Eurotrip, Winter Edition

Today when Christie walked through the gates at the airport, I was already waiting with a big hug for her. The time had finally come: last August, we booked all our flights, reserved our hostels, and made plans for her to spend her Christmas vacation touring Europe with me. What a way to finish out my study abroad experience, touring with one of my best friends from high school, definitely the one who’s heard the most about all of my experiences over the past six months.

Today we just chilled around Pisa, both figuratively and literally. You see, the heat in my apartment is not working (nor is the hot water), so we had to be quite creative that night to stay warm after we’d visited the tower and the duomo, gotten our first Italian coffees together, gone back to lab for my final bit of work, and run a few errands around the city. Fortunately, the Italian fashion police did not have access to my apartment, so no one has to be any the wiser of the fashion crimes committed this evening in the confines of my chilly home.

È stato un piacere: Saying "So Long"

In a glorious culinary culmination of our time together, Claudia and I at last cooked the pumpkin pie we’d been discussing since Thanksgiving, when we’d been unable to locate a pumpkin. We topped the pie with walnuts and pistachio (the latter for a bit of Sicilian flair), mascarpone, and fior di latte gelato. This was Claudia’s first taste of this autumnal delight. It was absolutely magnificent and allowed me to finally feel as though Christmas had arrived. Our masterpiece disappeared from the kitchen quite quickly: apparently Italians can also appreciate some American cuisine.

Later that night, Claudia, Fabrizio, Giovanni, and I went to Palermo’s first “Facebook Party.” The purpose of these parties is somewhat beyond me, but nearly every major city in Italy has had one within the past few weeks. It sounds to me like saying, “Well, why don’t we have a party and just invite everyone between the ages of 15 and 30?” but Italians seem to love the concept. They all get together, drink wine, and stand around talking for ages while a DJ blasts music to which few people dance. In Italy, young people don’t dance like they do in the US. Here, talking is the thing to do at parties. Facebook, as I mentioned in an entry a few months ago, is one of the newest crazes to hit Italy and has been fully embraced. I am amazed how long young Italians can discuss who’s posted new photos, added an application, or joined another Facebook cause. It seems to me like getting together with friends to discuss recent emails, spam filters, and the latest stupid forward going around. Nonetheless, I let myself enjoy my last night out with Claudia as roommates.

As I stood next to Claudia at the bus stop this morning, I realized my chest was starting to hurt so I tried readjusting my luggage strap, but when the airport shuttle arrived I understood what I’d been feeling: I could hardly bear saying goodbye. As I watched Claudia and her father turn their backs through the maddeningly tinted windows that prevented any final waving goodbye, I found tears streaming down my cheeks. As I said to Claudia with our final hug, È stato un piacere: It’s been a pleasure.

“So what now? It's plain to see we're over,
And I hate when things are over,
When so much is left undone” –Deep Blue Something, Breakfast at Tiffany’s

A Classically Sicilian Villa and Some Spicy Desserts in Modica

Claudia insisted that we see her father’s hometown before I left Sicily. I didn’t quite appreciate why we had to, but I loaded into the car with her father, brother, and her and took the drive through rolling hills with a distinctly Italian driver. Fortunately, I have a strong stomach.

In Modica, we met a couple who led us into a gorgeous, old, beautifully restored villa which, I soon learned, was the home where Claudia’s father had been raised. A few years ago, after her grandmother had passed away, Claudia’s family had sold the villa but have stayed on good terms with the current owners. I couldn’t believe the house: with its thick stone walls, arched entryways between rooms, old furniture, airy design for Sicily’s moderate climate, and vista over the hilly town, it was everything a classical Italian house should be. We sat down at the table to share some orzo, an interesting caffeine-free, coffee-type drink made from roasted barley which is quite popular in Italy. We also shared some treats from a local pasticceria, pastry shop, while we chatted with the new owners.

Afterward, we took advantage of our free time to explore the town a bit. We visited several cioccolaterie, chocolate shops, selling all sorts of trendy, modern, stone-ground chocolates in many flavors. Claudia even treated me to two of my favorites, cinnamon flavored and hot-pepper flavored chocolate bars. And as any trip to an Italian town would be incomplete without a sampling of the local gelato, we also made a stop at a gelateria where I got gelato alla canella and al cioccolato al pepperoncino, cinnamon and spicy chocolate. It was a scrumptious way to take advantage of one of my last chances to get some flavors I haven’t found often outside of this delicious country I’ve been calling home.

