The Wesleyan Argus

Tag: jonathan haber

  • Argus Abroad: Midnight Snack in Paris

    c/o Laura Hess

    ed foodie with a fairly strong handle on the French language, I was definitely excited to be living, studying, and, most importantly, eating in Paris for a whole semester. Paris is widely accepted as one of the food capitals of the world, so I was going to make the most of my stay.  I wanted to try as many different things as possible. I spent a lot of time trying to discover where to find “the best” of everything: the best baguette, the best croissant, the best cheeses, etc. I did this work mostly solo, with the exception of the quest to find the best crêpes in Paris, in which case an Australian exchange student from my university helped me.  In case you were wondering, the best place to find crêpes in Paris is on the rue de Montparnasse, a street completely lined with crêpe restaurants.

    Something that interested me a lot beyond all the delicious flavors I tasted was the different set of customs surrounding eating and buying food in Paris. The restaurant and café experience, for example, is totally different. When you go out to eat in Paris, the whole process is slowed down. It’s normal to take a two-hour lunch break. People often sit down and sip coffee for more than half an hour. Once, some of my French friends laughed about how they felt like they were in an American TV series because they were drinking coffee out of to-go cups while walking down the street.

    When you go to a café in Paris in the evening, the server might bring your check with your drink, but you aren’t expected to pay, drink, and dash. Instead, you’re expected to sit for a while and sip it slowly, preferably over a good book or animated discussion. I write “drink” rather than “coffee,” by the way, because, by the afternoon, most café patrons have replaced their coffees with beer or wine.  Their is no line of demarcation between cafés and bars in Paris; everything from the menu to the décor is similar.

    The restaurant experience is even less hurried. Even their familiar expressions take twice as long. If you’re taking a while to decide what to order, you would ask your server for “deux minutes” (two minutes) as opposed to our “just a minute.” Dinners start later. With 7:30 p.m. designated as “tourist hour,” most Parisians wouldn’t dream of eating before 8 or 9.  When you do start eating, it’s common for dinner to last two or three hours if you’re having multiple courses.  The order of the courses is a bit different too, with the salad coming after the main dish. If you don’t know French, be aware that in France, the “entrée” is the starter, not the main course. And if you’re in a traditional “brasserie,” don’t be surprised to find a pot of mustard on your table next to the salt and pepper. Mustard in France is a staple condiment, and it is much stronger in flavor than American mustard. When you are ready to leave, you must flag down your server and ask for “l’addition” (the check); otherwise, they won’t bring it to you. I’ve found that actually, it’s really nice to sit and relax without anyone hovering over you, waiting to kick you out and seat the next customers.

    There are a lot of myths about buying food in Paris.  We have an idealistic vision of visiting open-air markets, small butcher shops, cheese shops, and bakeries. However, shopping at a variety of stores simply isn’t practical for day-to-day life. It may have worked decades ago, but today, most people no longer have time. Instead, most people go to supermarkets, perhaps stopping at a bakery for bread or in the other specialized shops for special occasions. Refrigerators are smaller here, on average, and fewer preservatives are legal, so it’s necessary to go grocery shopping a couple times a week. Sure, the small stores have better quality goods, but they are also more expensive, especially for someone on a student budget. Something French supermarkets seem to do better than American ones, though, is encourage the reuse of shopping bags. Much in the spirit of Weshop, stores charge for bags and usually expect you to bring your own.  I’ve hardly ever seen anyone actually buy bags at the grocery store.

    Now that my time in Paris is almost up, I know that I’ll have a lot to get used to once I return to the U.S. I’ll probably have some trouble finishing my lunch at Usdan in only 45 minutes.  I won’t have delicious bakeries on almost every street.  I won’t be able to order a glass of wine at a restaurant.  However, it will be nice when salads are the least expensive thing on the menu again.

  • Argus Abroad: Distance and Identity in Buenos Aires

    Most of my friends in the College of Letters (COL) who took Spanish went abroad to Madrid, but I wanted something different (not, of course, that there’s anything wrong with Madrid). All those clichés people spout about the “comfort zone,” how leaving it is scary but “fulfilling” or whatever, really convinced me. So I wanted to get as far away from what I knew as possible.

