“It’s not a long holiday. It’s a short life.”

This title is perhaps the most precise summary of the year abroad that I have written so far. Which is a shame, because they aren’t actually my words. This phrase was the inspired thought of dear Rebecca, as we sat together on a metro in Paris, pondering the confusions of the year and wondering how we might ever find somewhere to call home there.

It is a short life. You have to go to a new country and essentially create yourself as a bureaucratic, systematic, (HYDROMATIC) human being there, a process that basically involves lots of forms. Lots. More than you can imagine. I’m talking a metric shit ton of forms. A short life contains just as many forms as a full-length life, just in a much shorter space of time. It’s form density. There is a home to find, bank account to open, phone contract to sign for, plus friends to make, supermarkets to find, favourite cafés to discover, language to learn, train network to decipher. All things that are already a part of your current life, but that you have to do all over again in a new country for it to ever feel like home.

Unfortunately from a paperwork point of view (and it’s surprising how fast this becomes your primary point of view), I had decided to split my year abroad. But happily, Rebecca had been equally naïve, and even more happily, our second placements were both to take place in Paris. And so, whilst the weight of forms hung heavily over me as I jetted off to Paris last week, it was lifted by the comfort that at least this time I wouldn’t be alone whilst getting my life in order. Almost falling off the metro due to the weight of your suitcase is a bit tragic and embarrassing alone, but with a friend it’s mostly just funny, especially when it’s the friend doing the falling (sorry Bec).

I cannot mock her too harshly because I made a much greater error shortly after arrival at Paris Charles de Gaulle, the largest and most bizarrely empty airport I’ve ever been to, in accidentally abandoning my rucksack on a bench. This rucksack contained my laptop, money, phone, but most crucially a huge amount of, you guessed it, forms, without which I might as well have got straight back on the next flight to England. I was convinced that, in the 10 minutes before I realised it was missing, it would almost certainly have been blown up by a bomb squad, but to my great relief and some quite impressive traversing of floorscalators, it was exactly where I left it, forms and all.

My hero.

And thus, generously hosted by Walter, our flat hunt commenced. Paris is a horribly cruel city in which to find an apartment. Everywhere you look there are apartments. Taunting you, because none of them seem to be actually available to rent, and certainly not for a short period to students. The subject of how to find a Paris apartment has been covered in numerous blogs, and so I’m not sure I have much to add to the wealth of advice out there except my own anecdotes.

The very worst flat-viewing experience we had was also the first. Having wildly underestimated the size of Paris from our map, we thought we would stroll from the Eiffel Tower down to the south-east of the 5th arrondissement, which was a nice idea until it started raining chats et chiens and we realised that Paris is actually pretty sizeable. Not only had the landlord told us the wrong address, but when we arrived we were surprised (naïvely, I now realise) to find that there were other potential tenants viewing it too. Within a minute of entering, these two jeunes hommes had declared that they were willing to take it, and would it be okay for them to send their paperwork that afternoon? We exchanged a glance and quickly left, hot-footing it to the nearest McDonald’s. For the free WiFi, I tell you. And okay, also for a McFlurry and a small cry.

This was probably the lowest low, however, apart from a time where a woman on the phone would not stop repeating “c’est pas pratique!” (It’s not practical!) when we called to enquire about her apartment, where one person would have to traverse the other’s bedroom to get to their own. This was clearly listed in the advert, and so I’m not sure why this lady was quite so keen on insisting on the impractical nature of her apartment, or who exactly she thought it would be practical for, but I quickly gave up and moved on.

Eventually, we found our luck with an advert posted on the announcement boards at the American Church in Paris. This was something we’d read about but that I’d hardly believed could actually be a source of success, but we’re really happy with our newfound home, even if we haven’t moved in yet. More details and photos to come when we have, but for now I shall just share my own personal point of glee- it has a balcony with a view onto the Eiffel Tower. I feel like I’m winning the short life game already.

However, one big hurdle jumped and I remembered that I still didn’t really count as a person in France because I didn’t have any of the human being numbers that my new forms required. A phone number. A social security number. A bank account number. Not only does each of these things take a good hour of research, another very decent hour of queuing, and a conversation with an uninterested French person to sort out, but you are somehow supposed to intuitively know the order in which to get them. I couldn’t get a bank account without an address, nor a SIM card without a French bank account. It is a horrible bureaucracy trap, especially because the French bloody love forms. They adorent forms. When opening my bank account, I was asked for a photocopy of my landlady’s ID. To be clear, I wasn’t opening the account for her. This was just something they wanted 3 copies of.