Buon Natale e Tanti Auguri!

Christmas finally arrived and I celebrated in Italian style. Claudia’s family and I shared a full course meal, with appetizers, entrees, first courses, second courses, side dishes, fruit with mascarpone, and desserts. There was more food readily available than any of us could consume, and Claudia’s mother even provided us all with menus to prepare us for the gustatory delights she had in store.

Though Claudia and her cousins (and there weren’t many of them despite our stereotypes of Italian families) are all in their late twenties or thirties, none of them were married, none were in long-term relationships, and none had children or plans for them in the near future. It seemed so strange to me. At home, my older cousins and I all date people and often bring them along to family parties on the holidays. Though just in our young twenties, all of us have graduations in our near futures and general ideas for careers not too far ahead. With an average Italian college graduation age in the late twenties, I suppose Claudia and her cousins should not have surprised me. The vast majority of Claudia’s high school friends are not married or engaged, and the only one with a child had caused a scandal when she became pregnant during her final year in high school. I have heard that the birth rate in Italy is negative and now it seems much more understandable. The culture really seems to hold young people in an awkward sort of limbo for longer than is biologically advantageous or advisable.

Linguistically, I was thoroughly amused to realize that in Italian, it is not only acceptable but normal to refer to your aunt or uncle as just “Aunt” or “Uncle.” In fact, no one addresses aunts or uncles as Aunt/Uncle [insert name here]. And in Italian, it doesn’t sound fresh in front of one’s own grandmother to say things like, “the grandma wants the salt” or “the grandma needs a knife.” Even if no one else appreciated it, I still had to hold in a laugh or two. Sometimes things are just lost in translation.

From Mountain Tops to Shorelines to Historical Downtown Palermo

Only a day after arriving in Sicily, Claudia and I loaded ourselves onto a bus to cross the island towards Palermo, the fifth most populous city in Italy and home of our friends Arianna and Danilo. Palermo is over 2700 years old, and is rich is its culture, history, and geography. The two full days we spent there far from covered all the city has to offer. On our first day, we admired Sferra Cavallo on the Tyrrhenian Sea and I could not get over the fact that I was walking freely along a beach three days before Christmas. In the afternoon we were treated with Part One of our grand Tour of Palermo, guided by Armando, Arianna’s childhood friend with a passion for Sicilian architecture and history.

We grabbed some traditional food at the Antica Focacceria San Francesco, a focacceria famous for refusing to pay the pizo, the Mafia’s tax. It is thus constantly guarded by Carabinieri, the most effective Italian police force. I was amazed to hear my friends’ attitude towards the Mafia. While they don’t personally support it or take part in it, they explained to me that the Mafia is a part of the culture, even perhaps the true governing force in Sicily. Many Sicilians do not see themselves as a part of the state of Italy but as more of an independent entity governed and guarded by the Mafia. The Mafia, at least in Sicily, is viewed as fairly effective and generally does not harm anyone who has not directly confronted or challenged them. Citizens scoff at tourists’ fears that the Mafia would waste its time on people who have nothing to do with its affairs. I found this all an incredibly interesting and wholly different perspective.

After dinner we returned to the city center where we saw the Teatro Massimo, the largest theater in Italy and the third largest in Europe. It’s an architectural feat for which Sicilians are quite proud. I absolutely loved how the main stairs were filled in the center with a blanket of poinsettia plants giving the appearance of a giant red carpet lining the steps up to the theater. During the later part of the past century, the theater closed for some routine safety renovations and did not open again until 1997, twenty-three years later. Efficiency is not always high in Italian priorities.

The next day we drove up Monte Pellegrino, which offers a breath-taking vista across the Tyrrhenian Sea and the city of Palermo. We also took a power tour through the seashore of Mondello before our train left for the city center.

