go, that bread, a loaf of beautiful, fresh, country rye bread that you might pay upwards of four dollars for in New York, is about fifty cents. An RA tipped me off about the fish. In landlocked countries like here that have never used fish as a basic part of their cultural palette, DON’T BUY FISH. It’s always frozen and often gross. Taco ingredients? Forget about it. The egalitarianism of food in New York grocery stores is not at all reflected in Czech ones. You need to bring your own bags here to carry off your purchases unless you want to buy them, and though the checkout counters have gum, the usual slew of candy, gum, batteries, etc. is not present. Also, household goods can be a crapshoot. At my local Albert they don’t have Ziploc bags, but at the Tesco they do. Of course, the lines are the same. They’re always the same.

So every time I go to the grocery store I think, “This is normal, this is good, this is how people live.” I helped an old man get some juice off a shelf he couldn’t bend down to reach the other day, and every time I’m in there, people accost me with Czech, so I feel integrated, a touch expatriate even. But fifteen minutes later I’m inevitably faced with the thought, “If only they had fucking Pop Tarts.”

Gotta love that choripan...

I generally wake up the same way everyday: screaming children. Just outside my window lies a "escuela primera" (elementary school), where the joyus, rawkus, sounds of the playground waft through my window, whether it´s closed or open. After my groggy ritualistic morning pee, I step out into the hectic battlefield that is known as my home. At any moment in time, one of my seven host brothers and sisters can race by in order to grab a quick bite before they´re off to school or work. My lovely housekeeper, Cookie, always has a classic Argentine breakfast laid out for me: tostados con mantequilla (toast with butter), cafe con leche, and fruta. After I slowly enjoy my wonderful meal, I hope in my tiny little shower, which takes super long to heat up. Since we´re so many in the house, I always keep it quick. As I leave the apartment, I hop in the fantastical, old, manual elevator and pop down to the ground floor, where, like all building in Buenos Aires, you must use a key to get out.

That´s when the fun begins. I live about a 20 minute walk from school (it´s literally a right turn out my door and straight), but I thankfully brought my skateboard here, and it only takes about 5-10 minutes. There is no better way to really wake up. As soon as I start pushing, the adrenaline kicks in. For starters, there are NO bike lanes here. I just stick to the side of the road and make my presence known to the traffic. As taxis and colectivos (buses) zoom past, I just keep my steady pace, pushing right along. The ground is smooth and flat, so I can just glide along nicely. And, since there´s so much traffic, I can often beat the buses to school (or at least keep up with them for awhile). It is definitely one of my favorite parts of the day.

Then there´s almuerzo (lunch). God I love lunch. I usually stay on a cycle between a few different things, but empanadas and choripan are my favorite. Empanadas, for those who don´t know, are like the hot pocket´s better, nicer, and more attractive cousin. Either filled with meat, cheese, or vegetables (or a combination of all three) they usually go for around 2-3 pesos a pop (approximately 50-75 cents US). SO GOOD. Choripan, which is chorizo sausage and pan (bread) is a sausage sandwich. Usually topped with chimichurri, a delicious oil sauce, a choripan will usually run you about 5 pesos (1.25 US). Straight ridiculous exchange rate. I love eating here, and I love living here.

mi habitacionBefore I got here, I was thrilled to hear that I didn’t start class in Spain until twelve thirty every day. I am anything but a morning person and was glad that no one was trying to turn me into one. I set my alarm for ten on the days I have school…which turns quickly into ten thirty after two or three swift smacks of the snooze button. I shower and dry my hair and hopefully make it out my door by eleven thirty. I live on the southeast corner of the city but have to go all the way uptown for classes. I walk ten minutes to the metro, take the nine-train heading north, and then walk fifteen minutes more to ‘campus.’

Campus is…well, not really a campus, rather two town houses joined by a patio. Anyway, Monday through Thursday I have my Introductory Spanish Intensive from twelve thirty to two thirty (which, if you ask me, is longer than any of our attention spans can handle…) On Mondays I then have a four hour break—I see who’s around and usually grab a longer lunch because it doesn’t make sense for me to go home. Monday nights I have an econ class about the European Union…it would be interesting if it weren’t nearly three hours long. The rest of the week I’m done at two thirty.

