Film suggestion: Le concert

A movie about the universal language of music in which you will also have the chance to listen to a classical concert for violin and orchestra without getting bored even if this is not your favorite music genre.

This movie from Radu Mihaileanu is a comedy about an ex conductor from Balchoi Theater who finds an occasion to perform at Chatelet in Paris. He organizes an ad-hock orchestra from his old friends and goes to Paris, where his group which didn't practiced since years seems to disintegrate. However they get reunited for the concert which becomes an enormous success. 

It is about language, about differences between the eastern and western Europe, about cliches and about music.

Film suggestion: Auberge espagnole

Auberge espagnole and the sequel Les poupees russe is probably the most representative for the abroad students way of life. It capture the enthusiasm of youth and the joy of discovery.

A french student goes to Barcelona with an exchange program. This becomes an initiative travel, in which he discovers a new way of life, makes friends and learns something about love.
Back home he is a different person and he chooses to change his life, starting from his carrier. 

The sequel is more a story about finding love. One story is hidden in a bigger story. What is interesting, is the fact that each new girls that he meets is from a different country, a different culture and we get some very nice sight-seen from Paris, London and Moscow.

Studying abroad

I dedicate this post to exchange students everywhere who had the courage to leave for the adventure of studying abroad. 

I chose to speak about Erasmus because it is one of the most popular programs, at least in Europe. Every year, it facilitate the exchange of hundreds of students and it is maybe the most accessible program for studies abroad.

Erasmus was an explorer, now Erasmus is an experience for those who want to explore new countries, new studies.

I have met many Erasmus and students in my life and I always felt like there was a particular form of energy around them. For most of them the experience abroad was life changing and for some (including myself) it was an initiative road to adult life.

I was watching them long before I become one myself, while dreaming to live an adventure like this. It was not about the studies, it was not even about learning a new language. It was mostly for the feeling of discovery, a new world, a new country, new people, a new life.

It starts with a lot of bureaucracy, going from office to office. This was the first step and an important one, because it's easy to quit in this stage. One can end up disappointed when they see how few money they will receive, how expensive life abroad can be (especially if they have to go in a touristic city). Some quit because they are not sure that it's the good timing. Some are discouraged by the fear of not having all the classes equaled or accepted when they come back home.

And here comes step number 2: the personal conflict. What will happen to your relationships? What if the family doesn't support you? Will you be able to adapt to a different society?

Step number 3 is the journey. For some is the first time they get into a plane or the first time abroad. It's hard to leave your family and receiving a thousand advices. It can be possible break up in a relationship or difficult goodbye.

Step number 4 is the adaptation. This is the big challenge: how to get cheap accommodation when sometimes you do not even know the language? We all leave with some knowledge about life, but sometimes when you get to a destination you realize that procedures like "finding a place to live in", "getting a good grade at the exams" are not the same or food is not the same or people behave differently. You also have to start managing a budget. For those that get over this stage (and I met some that couldn't) another life begins.

Step number 5 is the evolution. When you get to know a new country, when you meet other students like you, you start to see things differently. This was for me the time of great human interaction, the time for great friendship, nice parties and amazing trips. It was a time full of pictures and beautiful memories. And in the meantime some ideas started to grow about building a life abroad.

Step number 6 is a very emotional one: the come back. Most of the Erasmus I met, told me that they had contradictory feelings: on one side they were happy to go home to their loved once, on the other side, they were having the feeling that a great time was over. I met many for which the adaptation process at come back was more difficult that the one at the beginning. I used to have dreams in other languages, I felt uprooted, and I wanted to discover.
This is the stage when you have to take a decision: staying or leaving, and most of the time the decision is taken quite quickly in a young heart. The process of implementing it begins.


I know many people that had the same experiences, I know that they were changed. I know people who stayed, who decided to have a life in their own country and people who left for good, and all of them did well in life...

Play suggestion: The Kitchen

A more unusual recommendation: a theater play by Arnold Wesker, who might provoke some thoughts to those working in an international place.
It was put in scene also recently, in 2011 by London National Theater also broadcasted live in several cinemas across the world.