That evening we returned to the Centro Storico, the historical center of Palermo, for Part Two with Armando. One of the first things we saw, after the inside of a pasticceria, or pastry shop, was the Palermo Cathedral, built in 1185. Though chiefly designed in Gothic-Catalan style, it was renovated until the 1800s and shows influences from many different schools of architecture. Inside this church you can find a meridian across the floor with all the symbols for the different astrological signs. I believe some sort of light shines in through the some window overhead and based upon the time of year will hit the appropriate zodiac symbol. Inside, the cathedral was incredibly ornate and beautifully decorated as was to be expected, I suppose, but proved quite impressive nonetheless.

After leaving the cathedral, we walked through an immense market selling all sorts of fresh produce, regional foods, and spices. The sounds, colors, and smells painted a wonderfully old-world Sicilian image. It was a path few tourists seemed to cross, and I was thrilled to wander through it with my Sicilian friends. I had t resist urges to buy all sorts of wonderfully colored, delicious looking items since I knew Arianna’s mother would have another delicious, typically Italian dinner waiting for us when we came home that night.

I couldn’t believe how much Armando knew about nearly every building and piazza we passed, and I certainly couldn’t absorb most of it. I did learn, however, that for the brief period of time around 1000 AD after the Arabs took over rule of Sicily from the Byzantines has had a strong lasting influence on Palermo. It was during this time that Palermo truly rose to prominence in Sicily. By 1100 AD Sicily was under the rule of the Normans, and so the classical architecture across the city is a blend of traditional Norman and Arabic style. What a fascinating blend! Between 1300 and 1700, Sicily was under Spanish rule (first through the House of Aragon, which ruled the part of Spain nearest France where Barcelona is located), and this culture’s architecture and language has also left strong traces throughout the city. I was captivated by all the magnificent churches we saw and also undeniably surprised to notice at buildings scattered throughout the city that have still not been repaired since World War II (love that Italian efficiency), though I suppose on the scale of Sicilian history, not much time has passed since those buildings were damaged.

We passed through the Quattro Canti, a square which divides Sicily into its four mandamenti, or quarters. It was beautifully decorated for Christmas and generally ornate with sculptures of the four seasons, the four Spanish kings of Sicily, and the four patronesses of Sicily on the four buildings that delineate the square. After this we visited our final church, Chiesa Sant’Andrea Avellino. I realized as I was listening to Armando describe all this history and watching my friends admire the architecture that the experience was quite different for me and them. It was all so exciting and exotic for me whereas this was their history, their home that they were exploring. At one time, it had been my ancestors’ story too, but it is not mine. I felt distinctly like an outsider, yet it wasn’t disconcerting. Being an outsider has its advantages, too.

C’era una volta in Sicilia…

The Sicilian sun was already shining through the window when I woke up today. Claudia and I spent the morning with some friends wandering around Vittoria, her hometown. Outside the Teatro Comunale, the city theater, we found a carretto Siciliano, a traditional Sicilian cart, only about five minutes after Claudia had been telling me as we checked out a tourist gift shop filled with replicas of these carts that there are pretty much none of them left in Sicily. Together we stopped at a cafe for some coffee with cinnamon, something I'd never tried before. We visited a beautiful old church and admired a view over the fields surrounding Vittoria. We also got a kick out of the locals and their driving skills. We had lunch with Claudia's parents and I can't deny that the home cooking is a going to be a major bonus of celebrating Christmas with an Italian family.

In the evening, we went out with some friends and checked out an art exhibit featuring work by the Sicilian artist Eva Montanari who art has been shown across Europe and the US. The exhibition was called C’era una volta, or Once upon a time, and depicted fantastic scenes from many fables. I particularly enjoyed the magical teapot scene on your left. After dinner with Claudia’s parents, Claudia and I went out with her cousin Valeria and her friend Serena and I tried some typical Sicilian cinnamon-flavored liquor. Everywhere we went Claudia ran into all sorts of old friends. I noticed that the concept of personal space is completely lost on Sicilians. When they greet each other, they rub their palms across their friends' cheeks, grab their chins, pet their hair, and sometimes even stroke their shoulders and poke their stomachs. Fortunately, it seems they reserve this for people they've already known for a bit. All the people I met were very kind, the food was wonderful, the city was beautiful, and the weather was excellent. Everything seemed so stereotypically quaint and Italian. I couldn’t believe I was really here to spend my Christmas. My first day in Sicily just felt somewhat magical, like something that might be captured in one of Montanari’s paintings.

Arrivederci!

