Tanaya's Exchange to CEU San Pablo | Spain
Study Abroad Reflections.
Tuesday 5th September
The anxiety of arriving almost a
week late due to Visa delays (a preliminary taste of the laissez-faire Spanish
administration) had seen me legging it to my new uni still in all my
post-28-hour-commute jetlagged glory, barely a day out from first stepping into
Madrid.
Admittedly probably due to the sleep deprived delirium in which I was
rushing around this unfamiliar campus coupled with the shock of catching a bus
filled with disgruntled geriatrics to get here (I thought all old people were
sweet?), I had unexpectedly allowed myself to become enthralled in a
conversation about Shania Twain.
Who knew that the American
sweetheart pop/country-singer great of the 90´s would provide such good
conversational fodder with two Danish students I´d asked for directions to the
University´s International Student Office?
But it
did because no one was quite sure what had happened to Shania Twain and so
speculation that her best friend had ended up marrying her husband and then she
in turn, had subsequently married her best friend´s husband (I later looked it
up and yes it´s all true) turned to the possibility of going out for sangria
some six hours later and perhaps a long-term prospect of not being a complete
loner after all.
I soon discovered that I was
better off buying Tinto de Verano than sangria- the poor man´s version
involving a blasphemous combination of lemonade with red wine and costing €1.50
per 3L plastic bottle, comparable to goon but palatable. I also learnt not to
tag along to student bar crawls which consistently visited the lowest
denominator bar/clubs in the city as a matter of necessity (unless of course
the drink deals were exceptional) and that the norm for going out here was 2am
which did not mesh well with 8 or 9am starts at uni everyday.
Consequently, I quickly became a
slave to the siesta, finally comprehending its functionality in the lively
inner-city purlieus where the shops only closed at 10pm everyday and dinner was
eaten even later. 5:30am churros at Chocoleteria San Gines became as much of a
fixture as the post night out kebab. Except that these churros were legit –
hailing from the oldest most famous churro establishment in the world (eat your
heart out San Churros) conveniently situated at the end of my street where
tourists who probably didn’t know it was open 24/7, formed great long queues
outside during more respectable hours of the day.
I felt
like I´d won the roommate lotto, avoiding the annoyingly uptight no-fun Nancys,
the serially unclean non-dish washers and more generally, the downright
weirdos. My roommate Sheila was Spanish which came useful not only for handling
noise complaints (all undeserved obviously) but also because her dad was a
chef, so I assumed she knew what she was doing when it came to Spanish cuisine,
at least before I saw her cutting raw chicken with the same knife as her
vegetables. She taught my other roommates and I how to make tortilla de
patatas- a Spanish mainstay which was essentially a stupidly delicious fat
robust omelette using about 7 eggs as the glue between wedges of fried potato.
Exactly as healthy as it sounded. I also partook in salsa classes but it turned
out that I was abysmal and lacked even a millimetre of coordination. I listened
to good reggaetón, bad reggaetón, heard Despacito more times than you could
imagine and then suddenly, two months had already passed.
Saturday 28th October
I was fast realising that Spain
was blessed with far more public holidays than Australia. I´d only been here
for a short time and there had already been 3. We jumped on the opportunity of
yet another long weekend by hastily organizing a weekend in San Sebastian with
all of one day´s notice. The revelry of travelling with new friends aside, San
Sebastian had brought me one of the greatest joys I have known in my life.
The perfect cheesecake.
Unbeknownst to me, we´d arrived
at this peaceful seaside town sitting on the border of Spain and France which
in fact turned out to be a gastronomical landmark- home to the greatest number
of Michelin-stars-per-square-metre in the world. And I´d binged enough
MasterChef and Chef´s Table to understand what a big deal that was.
A reputation which was likely
earnt from the quality of seafood and sheer variety of tapas, or pinxos as they
called them here in the Basque region.
But as I left my friends at the
beach to instead go for a jog and then subsequently wonder what I could eat to
make the past hour of exercise completely redundant; I spotted the vendor who
was about to provide me with my own definitive San Sebastian culinary
experience. A sleepy family bakery at the corner of the same street which my
hostel was on.
I can´t tell you exactly what
compelled me to choose a cheesecake in that moment. It was after all, one of
the more humble cake varieties. Especially here, a stone´s throw from France
where the Bakery´s display cabinet contained a selection of gateaus, mille
feuilles and other sorts of layered colourful creations that had been ascribed
little laminated placards spelling out names I´d rather point at than knowingly
butcher with my broad Australian pronunciation.
But common as it was, the
cheesecake had a myriad of pressure points which could make or (sadly more
often than not) break it.
