As the semester comes to a close in New York while I remain in sunny Spain, I wanted to reflect on my time in Europe with some notes. These aren’t ideas to improve on, though I have a few (too much soup!), but rather places, customs and foods that I have come to love and will soon miss.
Americans love Europe. We love to vacation here, import wines, imitate recipes and study abroad. But what is it exactly about Europe that has such a strong pull? This semester, I’ve found it to be its public spaces. Here, bars spill out onto streets with exuberant patrons, no one worried about glasses being stolen. In city centers, cars fill roundabouts on the outskirts of bustling plazas, home to restaurants’ tables and chairs, busking musicians and street artists. The party comes to you. At any hour of any day, you’re bound to be welcomed to the street by loud laughter and conversation in corners of cities like Granada, Rome or Lisbon.
In Prague, you can’t walk more than ten minutes without running into a park, sometimes built into hillsides. The green space was so abundant that my friend and I found ourselves on at least five different park benches a day, each one offering different flowerbeds and city views. In the central plaza, people gather around the astrological clock to wait and watch it change on the hour, every hour. This feeling of togetherness is reinforced for locals and tourists alike through the appreciation of a slow meal at an outdoor table and people watching while the day passes. Memories from places like Lisbon and Paris are preserved with the honeyed glow of the cities’ warm street lamps.
When I was younger, the food I ate on a trip had little sway on my experience of the place, whether it was in Paris or Kansas City, Mo. Now, as I cram in every country possible before I leave, I am constantly looking for my next best coffee and meal. While some places weren’t all-too-memorable, there are a few that will be forever cemented in my mind as the best dinners — and cultural experiences — of my life.
In a New York Times article, we found a place that only served roast chicken in Geneva, Switzerland. At Chez ma Cousine, we ordered the specialty, a roast chicken served alongside heartily seasoned potatoes. When they brought out the plate, our identical orders amounted to two whole chickens and a heaping pile of fries. We ate in silence, savoring every bite of the perfectly cooked meat, ending with the mutual consensus that it was in fact, as good as the New York Times said.
The following weekend, in Istanbul, which will remain the most incredible place I have ever been, we ate kebab plates in a building that was three hundred 50 years old. The dishes came overflowing with skewers, fluffy pita, lime-pickled cabbage, hummus and shredded vegetables. When our plates were taken away, every last piece had been cleared. We unsurprisingly had the most delicious coffee, but also found incredible street food, available for 10 Turkish lira, and truly believe that simit is the new bagel. Cooked fresh, they are light,doughy and topped with black sesame seeds. Though not on the sea itself, I also had incredible Mediterranean food in Lisbon. Chicken served on a bed of hummus (ingenious), red pepper dip and more pita.
In Morocco, while all of what we ate was new, my biggest takeaway was dessert. As an alternative to the other options that had dairy, I was served orange slices with cinnamon at every meal. My host family and I now finish many late dinners with them, a combination I never would have thought of but have wholeheartedly adopted.
Back to Granada. Having packed many weekends with travel near and far, I spend my weekdays creating a fine balance between home cooked meals at my homestay and experiencing restaurants and tapas bars in the city. My two favorites take two very different approaches. The first, called Las Lomas, is a restaurant owned by my host family in the mountains of a nearby town. First started in 1980 by the family, they serve delicious, traditional Spanish food like migas (similar to stuffing) and “patatas a la pobre,” which are slow cooked, thinly sliced potatoes with onions and peppers. The main attraction at Las Lomas is the thick cuts of meat that are served with simple spices and brought out with a hot stone, so that each piece you cut can be grilled freshly to your liking before every bite.
My most recent find here was Bar Poë, a tapas bar run by a husband and wife duo from England and Angola, respectively. As is tradition, each drink comes with a free tapa. They are listed on the menu as numbers one through eleven, offering items such as Thai cooked chicken with polenta, pork skewers with pineapple and garbanzo bean salad. The husband works the front, taking orders and running drinks, writing out checks by hand and from memory. The kitchen is also a one-woman show, which requires patience but exhibits authenticity. It is standing room only, with seats at the bar and space for four tables. Dinner and drinks for four never surpasses 40 euros. After trying nearly everything on the menu, it will be the first place I recommend to future Granada students.
As a result of the semester, I have learned Spanish slang and pushed my average dinner time back to 10 p.m. I’ve met people from all over the world and managed to still run into people from high school. Though studying abroad isn’t always as footloose and fancy-free as it often seems, I’ve found it to be an essential way to experience new cultures while learning to appreciate one’s own.