All good things must come to an end, and so today I had to say goodbye to some of my dearest friends here in Italy. It was bittersweet: on one hand I felt incredibly fortunate to have had them in my life, but on the other hand it seemed unfair to have to leave them all so soon after we'd met. Still, we made the most of our last night together, sharing dinner, drinks, an evening out, and a very late night of YouTube videos to compare national senses of humor. By the time I found myself in lab at 8:30am, I felt incredibly exhausted but had a smile across my face and my heart. We always say at MIT that you can only pick two of the following: school (or in my case, lab), sleep, and friends. I felt as though I were back in my MIT environment and had obviously made my selection last night and this morning. After so many months away from the sensation, it felt good in that masochistic MIT way. This afternoon I dragged my suitcase with me to the cafeteria and had the good fortune to eat lunch together with my friends one last time. Afterward, my closest friend even accompanied me all the way to the bus stop and gave me a couple wonderfully appreciated hugs. It touched me that as I closed out my six-month stay here in Pisa I didn't have to take the final steps out of town alone.

I can't deny I'll miss them loads, but leaving them puts me that much closer to the seeing my old MIT friends for one last term and it also brings me that much closer to my return to Europe. I'm certain some of us will meet again. As it turns out, I already have an invitation for Thanksgiving 2009 and several guests who've promised to visit me next September in Paris. Pisa's been wonderful, but I suppose it's time to close this chapter of adventures and open the next. After all, I'm not flying home until January 18. As they say in Italian, arrivederci, which means to the next time we see each other!

The linguistic mélange that has become my modus operandi

Sometimes it’s good to have some ex-patriate friends, even if not from the same country, most especially those who share your native language. It's great to know someone who can really understand certain experiences, like being told in Italian, "My how you are big!" (the adjectives big and small are used to refer to height and not weight) and realizing for the first time that you’re starting to get rusty in your native language. While chatting with my Austrian friends, I kept on forgetting English words or finding myself uncertain of the appropriate phrasing to the extent that they even teased me about it. Last week while preparing for my interview in Paris (which was conducted in English) I unintentionally began throwing in French vocabulary words with English pronunciation. Worse yet, I didn’t even realize until my mother caught my mistakes while I was practicing with her. I’ve also begun using strange phrasing such as, “Would you like to take a coffee with me?” and “I’m becoming habituated to this,” both of which are more or less direct translations from what one would say in Italian when trying to express these ideas. It’s good to know at times like this that no, I'm not completely crazy. Or at least, this is not an indication of whether or not I am.

Proud to be an American

Across cultural, political, and geographic divides, we can all sing along to Born in the U.S.A., all cheer on the same Americans at the Olympics, and all feel pride when we look up at our flag on the Fourth of July. Though much may seem to divide us on a daily basis across the US, as Obama said in his acceptance speech, we are the United States of America. We share a sense of unity one may never find within the European Union. Think back to September 11, for instance: When the twin towers toppled, it wasn’t New York that was under attack but America. We all felt touched by the horrors of that day, whether from an urban central or the most rural stretches of America. I do believe our money reads well E Pluribus Unim: from many diverse backgrounds, we are one nation.

My Austrian friends were talking about how funny it seems to them that Americans are so proud of their nationality. They’re proud of being Austrian too, they said, but it’s not such a big deal. Just last week my Spanish friend was talking to me about differences between national responses to terrorist attacks in the US and Madrid and he too said that it seemed strange that Americans responded with such nationalistic pride, with flags suddenly appearing on windows, cars, and many articles of clothing. It is true: after the terrorist attacks, I proudly, perhaps even defiantly, placed a flag on my window and began wearing the stars and stripes with some degree of regularity.

It occurred to me that for us, nationality isn’t just something we were born into, and it’s not just something we can take for granted. Sure, I was born in New York, and my parents and even most of my grandparents were born into this citizenship, but in the not-so-distant past most Americans’ families made (and many are still making) great sacrifices so that we could call our country home. Our nationality is something earned.

And it was interesting to think about my nationality in this way. For goodness sake, the governor of California, as my friends pointed out, is an actor from Austria. The president-elect’s father was a Kenyan immigrant! Did you know that this year Kenya declared Thursday, November 6, the day after Obama’s victory was announced, as a national holiday in his honor? It sounds funny, but think about how powerful of an idea that is—you too can move from a country as small in the international political arena as Kenya and raise your child to be the leader of the most powerful country on earth. How many times in human history has this been possible?