    Buenos Aires wasn’t the most logical choice for this purpose. Yes, it is very far in terms of distance, but it is still a developed city. It has shops, tourists, cars, public transportation, et cetera. I’m not lacking in any of the comforts of capitalism here in Argentina. The education offered is very, very good. Maybe I chose to go so far away because I was misled by the spatial metaphor of “comfort zone.”

    All I know is that during the last few years, especially toward the end of 2013, a powerful, creeping feeling began to come over me. It made me ask myself: “Who are you? Do you even know?” I could hardly fathom my own identity. I just couldn’t picture it, if that makes any sense. So I decided to challenge myself as much as possible, go somewhere entirely new where I didn’t know anybody, and essentially lose my entire support system so that I could be left alone to “find myself.” Then my four-and-a-half-year-long romantic relationship ended, which definitely was not part of the plan, and I was truly left feeling completely, utterly, unfathomably alone, living in an apartment in South America with a 64-year-old woman who really likes to yell at me.

    The fallout of my breakup is still unfolding like a slow-motion train wreck, and it has compounded my experience considerably. To use another unfortunate cliché, studying abroad is like a roller coaster: full of ups and downs. My ups are pretty good, while my downs are often unbearable, more than I imagine they are for most foreign students. I was so obsessed with trying to “find myself” that I forgot some of the things that were most important to me. (I am equally disgusted as you are, reader, at how obvious this hackneyed conclusion should have been.)

    I’m having a lot of experiences that, on paper, should make me feel good about myself. I’m reading Derrida in Spanish (I don’t recommend it) and discussing it with classmates; I’m starting a Spanish poetry circle with Argentines and other foreign students; I’m writing a lot of music; and my Spanish is approaching acceptable, or perhaps even good.

    Yet as much as all of this is true, every day is still a challenge. Bus drivers yell at me and I don’t know how to react; creepy dudes creep up and creepily hit on my friends; I struggle to understand anything and everything in my philosophy seminar at the University of Buenos Aires (I’m the only foreigner in the class); and on top of all of it, I’ve lost my best friend. Now I need to learn to be alone and deal with all of this. It isn’t easy.

    Don’t get me wrong: I’m also enjoying myself a lot. This might actually be some sort of transformative experience. But growing can really hurt (I’m 6’4’’, so I should know). Study abroad is way too hard to be therapy, but it is an opportunity to question my beliefs.

    The point is, I could have planned this whole thing better. I could have tried not to distance myself because of some misguided idea about my “identity,” and could have realized that an “identity,” or whatever I mean by that word, is something that is acted, that forms through behaviors and habits that conform to your ideals.

    My experience is far from over, and because of some of these things I’ve come to understand, I have hopes for the future. I’ve formed a relationship with an amazing guy with whom I expect to be lifelong friends (and who has already started making plans to come visit me in Seattle). I’m being challenged intellectually. I’m recording music. Sometimes it’s enough, and sometimes it isn’t, but I feel okay. And even if I feel unhappy sometimes, it’s more than worth the experience for the high moments and the personal growth. I had to find that out after doing some personal shrinking, but I found it out nonetheless.

    When studying abroad, you can’t put so much pressure on yourself to find your identity. You just have to try to act according to your beliefs and ideals. Then, at the end of the day, you can sit down, alone, and ask yourself who’s there. If the person who responds isn’t someone you like, don’t get depressed and drown it in unhealthy ways. Just think about who you would have wanted to respond, and go act like that person.

    When it comes down to it, it’s really that simple. Or it’s the hardest thing imaginable.

  • Argus Abroad: Finding America in Eastern Europe

    c/o Roxie Pell

    Months of deflecting extended family members’ inquiries and foraging for half-hearted small talk have whittled my justification for spending a semester in Prague down to “just tryna get me a piece of that democratic transition, ya know?” Which of course nobody does, considering the aforementioned statement doesn’t really mean anything. And if you’re looking for a typical bullshit excuse for study abroad that also indirectly smacks of American privilege, well, there you go.

    But with traces of the past around every corner, it’s almost impossible to ignore the Czech Republic’s geopolitically fraught history. Taking into account my outsider’s bias toward interpreting the most innocuous cultural differences as exotic socialist relics, it’s obvious living here that Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) remains a region of mixed political allegiances quite unlike the unifying ethos of capitalist individualism we Americans put so much stock in. While young Czechs tend to be passionate about Western ideals of freedom, some older conservatives are nostalgic for a time when homelessness and unemployment were technically nonexistent in a country not yet governed by the ruthless laws of neoliberal self-interest. Certain foundational assumptions behind the functioning of our society, though influential in Eastern Europe, are not always taken as givens by its inhabitants.