Whilst we’re at it, why does everybody want 3 copies of everything? I understand one for them, one for me, one for… who? It remains one of the great mysteries of our time. I can only conclude that somewhere in the middle of rural France there is a mad aristocrat called Monsieur Bureaucratie, to whom everyone sends their third copies. He then proceeds to fill his great country chateau with them, basking in a room filled with forms, and the warm, inky scent of photocopier paper.

There are no shortcuts to the successful short life, but luckily there are friends, food and cheap wine. Not to mention beautiful cats. Paris, you’re next.

A Brit Abroad: The Double-Edged Sword of Englishness

A British Social Attitudes survey carried out in 2013 saw a drop in the number of people who would describe themselves as ‘very proud’ to be British. What were we, then, if not ‘very proud’? Eight in ten said they were at least ‘somewhat proud’ to be British, a statement I really love. Quietly asserting a secret bit of patriotism in this way is just so, well, British. Whilst the whole idea of British patriotism has been rather tainted, especially in recent years, by its hijacking by certain political parties and far-right groups, most of us are happy being ‘somewhat proud’. We like to moan about all sorts of minor issues, but deep down we’re rather content with ourselves.

I’m getting nostalgic for all sorts of weird things, some of which I’m not even sure I liked that much in the first place. Things like the shape of a 50 pence piece, the word ‘juniper’, muddy fields, Bradgate Park, and the concept of a cone of chips. Are these things really that exciting? I’m not sure anymore, but I know they’re a part of my heritage. I’m somewhat proud of it.

And yet, when abroad, many of us feel quite a lot less proud when our Britishness is horribly evident in the games of Charades and Articulate that we’re forced to play in attempting to speak the language. Don’t know the word for earplugs? Don’t worry, just say ‘the things you put in your ears when you’re trying to sleep and there is some noise outside’ (a generous translation- a truthful one would have contained many more grammar errors), and the assistant will grimace and hand them over. At least it’s good practice for Christmas.

As a country, we’re pretty rubbish at learning foreign languages. The classic excuse is that ‘everybody speaks English anyway’, and whilst I desperately want to turn around to the people that claim this and say “no they don’t so get your head in that grammar book”, it’s kind of true. English is an extremely marketable language, and one that most European children now study intensely at school, so most people probably do speak at least a little bit of English anyway.

Therefore, when abroad we end up being immensely privileged. If you visit a museum in almost any other country in the world, and they have been so kind as to provide a translation of their reading materials, they will translate them into English first. Because even if a visitor from, say, France, is visiting Italy, they probably will have some knowledge of English. And so it is that everyone else has to read in a second language they are assumed to have, whilst we swan about and are spoilt with information handed to us in our native tongue.

I was talking with a friend from Germany about how much I hate dubbed films, and my struggles to find a subtitled version of the new Hunger Games film to watch. She pointed out that I probably only hated them so much because most films I saw were already in my language. A privilege I had never really noticed because I never really had to think about it.

There are lots of these privileges. Museums, films, tours, restaurant menus, signs: you name it, they’ve probably already translated it into English for you. Often quite broken, unwittingly amusing English, but a valiant attempt at English all the same. And it sounds so ungrateful to describe this massive, massive blessing as being actually a curse-in-disguise, but sometimes, when you’re really desperately trying to make the effort to actually learn a country’s language and all they seem to want to do is help you to avoid doing so, it’s quite demoralising.

Anyone who has attempted to speak a foreign tongue abroad has probably been confronted with the classic helpful waiter/waitress/shop assistant who replies to you in English, happy for the chance to practise as well as being just a little bit smug that they are doing you a grand favour. So they think. I wish I could wear a big sign that says ‘PLEASE SPEAK TO ME IN ITALIAN. I’M TRYING.’ But in the absence of cardboard and a big pen (where are all the stationery shops in Italy?), I just have to smile and keep ploughing on in the hope that they will be the first to crack in the battle of language wits.

If I have one aim for the year abroad, it is not for people to stop trying to speak to me in English. I am visibly foreign and not ashamed to be so; I am ‘somewhat proud’ of my heritage. No, the aim is thus: when I reply in Italian, and later in the year, French, they will be so struck by my mastery of the language that they will immediately revert to it. And that’s how I’ll know I’ve won.