Ours truly is a nationality unlike any other. There is no American “face,” no American genotype, and even fairly little in the way of national history and traditions. We are united in our differences, in our belief in the ideals upon which our nation was created, and in the faith that there will always come a brighter tomorrow. It’s a nationality which brings people together not so much around a shared past as a common focus on the future.

I think our nationality offers a fresh, exciting launching pad from which to explore the world. For us, anything is possible. True, this means that perhaps only in the US can you find laws such as the one in Pennsylvania which forbids citizens to sleep on top of their refrigerators on their front lawn. For more entertainment, you can always check out dumblaws.com as I did with my Austrian friends. America may sometimes be quite silly, but it’s also quite optimistic. We see ourselves as living in a land of endless possibility, an attitude which fosters a national optimism on which I thrive. Even if my country has made some awful mistakes, even when my government shames me and I watch my fellow countrymen maintain an embarrassing image of us overseas, I am incredibly proud to be an American. I am most certainly an American at heart and I always will be, no matter where I choose to live.

“The Queen is not amused” and Other Viennese Adventures

At 5:45am on Friday morning I was already dozing off as my train left Pisa Centrale. I hadn’t exactly slept since flying home from Paris as that evening was my last opportunity to see one of my closest friends before he left Pisa for the holidays. A few hours later, I found myself in a café in Rome with my breakfast of a cream-filled croissant and a caffè al ginseng. All in all, it would have been hard to justify lamenting over the raindrops I had to brave before returning to the station. A few more hours, an extra train ride, and one flight later, I arrived in Vienna.

As I walked through the gates at the airport, I was greeted by two friendly faces, Susi and Marie. When I wrote about my adventures in Prague, I briefly mentioned that I’d met a few friendly Austrians. These were those very same girls, all these months later. We’ve been writing ever since we met in our hostel that evening in late August. Leaving the airport, we headed back to Susi’s to drop off my things. Marie then showed me around Vienna for a couple of hours. We walked through the campus and split a warm soft pretzel at our first Christkindlmarkt, the Christmas markets for which Vienna is famous. We wandered through the university and stopped at another Christkindlmarkt in front of the Rathaus, Vienna’s city hall, which was magnificently decorated for Christmas. In fact, the entire façade had been converted into a large Advent calendar. Every night in December at 7pm one can watch the next window being opened to reveal a new Christmas painting and officially take Austrians one day closer to Christmas (which interestingly enough is celebrated on December 24). We passed Parlament, Vienna’s grandiose Parliament building before which presides a large statue of the Greek goddess Athena. Later that night when I opened my email, I discovered that I would indeed have the chance to spend the next few years living in Paris. Even though these girls and I had only spent a single evening together, they were so happy for me when they found out. It was amazing to have such friends with which to share my exciting news.

On Saturday morning, Susi and I set out to explore Vienna but were sidetracked by a beautiful old-fashioned chair we found discarded near her apartment. Susi decided this was to become her throne from which she could decree, “The Queen is not amused,” an expression Austrian people love to say in English whose origins none of us could quite elucidate. After returning to her apartment with the newfound treasure, our day began. We passed several beautiful historic sites including the Vienna Opera house on our way downtown. Reaching the center city, she first pointed out the Hotel Sacher which sells the Sachertorte, a famous dark chocolate sponge cake with fruit filling and chocolate icing. The original cake, whose official recipe is still kept secret, was first made in 1832 by Franz Sacher and is considered to this day a Viennese delicacy. Walking along streets crowded with tourists and Christmas shoppers, we reached the square that houses both Hass Haus and Stephansdom, a large modern building and Austria’s most famous gothic cathedral respectively. After a brief tour through the church, we continued our travels and soon reached Hofburg, the imperial palace and official residence of the President of Austria. This area has been in use for Austrian governments since the late 1200s though the building itself has been expanded many and has seen many changes over the years.