    Prague has become a popular travel destination because of its cobblestoned streets and baroque charm. Ride to the end of the Metro line, though, and you’ll see buildings get real Soviet real fast. The neighborhood of Háje, a functionalist sea of once-grey high-rises since painted garish pinks and sickly yellows in some feeble gesture toward architectural cheer, lies just beyond Prague’s storybook center, a fringe of historical reality surrounding touristic delusion. There are no bustling streets or beckoning storefronts in Háje; in fact, the area appears to host no commercial activity at all, as if capitalism as a geographical force has not yet extended its reach outside the inner city. It’s easy to forget how little time has passed since communism shaped every aspect of daily life here, and just how deep its effects go, even now.

    That isn’t to say things haven’t changed for the better. Evidence of America’s Cold War victory and subsequent global hegemony is almost inescapable in Eastern Europe’s metropolitan centers, to the extent that I’m tempted to wonder whether the region hasn’t simply been conquered by another power. Where once everyone learned to speak Russian, now English is required to get by in an international capitalist hierarchy with America at the top. Whenever I speak English to native speakers of Czech or Polish or Romanian or any other equally beautiful and culturally rich tongue, my conversation partners will almost always apologize for their incompetence, however proficient they are in a language so distant from their own.

    Sure, this display of humility is partly just politeness. But in each of these interactions, which should ideally serve as equalizing instances of mutually beneficial cultural exchange, I can’t help but detect certain rotten power dynamics at play. While my atrocious Czech pronunciation, butchered Polish consonants, and nonexistent Slovak are assumed and generally accounted for, imperfect English on their end is treated as some inexcusable transgression for which they should feel ashamed, as if I have somehow earned the right to feel my country’s influence in the farthest corners of another continent.

    With common sense and a little historical consciousness, it shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out who’s to blame for these strangely unequal relations. Take, for example, this illustrative yet unsettling conversation I had with some random American douchebag on a train from Kraków to Prague:

     

    Me: I always feel like such an asshole when I can’t speak Czech in their own country. Like I literally can’t say words.

    Random Douchebag: Yeah, I kind of just follow a policy of “you don’t speak my language; you don’t get my money.”

     

    Me: What? That’s ridiculous! It’s gross and discriminatory enough when people talk like that in America, but that logic doesn’t even apply here, etc.

    RD: Whatever, I mean, we give them all their business.

     

    Me: !!!!!

     

    This all-too-familiar example of entitlement is indicative of something many of us have come to associate with the American traveler, engaged as ze often is in a process of simultaneous (indeed, codependent) cultural appropriation and assertion of U.S. supremacy. To enumerate the ways I’ve seen American students in Prague disrespect and ridicule the country hosting their European adventures would be a long and unnecessary exercise. Yet I can’t help but draw connections between our brand of appropriation and Eastern Europeans’ seeming resignation to being appropriated: it’s as if everyone has mutually agreed to designate the entire world as America’s playground.

    Cultural imperialism is far from America’s only mechanism of obtaining power: we establish dominance by attraction as much as exertion. I’ve seen young Eastern Europeans get starry-eyed at any mention of New York, listened to them talk about America as the holy grail of opportunity that jaded U.S. citizens have long since accepted does not exist. Though CEE countries are for the most part considered democratically consolidated, poverty is widespread, and governments are often disorganized or rife with corruption. America’s wealth, however disproportionately distributed, looks pretty good in comparison.

    Still, anti-American sentiment is alive and well in Eastern Europe, however contradictory that may seem (it isn’t). There is an undeniable tension between the perception of America as a benevolent messiah of Western capitalism and as a paternalistic international aggressor, perhaps because we ourselves haven’t yet decided what kind of superpower we are. Even the greatest country in the world can’t figure itself out.