Ellie watches telly in Italy

As the screaming hordes of fans of my other blog will know, as they sit desperately hitting F5 in anticipation of the next almost unbearably brilliant post, I’m a big fan of telly. Alright, most of that wasn’t true; apart from an errant visitor on October 19th, nobody’s reading it anymore, which is most probably colpa mia as I’m not writing it much anymore.

I see you, reader.

I shall attempt to justify my lack of posts; it’s partly that I barely manage to maintain a regular posting rate on this one, and running two blogs would take up a bit too much of my time. But mostly, it’s because Italian telly is rubbish. I hate to generalise, but it truly is terrible. I’m not one to make such a grand statement without evidence, so these are some of the average shows you might expect to find on a flick through the schedules.

Italy doesn’t seem particularly keen on making much of its own programming, so it has a huge amount of badly dubbed imported stuff from England/America. The thing is, the shows they choose to import are really of the very worst quality. It’s almost as if they’ve approached the production company about buying something to fill the schedules, been handed a list of possible choices and just gone for the very cheapest ones so they can go and spend the change on a nice cappuccino. We’re talking shows about people using fake identities on online dating, teenage pregnancies, and Geordie Shore. Really. They seem very keen on the ‘real life’ angle, even when that real life is incredibly dull. They even have a channel called Real Time devoted to it.

When it does make its own programmes, the minimum possible budget rule is generally still followed rigorously. Thus, they end up with a lot of poor ‘current affairs’ programmes, my favourite of which is the one where a man gets all the day’s newspapers and sits there highlighting parts as he reads them out. Cheap as chips, but much, much duller. They also have a hell of a lot of weirdly outdated game shows, which often involve a myriad of barely-clothed showgirls, known as veline. I’d rather not go on about how obviously damaging this presentation of women is; instead, it’s good to know that someone is doing something about it, even if the process seems to be taking a long time.

A pair of more generously clothed veline

I always knew we were spoilt in the UK with our world-renowned darling, the BBC, as well as top drawer commercial services like Channel 4. But I didn’t realise quite to what extent: there are really next to no decent dramas or comedies being made in Italy at the moment, apart from the excellent Commissario Montalbano, which itself was imported by BBC Four a few years back. I asked my Italian friend about this: surely there’s a demand for decent programming made in Italian? So why isn’t there any? The answer: in a word, Berlusconi.

Berlusconi’s media empire has pretty much single-handedly pulled the rug out from under Italian television. He started with Mediaset, a commercial competitor to the state broadcaster RAI, and won large audiences by pandering to the lowest common denominator, usually sex. A few years ago, Berlusconi also bought into RAI, and applied the same strategy again, so now there is little difference between the two networks. Add to this the financial pressure of the recession, and the lack of willingness to take risks, and it makes sense that they’re sticking to tired formats rather than pumping money into developing new ones.

Still, if someone were to stop me on the street tomorrow and offer me a job in Italian television, I’d take those risks and make better stuff. Italian television could still have the potential to go through the same cultural revolution that English television has gone through in recent years, becoming a more highly respected cultural pastime and a quality competitor to the cinema with its own artistic merits, rather than something to just have on in the background. Just make it happen before I leave in February, per favore.

Biscuits, breakfast and the battle for toast

I’ve begun with an absurdly boring blog title, in what has actually been quite an eventful and cultural week. This week I’ve been to the opera, a music museum, out for delicious lunch and two equally delicious dinners, to see both a French and an Italian film, and volunteered at a film festival. But what’s on my mind? Biscuits. Sorry. At least there was a nice attempt at alliteration in the title.

It’s specifically these biscuits, the quite wonderful Pan di Stelle, that I’ve fallen for.

I was first offered one of these in Florence in 2013, which seems a strangely long time ago now, when Isobel and I were staying with a lovely Italian lady who offered us tea with these biscuits on our arrival. I hadn’t the heart to admit I wasn’t a fan of tea, especially because it was obvious she’d gone to a big effort to make the quiet, nervous English girls tea, so I sipped it meekly through pursed lips with a grimace that, looking back on it, probably could have been subtler. The biscuits, though, were a revelation, followed up by a purchase of at least 2 large bags during our 10 day stay. Just the right balance of nuts, cocoa and sugar. I tried to find them on my return to England but they haven’t made it there yet; I had them again in Rome in summer 2013, but they were always a bittersweet treat given that I knew I couldn’t bring them home. So I did the simple thing and moved my home to where the Pan di Stelle were.