That afternoon Marie met us at another Christkindlmarkt outside the Nationalbibliothek, the National Library. Together we ate kasekrainer, a type of bratwurst filled with cheese, a delicious local specialty. Afterward we wandered along some major shopping streets where I discovered that fancy, exotic looseleaf tea in Vienna is remarkably inexpensive. Marie and I spent some time late that afternoon in another Christkindlmarkt (they’re everywhere in Vienna) where we ate some traditional Viennese cream-based desserts. We arrived at Susi’s apartment to share some kaiserschmarrn, a typical Viennese dish of pancakes sliced in small pieces and served with jam and powdered sugar.

After dinner we went to the train station to meet Eva, the third Austrian I’d met in Prague who had just arrived in from Linz in northern Austria to spend the weekend with us. It was actually quite remarkable how much Prague’s architecture and its public transportation system resembled Vienna, and I was particularly amused given that I was touring Vienna with the girls I’d met in Prague. That night a bunch of friends gathered at Marie’s apartment. Over several rounds of Uno they even began teaching me some basic German. I found that Austrian German is much softer than pure German, and by the end of the night I was aching to actually begin studying this language too. For now, my friends left me with a list of words to study:
grün (green), gelb (yellow), rot (red), blau (blue), schwarz (black), weiß (white), violet, braun (brown), orange, bitte (please), danke, (thanks) and Ach du heilige scheiße (Oh, holy shit)

On Sunday, Eva, Marie, and I went to Schloss Belvedere, an imperial castle built in the 1700s which now serves as an art museum. We saw a special exhibit in Lower Belvedere, Gustav Klimt and the Kunstschau, commemorating the 100^th anniversary of the Kunstschau modern art exhibition in Vienna. I was particularly enticed by Klimt’s Der Kuss (The Kiss), a remarkable painting. Upon leaving the museum, we stopped at the Christkindlmarkt outside Upper Belvedere to share some chocolate covered strawberries while I drank some punsch, a warm, flavored wine served all over Vienna in the Christmas season. One can choose from a variety of flavors and this stand happened to offer an irresistible one called “After Eight,” flavored with mint and a large bar of chocolate, and served with whipped cream.

Together, Marie and I went on to the Schloss Schonbrunn, the castle of Kaiser Franz Joseph I and Kaiserin Elisabeth, known as “Sisi.” We walked up to the Gloriette, built on a hill behind the castle in 1775, from which point we admired an impressive vista over the city of Vienna. I hadn’t really appreciated just how large this city is until that moment. Before we left we took a tour of the Christkindlmarkt outside the castle where I finally learned just what is the Christkindl: the Christ child who comes on Christmas Eve and delivers the Christmas gifts to Austrian children. In Austria, Santa Claus and a frightening second character for the bad children arrive together at the start of December to usher in the Christmas season. It’s kind of like Santa’s sneak preview appearance before he sets off to deliver presents to all the other children who expect his arrival a few weeks later.

Escaping the cold that evening, Marie and I visited Susi who had prepared some wiener schnitzel, a traditional breaded meat. Afterward Marie and I ventured over to Donauinsel, an island on the Danube River where concerts are held in the summer. From here we found Eva’s brother’s apartment where we spent some time before Eva, Marie, and I returned to Susi’s together. Late that night Marie took me home with her since the next morning she would be the one taking me to the airport.

After a full weekend of introductions to many Austrian specialties, I thought it would be fun to share something American together, so we woke early and cooked some French toast (despite the name, a thoroughly Americanized dish) which we ate with apples, cinnamon, ginger, and whipped cream. As we walked to the metro after our regal breakfast, I noticed several packs of obviously trendy high-school-aged girls on their way to school, each sporting streaks of a vibrant color in her hair. It’s apparently much more common and seemingly less rebellious for people in Vienna to dye parts of their hair in various neon shades. The metro stations in Vienna are also notably energy-efficient: the escalators sense movement and only run (or only run at full speed) when people want to ride them!

On the plane, applause, some whistling, and a few “bravo!”s as I landed in Rome reminded me that I had indeed returned to Italy. I just smiled and shook my head. I couldn’t believe how lucky I’d been to have met such nice girls fairly randomly in Prague. Though I decided to take these girls up on the offer of a free bed in Vienna because it sounded like a great chance to see a new city, I hadn’t realized just how awesome they were. Having friends scattered across different cities makes Europe feel a lot smaller. I can’t wait to have the chance to return the favor and host them once I return to Europe. Between the friends, the beautiful architecture, the new language to learn, the different but distinctly enjoyable cuisine, and the amazingly affordable tea, I have more than sufficient motivation to plan a return trip to Vienna before the next year comes to a close.