It is a day in the kitchen of a London restaurant in the 50s where the employees come from all the corners of Europe. The tension raises as rush-hours approach and in between the polyglot stuff shares their hopes and dreams.

Even though restaurants and international food are back in fashion (as they were in the 50s), the play is not about food. It is more about about how we define ourselves by the work we do and, in this high speed live, we forget who we are. In the kitchen French, English, Jewish and German persons work together and stress together. 

Food and homes, and homes away from home

This following story was lived and written in Oxford (UK), where I used to live as a Romanian-Italian student/researcher for quite a few years. Being an Eastern-European and a Southern-European too, food has always meant a lot for me and certainly for my friends too. And I’m not referring here only at the pleasure that food can give you for its palatable qualities but also, and maybe foremost, for the power it has in helping you to express your inner-self, your belonging to a place or to places which have left a mark on you. Food is the way you can talk to others about where you come from, about where you have been, and where you want to be. And there are so many moments in a traveller’s life when you feel the need tell the others about you, when you need to feel home, to recreate home away from home. But where is home when you keep being on the more.... I so many times asked this question to myself. For now, this is my answer:

“My home is in the food I eat and in the language I speak”

We talked about food and about us while Maria was showing me how to prepare a nettle soup using nettles we picked in the garden. Few days before, I was complaining over the phone about all the gardening I had to do because nettles had taken over a large part of the plot I wanted to dedicate to flowers and strawberries. I told her that I had spent the whole morning digging the ground so that I could get rid of the roots and therefore make sure nettles were not going to show up again. On the other side of the phone I could hear her laughing loudly while telling me that I didn’t know how lucky I was. After that she proposed to come to my place the following Saturday and show me what to do with the nettles.

She came on Saturday morning, it was spring and it was not raining. So we went out in the garden and Maria showed me how to pick the young nettle leaves by using a plastic bag as both glove and container. Then she told me that it was almost impossible to find nettles here (London area) at the market in spring time. Although there were vegetables coming from very far away, you could not find nettles she said. She told me that, even if I did not remember it, my mother was for sure making nettles soup for me back in Romania as that was one of the easiest available vegetable in spring time: “Cooking nettles is very much Romanian, this is our food”, she said.   

Back inside the house she cooked the nettles in two different ways: one using a recipe from Moldavia, the Romanian region in the North-East of the country, and the other from central and southern areas of Romania.  We then kept discussing about how Romanian was the use of nettles in the kitchen and I had the feeling that picking those nettles and cooking them was a way for Maria to tell me about her Romanian self and how much a feeling of “home” she was “imagining” and recreating through the food itself. I kept asking her how often she cooks Romanian and she told me: “every day, or, at least I have some Romanian food every day. It is like speaking Romanian every day, you DO eat Romanian everyday”. I could see that for Maria speaking and eating Romanian was very important, there was some sort of emotional relationship that she upheld with flavours, smells and sounds of the past. Yet there was no regret in her voice, no longing to go back, only a clear desire to preserve and express her belonging feeling at home, yet away from home.

Oxford, Spring 2006

By Raluca

Film suggestion: Before Sunrise / Before Sunset

Explorer Destinies has decided to put together a list of movies, books, plays and music that we feel close to the theme of our blog. We look at them not through the eye of an art critic, but through the eye of a traveler that discovered a great place and wants to share it with the others.

 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112471/

This movie from Richard Linklater (1996) with a sequel 10 years after features the exuberance of the so called generation X and of the 90s, a generation that enjoyed freedom.

A French girl and an American young man meet in a train going to Vienna and decide spontaneously to spend the day together. Before sunrise each of them would continue their trip home, but the magic of this one day in Vienna will remain. All behind the long chats about life and youth there is the image of Vienna, the idea of traveling, discovering, sharing intercultural experiences. In short, a snapshot of "that moment when you really know somebody".

In the sequel Before Sunset (2006) the couple meets for the second time in Paris. During the long walk in Paris (that almost seems real time) we see how world have changed, how mobility increased in 10 years and, of course, how life changed for the two characters.