I’m so glad we’re reunited. Even better, the biscuits are often on TV in this slightly creepy advert where the children live in a magical biscuit star world:

They’ve eaten too many Pan di Stelle and are in need of some Dulcolax, pronto.

I’m eating a lot of them. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, pre-bed supper. Often spread with Nutella on top, I am ashamed to say. But before you go judging me for eating biscuits for breakfast, you should first know that this is actually an important moment of cultural assimilation, and not just a problem. Because, in Italy, the dreams of small children across England’s green and pleasant land come true, and biscuits-for-breakfast is a perfectly acceptable status quo. You can just pour yourself a glass of milk, dunk them in (Pan di Stelle make for excellent dunking) and nibble away. In the end it’s really not much more unhealthy than a generous bowl of Coco Pops, but it still feels like a decadent way to start the day.

Other breakfast items are harder to come by, though. The concept of toasters does not seem to have made its way over to Southern Europe, and in a bizarre response to this, Italy just sells ready-toasted bread. I mean, I think it’s toasted.

How long until we get an episode of ‘How It’s Made’ on these babies?

These things are called “fette biscottate”, roughly translating to “crisp slices”, or more neatly “rusks”. Through a quick Google search, I’ve discovered we do actually have these in the UK, but here they are a staple of the diet, and my experiments reveal that they go very nicely indeed with apricot jam or Nutella. I’m trying to slowly replace my standard breakfast of Special K with them for three main reasons. 1. Special K (or its supermarket own brand equivalent) is heinously expensive here. 2. UHT milk ruins it anyway. And 3. I’m hoping that this breakfast change is a symbol of a greater attempt to integrate and live la vita italiana, starting with the little things and moving onto such heights as tonight’s task: applying for a PAM supermarket loyalty card to fill the void my Nectar card has left in my purse. Time to grab the Pan de Stelle and get cracking.

From language student to language learner

Earlier today, I came across this image on Facebook.

It was clearly written by someone who smugly thinks of themselves as a great ‘language learner’, ridiculing the bookish student with their grammar exercises and silly exams, but there is some truth to bits of it. When I saw it, my main feeling was a big sense of guilt. Guilt because, although I’ve been in Italy a month, I’m still not sure I’m learning ‘how to communicate like a native’, and I am most certainly not ‘spending most time with locals’. Without trying to sound too sorry for myself, it’s just a lot, lot harder than I thought. One of my main aims when coming to university abroad was not to fall into the classic international student trap of not really integrating. Back at Cambridge, I often wondered why so many (though of course not all) of the international students seemed to stick together rather than mix with the main student community, but here it is blindingly obvious why.

Living with Italians would have been ideal, but obviously given the difficulty of searching for a flat, I was hardly in a position to restrict the options further. There were simply not that many rooms available in Italian flats, presumably because if someone has a spare room they can just find another Italian friend to fill it. Equally, all of the events and trips organised by ESN and ESEG, Erasmus societies, have been fabulous and fun and a good way of seeing the country, but they have also thrown all the international students together, without any of the Italians who actually study here full-time. In many ways, the system pushes you towards being friends with other internationals- which, don’t get me wrong, has been amazing, but is doing little for my Italian. The only obvious way to make Italian friends is through language tandems, but this feels like a rather artificial way of meeting people, although I am hopeful that tandems can develop into friendships instead of always remaining a cold linguistic exchange.

Still, I am using Italian a lot in everyday life; at university, in shops, watching the television (more to come on the strange phenomenon of Italian TV in a later post). I would make the claim that my basic Italian is pretty good; I have got to grips with the basics of how people actually say things, probably the main aim of living abroad, such as the way you answer a phone, tell someone to come in when they knock, let someone know you’re on your way, greet people, etc etc. It’s not very original to say that you don’t really learn this properly from a book, but it’s true, and even truer in Italy where linguistic quirks can vary substantially across regions.

What I am hoping will come with time, and with (touch wood) the achievement of my goal of making Italian friends, is the expansion of what I will henceforth refer to as a mental thesaurus. After years and years of reading books like it’s going out of fashion (which it probably is…), my English vocabulary is fairly broad and interesting, and I have ways of expressing myself ironically, formally, carefully, or with carefully chosen pop culture references, depending on the audience. It is this mental thesaurus, this bank of words and set phrases and cultural knowledge, that I sorely miss when I attempt to express myself in Italian. In short, I’d have no idea how to express the cultural idea of ‘touch wood’. I’m working on it.