If I’m staying I grab lunch by school, otherwise I go home and eat there. Food in Spain is really expensive as compared to the prices we pay back home (yes—even in New York). For chain food like McDonalds or Starbucks, I’m paying the same, if not maybe ten percent more Euros than I would have paid dollars for the same commodity in the states—that plus the conversion (1 Euro = 1.50 Dollars) But I guess if you’re earning your living in Euros, spending in them wouldn’t seem nearly as bad. Sometimes I succumb to the general napping norm and take a siesta. At about seven, I wake up, do my homework, maybe watch some TV, and decide what to do about dinner. People here eat a lot later than we do at home—few eating before ten at night! Here it is customary to go out around one in the morning (before the metro closes at one thirty) and party until six in the morning (when it opens again). Let’s just say I’m not quite there yet, but I’m definitely working on it!

Four days a week, I stand at the corner of Adalbertstrasse and Köpenickerstrasse waiting for the 147 bus, which never seems to show up as scheduled when I'm around. The commute to class is almost exactly 20 minutes. There’s no direct way to get to class via public transportation. The bus takes us from our neighborhood into Mitte, the central district of Berlin, close to the Brandenburg Gate. It doesn’t always come at the scheduled times, but when it does, the ride is magically the same amount of time. From the bus stop, we get on the U-bahn, our subway system. It’s more reliable than the buses, and there are always electronic signs displaying when the next train for both directions is coming. During the week, the wait is rarely more than 5 minutes for a train.

(I think it would be amazing if the MTA would use the fare hikes to follow Europe’s method of displaying the upcoming trains and extend these signs beyond the L-train line.)

All of the students in the NYU Berlin program are studying through Humboldt Universität. Before our arrival, we were prepped with a brief history: it’s free, Einstein taught here, Marx, Engel, and the brothers Grimm studied there, and how wonderfully prestigious of a university it was – I would name-drop to my scholarly relatives and family friends and immediately their eyebrows shot up and they nodded in approval (“Ah Humboldt, I lectured there once, it’s a fine school…”).

On our third day in Berlin, we were given a tour of the area surrounding Humboldt’s main building. Then we discovered that our classes were not actually in that building at all. The administrative offices, international student services, dining hall, and lecture halls were in the beautiful main building adorned with a statue of Wilhelm von Humboldt… but the German semester doesn’t start until mid-October. Once embarking on the 20-minute trip, one would find themselves at the actual class building, which houses mostly science labs.. and the NYU in Berlin office. The architecture of the building is, well, utilitarian at best. This is a fairly standard aesthetic for East Berlin buildings (see a few posts back with the white and yellow apartment photo). After the commute to class, the building is rarely a sight for sore eyes, but out of habit and routine come comfort.

Outside of class, I try to explore the more attractive areas in East Berlin. The subways don't run late on weekends, but luckily there are tons of great bars within walking distance. Shisha (hookah) is cheap here; it rarely costs more than 3 euro a person, which is about a quarter the price it'd cost in Manhattan even with the conversation rate. A standard half-liter of beer is about 3,50, and a decent bottle of wine is about 3 euro. Of course, the fact that it's only 3 euro automatically makes it decent.

Regular classtime routine becomes so second-nature that these wonderful qualities in Berlin seem even that more extraordinary. The yellow buses, the subways, wonderfully cheap beer, and yes, the ugly buildings have all grown on me for better or for worse.