Oh, Paris...

It's been four years to the day since the letter arrived from MIT.

I got in.

Grad School Interviews

When it rains, it pours, or so the saying goes. After months of emails, applications, and waiting, this week I had some activity on both of the grad school fronts I’ve been pursuing. Monday night I learned that Prof. Henry Markram invited me to attend Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne’s Hiring Days, an interview and orientation session held on January 15-16 in Lausanne, Switzerland. This really was quite an honor as Prof. Markram is an incredibly exciting professor. He is head of the Blue Brain project, a high-profile project sponsored by IBM and run through the Brain-Mind Institute at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). This project, described as the neuroscience equivalent of the Human Genome project, seeks to map out the neural microcircuitry of the human brain and reconstruct the brain through computer simulations. The project is ground-breaking and joining it would be no less than thrilling.

Twenty-four hours after getting the exciting news, I was in the air on my way to Paris yet again. Of the 129 initial applicants to the Ecole des Neurosciences de Paris Ile-de-France (ENP), I was one of the final six left by the time Interview Day came around. After sending in a paper application in late September, I had also phone-interviewed in mid-November and finally there came this: an all-expenses-paid trip to Paris, but not exactly a vacation. After arriving in the heart of Paris shortly after midnight, I got a few hours sleep before a long day of interviews, presentations, lab visits, and finally a three-hour dinner with the ENP staff (at an undeniably quaint, quite enjoyable restaurant in the 11^th Arrondissement called Chez Paul, 13 rue de Charonne). The experience was very much like dangling a particularly savory piece of bacon just out of reach of a very hungry puppy; I could hardly bear hearing all about the program all day without knowing whether or not I will be accepted.

By the time the day was done, I was very pleased to meet up with Jeremi, my good friend and fellow Fifth Wester (in other words, a person from my floor in my dorm) who’s studying abroad at Ecole Polytechnique this year. (On a side note, I had a very happy piece of news that evening when checking my email: indeed a place has been reserved for me to move back onto Fifth West, the place I’ve called home for the past three years, so that I can live with my best friends for my very last semester at MIT.) Jeremi and I settled on a heated, covered outdoor deck of a bar to sip vin chaud and enjoy the company of someone so very familiar so far from home. It was incredibly refreshing to spend a bit more time with someone who needs so little explanation to understand me so completely. By the time the bar closed, the metro had already stopped running so we took a late-night meander through Paris while continuing our conversation. Wandering aimlessly through cities with friends has always been one of my favorite activities (just check facebook). When you make that city Paris, it’s hard to find much about which to complain.

Despite the late hour at which I ultimately returned home, I made an early start for my free day in Paris. After a quick tour through the Luxembourg Gardens, I found the famous English-language bookshop right by Notre Dame and immediately understood why my Scuola Normale friend majoring in Italian and French Literature at Oxford spoke so highly of the place. Just look at how many books have been jammed into this place! And in perusing through the store, I had to resist the temptation to buy at least a few of them. Supposedly this store is also a great way to find yourself an Anglophone, presumably lit-geeky (more or less the anti-MIT-style, potentially more socially adept) network, which could come in quite handy if living in Paris. After this I took a grand tour of central Paris, hitting many of the major tourist sights and generally walking the streets to get a feel for mid-day Parisian life in the Christmas season. Today I even wore my glasses just so that I could soak in as much detail as possible in this city so rich with beauty. (That's la Madeleine, the church in the center of la Place de la Madeleine, pictured on the left. There are some trendy and quite pricey shops in this area of Paris.)

Finally I caught up with my friend from Ecole Normale Supérieure, Gabriel, over coffee at a little café for my last couple hours before flying home. For the first time together we managed to speak exclusively French. Though living in Italy obliterated my ability to speak Spanish, it has somehow improved my ability to speak French. I found myself seated with a native French speaker, chatting and laughing, feeling quite relaxed (even if still far from fluent) in the language I’ve so loved and studied so long. It really made me smile and was a wonderful way to close up my sixth and final visit to Paris in 2008.