    The current crisis in Ukraine has reminded us all that the seemingly antiquated East/West dichotomy is very much extant and making everyone nervous about its implications for the tenacity of liberal democratic values outside America and the EU. We speak again about a domino effect, speculating as to whether Russia’s continuing imperial ambitions will extend its influence way past anything anyone is comfortable with, and we’re right to worry. After a few years of democratic consolidation and explosions of repressed ethnic tension following the fall of the Iron Curtain, CEE countries were considered for the most part to be “taken care of,” their role on the global stage negligible, their boxes checked. Where Clinton focused his diplomatic eye on former Eastern bloc members, Bush turned the country’s attention toward the Middle East. Though the shift didn’t seem all that important at the time, relations with Eastern Europe suffered.

    In 2009, CEE politicians and intellectuals issued a clairvoyant letter to the Obama administration urging America to understand that their nations continued to operate between two worlds—with Russia still uncomfortably influential both culturally and economically through its monopoly on energy, Eastern Europeans were at risk of becoming neutralized in their allegiance to the West. I came to Prague in part because I was curious about the globalization of modern capitalism, but I’m leaving wondering under whose jurisdiction it took hold in the first place. The so-called neoliberal consensus may or may not have actually happened, but if it did, who really consented? And will it last?

  • Argus Abroad: Discovering Utopenhagen

    I’ve come to an unhappy conclusion about the lessons we can learn from Denmark, the world’s empirically happiest country. In short, America just can’t do it.

    I shouldn’t put that so pessimistically. Americans could definitely do what the Danes do that makes them so happy if they just changed their attitude toward life and work. And their size and demographic makeup. And their historical and current relationship with the government. Simple.

    There are several explanations I’ve heard thrown around about why the Danes are so happy, and most, if not all of them, would be extremely hard, if not impossible, to put into practice in the United States.

    The most obvious thing people point to when explaining the phenomenon of the happy Danes is the welfare state. People here get free (and generally good) health care, free university education, 5 paid vacation weeks a year with an extra 11 paid holidays, a 20-dollar-an-hour effective minimum wage, and generous unemployment policies. It’s said that if you were born an average citizen, the best place to be would be the Nordic region.

    But as the heated debate over Obamacare shows, people in America aren’t willing to go in that direction. Yes, the taxes here are high, but the citizens don’t mind because they are so well provided for. In the United States, people fight over proposed small tax increases, so the fact that members of the top tax bracket in Denmark pay 60.2 percent of their income in taxes (as of 2012) would blow many Americans’ minds.

    As I take my clean bus to school or walk on litter-free and well-salted roads here, it does seem like you get what you pay for. With the security that the welfare state provides to people who actually live and work and get sick here, I’d be pretty happy, too.

    Another part of the reason the welfare state could never work in America is the fact that people in the United States often distrust and resent our government. In Denmark, by contrast, people pay their taxes and follow the rules. They love their figurehead queen and wait until the walk light turns green at the crosswalk, even if it’s the middle of the night and there are no cars to be seen. More than 50 percent of Danes reported that they “tend to trust” public institutions, according to a 2012 poll.

    This trust can be seen on a much smaller level as well. The other day, while walking around, my friends and I saw a baby left alone in a stroller outside a store. A baby. We’d never seen anything like that. Aside from the media hullabaloo and the allegations of child abuse that would arise if anything like this happened in the United States, it just seems unthinkable that a parent would be able to leave a kid unattended without a babynapper coming along, but I guess that’s my American suspicion talking.

    The Danes also manage to keep their society running smoothly because they’re culturally homogenous. A country with a population smaller than that of Massachusetts, Denmark is sometimes described as a tribe rather than a country. This is very apparent when I walk down the street and look at the people who surround me. Of course, everyone is different, and Denmark has experienced an influx of immigrants, but generally people here come from the same cultural background and share the same values. In a melting pot like America, it’s a lot harder to reach a consensus.

    I’ve heard that Danish happiness stems from low expectations, which seems very antithetical to American views. In America, people seem more driven and work-oriented than people here seem. Danes consider family to be very important, and their policies governing parental leave and vacation reflect this. In the United States, the frenetic, materialistic culture makes it easy to feel like work and money are the be-all and end-all. I can understand that these differences in values could account for the difference in happiness levels, but I see no easy way America could fix this.

    Even if we can’t adopt the ways of the Danes, however, it has been fascinating to see how a whole new set of values and laws can shape a society.  For the next few months, I can just slow down, immerse myself in people who understand the important things in life, and marvel at the un-kidnapped babies.