Humboldt main buildingOur class building

stray catEvery morning on my thirty-five minute walk to school in Buenos Aires, I stare in all of the cafes at the people mingling over coffee and eating medialunas (Argentina’s version of a croissant that is sugar coated and oh so delicious!). I always want to be one of those people enjoying their breakfast and taking their time (you rarely ever see someone drinking coffee in a go-cup here, everyone takes their time with everything). Instead I feel the burn in my calves as I am nearly running to class after taking five minutes to down a bowl of cereal before heading out for the day. My first class is at 11:15, which totally leaves me time to be one of those people in the cafés, yet I find myself too lazy and just leave it up to my imagination as to what it is like to actually eat a medialuna in a café rather than in class. I have intensive Spanish everyday, which is great because I am learning a lot of Spanish for a beginner, but I feel as if my workbook and notebook are gobbling my life up. It is a little too intense! I have about two tests every week. Agh! I am not too fond of my classes here, but whatever. There is one topic that every class dabbles in, and I find it very interesting, the Dirty War. I have even been lucky enough to ask a few questions to a survivor that was kept captive at the age of 16 and tortured for a year. It was INTENSE. Those moments are the surreal ones, where I pull myself out of the picture and look at where I am and what I am doing. HOLY SHIT, I am one lucky girl. Anyways, those are the good moments at school, which unfortunately get drained by many lame ones too.

As for life outside of school, Argentina is awesome. I love the nightlife, though I don’t really understand it. Every Saturday night when I am out to dinner, and 1 AM rolls around, I am boggled at how many kids are out to dinner with their families! You would never see that in states, nor would you really see people eating dinner at 1 AM (besides NYC). Most bars don’t get hopping until around 2 or 3 AM. I thought people were exaggerating when they told me that before I came here, but noooo. My friends used to call me the “grandma” in New York because I would always get tired first; in Argentina we stay out till 6 or 7 AM on a typical weekend, though some people much later. It is ridiculous how late the average person goes out. My host mom sometimes comes home later than me! The only problem is that I just hate sleeping through the next day. So I am learning how to function as a zombie.

So life here is good. I love the food, for the most part…Trying to hit up the gym to counteract all the empanadas that I am eating, but the gym just doesn’t ever seem to “fit” into my schedule! Oops! The Malbec is amazing. I have to resist from drinking it everyday. My host mom is the friendliest human being ever (and all my guy friends are jealous because she is so “hot”). Argentina is ridiculously cheap. A nice dinner costs about $15 or less. Getting my laundry done costs $4. A thirty-minute cab ride costs about $5. It is a refreshing change from NYC. I am currently packing my bags to go to another city for the weekend to celebrate Brewfest! I really can’t complain about anything, besides maybe all of the dog poop on the sidewalk…And if that is all I can complain, that says a lot…

Cheers

Alamo BarA typical day in Argentina runs like this. I wake up at 10 a.m., hit the snooze button on my cell phone alarm, and go back to bed for five minutes. This cycle continues until 10:15, and I actually get out of bed. After breakfast of a quarter of a bowl of cereal (they don't really believe in a big breakfast here), and some cookies, I brush my teeth, and I am off to school. I take the 152 colectivo (Argentinian Bus) to school which only takes change as payment, so I always have to be aware of how much monedas (change) I have. After a ten minute bus ride, I walk the half a block to class. I walk in chat with the security guard Raul for about ten minutes, show up ten minutes late to class, and begin my school day. After Spanish, which I have every day Monday through Thursday 11:00 to 1:15, I go get lunch. Usually for lunch I walk to Imperio de Sabor (The empire of flavor). It is a gourmet empanada restaurant that only sells things to go. They guarantee your order will take less than ten minutes to be ready. In a country where they love taking their time, ten minutes is incredible. I usually take my order and eat it in the lobby of the school building. I then finish my lunch. Now depending on whether it is a Monday Wednesday or a Tuesday Thursday, then this is where my days start differing. On Tuesday Thursdays, I then proceed to Reporting Buenos Aires and then to Creative Writing. I finish the class day at five, go to the gym, and then come home for dinner. On Monady Wednesdays, I go from lunch to an adventure. Usually this just means I pick a barrio to explore, take the colectivo there, and walk around for a couple of hours. Then after the adventure, I come home for dinner. After dinner, I take a shower, because I am not allowed to take a shower after 11. Do whatever homework I have, and then try and go out on the town. Usually going out on the town means going to a bar in Palermo where I live. Some of the classics include Jobs – a games bar that includes archery and Jenga – Carnal – a bar with roof top access – or Alamo – an ex-pat sports bar with American television. That usually ends the typical day in Buenos Aires.