This cheesecake was a simple
baked cheesecake which I preferred because the oven gave the filling an
airiness that continental cheesecakes lacked. In fact, the texture of this
cheesecake had resolved the dichotomy between lightness without being dry and
yet simultaneously creamy without the sickening denseness that sometimes left a
layer of cream cheese residue coating your tongue long after consumption.
And still, there were many more
important considerations to gauge. For example, what was the perfect base to
filling ratio? It had to be thin enough to easily run a fork through whilst
maintaining enough of a biscuity presence to counteract the richness of the
filling. And of course the flavours. I often found that many cheesecakes fell
short of the requisite level of tartness which allowed you to enjoy it without
the cream cheese flavour becoming too monotonous half way through the slice.
These were all difficult balancing acts that the baker of this cheesecake had
executed flawlessly.
They sold
it one euro per slice and the cake was completely unadulterated and
unpretentious. Sadly my only complaint going forth was the burden of knowing it
would be long before I stumbled upon another cheesecake which could match the
level of excellence I had experienced today.
Sunday 10th December
All too soon here I was. At a
flat in downtown Madrid celebrating Danish Christmas traditions, drinking Feuerzangenbowle
(German mulled wine, yes I googled the name again) feeling conflicted about
Australia´s Christmassy contribution of Rolf Harris´s greatest festive hits,
quickly realising Bublé was a safer bet and sitting in a circle with one
Singaporean, one Faroese, one German, two Danes, half a Mexican, one British
person and a partridge in a pear tree. We played Pakkeleg, which seemed to be
some glorified version of Secret Santa from Denmark but slightly crueller. For
a tradition originating in one of the most socialist countries in the world,
this game did not evenly distribute the presents at all. Mathias ended up with
4 of the 7 gifts which was suspicious as he had been by far the most
enthusiastic to play.
We
dispersed at the end of the night with a mounting sense of melancholy. Exchange
had gone far too quickly. Half of us were finished with our studies and would
not return to Madrid after the Christmas break.
The cold had truly set in come
Christmas and I learnt that I had never experienced the cruelty of mother
nature before spending winter in Europe.
It became compulsory to announce
´it´s not too bad´ every time we stepped outside which was more of a mental
reassurance to ourselves rather than a statement of truth. I reluctantly bought
new foundation after discovering I had become two shades lighter and the daily
hassle of dressing in thermals, trousers, a woollen turtleneck, a puffer
jacket, a scarf, a beanie and mittens evolved into ritual after endless months
of sub-zero weather which had lingered longer than expected thanks to a
shifting ´Siberian cold front´. It was a ´you had to be there´ type of
situation to fully comprehend how bad the weather was and in my more dramatic
moments I wondered why humankind had chosen to settle in such unhospitable environments.
But I couldn´t let it dampen my
festive spirit. My friend Rachel had come to visit me from Australia for
Christmas and a week later another friend Edith and I unintentionally found
ourselves at a spontaneous (and most importantly free) street party in the heart of Amsterdam over New Years. The
trash combination of snow, hail, wind and torrential rain that had plagued the
rest of my visit to Holland, held off for the celebrations like a twenty
eighteen miracle. Now all we had to avoid this night was the fiery downpouring
of debris from homemade fireworks exploding every 2 minutes that made the
entire city sound like a warzone.
I returned to Madrid for final
exam season at the end of January. Afterwards I found myself in the fortunate
position where I could externally enrol for my next semester at Murdoch and
continue the sporadic country-hopping I´d developed a taste for.
Google Flights in collaboration
with delightfully cheap Ryan Air tickets and too many to count reservations on
hostelworld.com, enabled me to experience mildly frostbite-ridden toes in Paris
(Paris is really much better in the summer), a missed flight from Copenhagen to
London because I´d wanted to finish my tacky reality tv show (at least it
wasn´t a flight back to Australia?), sunsets over the Amalfi Coast, diving in
Tenerife and fashion week in Milan.
Some twelve countries later and a
growing self-awareness that I probably already sounded (still sound) like a
tool for embodying #wanderlust, I also realised I was thankful that I had
studied abroad as someone a little older (23) than second year uni. Whilst
there was no better time between sooner or later, I now felt like I had a
greater understanding that this experience was on borrowed time and that the
exigencies of life wouldn’t allow me to do this forever.
The opportunity to throw yourself
into the unfamiliar and appreciate a new city with more than a mere cursory
glance is worth the daunting amount of paperwork. There is no time too late as
long as you have a full semester´s worth of credits left to complete (I went on
my second last semester). And whilst you might not end up sampling the best
cheesecake of your life, maybe you´ll taste the best carrot cake instead.
*And I also
studied a lot. Like everyday.
- Tanaya studied abroad at CEU San Pablo Madrid in Spain
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