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1. This one time when I was a student, I went on a trip to Barcelona with friends… / me / my friends.

2. At the airport border control, I had this conversation with the officer: / What are you studying in Romania? / I am learning the language / Why the heck are you learning such an useless language? Only a few people speak it… / Well, more speak Romanian than Catalan… /

3. That day they lost my luggage and sent it back to my hotel in two plastic bags: one with my backpack and the other with the rest of my things. / Aww.. nuts / And because of that, and may other experiences, I feel qualified to offer you…

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The Unofficial Boder-Crossing Guide for non-Europeans

1 - Always look like the pic in your passport. / People change!

2 – If you are hitch-hiking don’t cross the border on foot. / Pedestrians prohibited

3 - Don’t say you are unemployed. / Yeah, I am my grandma’s designated personal assistant.

4 – Take a shower. / What is that smell? / uh… sardines? / *Don’t transport sardines either

 

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5 -  Don’t transport your things in cardboard boxes.

6 – Buy a cheap ticket somewhere else so it looks like you’re in transit / How long are you staying  in Finland? / ohh, just a couple of months, I mean…hours.

7 – Don’t put stickers on your passport. Just don’t.

8 – Search for contact numbers online before you get there / who are you coming to visit here in Rome / Well, there’s this guy… they call him the Pope.

9 – If you can’t be white at least be rich.

10 – If your name is Mohamed…don’t even try it!

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1. Chapter I Spain-Argentina 1945 / When the Spanish civil war concluded, lots of people were persecuted and shot due to their political ideas. During World War II, Franco tried to finish off the rest of the resistance. / Somewhere in Spain, 1939 / …READY…AIM…FIRE!!

2. Surely it was in that moment that a series of unexpected events started. An ancestor, a world foreign to me and the possible question of “why” in relation to my place of birth. / I’ll miss you mum… maybe some day I could see you again… maybe I will come back different… /Andres Fuentes emigrated to Argentina, where he would try to make his dreams come true; write down his ideas freely and someday go back to his place of birth, and give hug his family… but sometimes, or even always, things don’t happen as we dreamt.

3. Argentina, almost 55 years later

4. 2001, Economic crisis / Give us the future back. / Frozen Bank Deposits.

5. 2008, Farming crisis / Scarcity of some goods because of rural strikes in different parts of the country… the government is lying about inflation… the crisis is growing. In other news, Spain passed a law that would grant the citizenship to descendents of exiles…

Page 2

1. Law of historical memory? What’s that? / …yes, that’s it… mum, dad, I’ll go to Spain.

2. Why Spain? Now? Finish your studies before you go… I know it’s difficult but we can help you. / Mum you know that I want to be a writer and here I have no future as one. Besides, how long should I wait to become independent. / Do you have a plan? Anyway, you are an adult.

3.  … Well, it’s ok Diego… take care and remember that you can count on us. I’m sure that if your grandpa were alive he would go with you.

4. Thank you both! Now I have to start saving money… citizenship is not enough. / HMM! The only plan that I have is a dream. I think that if I continue thinking about it I wont go anywhere… HMM… but it doesn’t seem complicated… and the language doesn’t either… / At least I’ll have security, which I don’t have here.

5. Chapter II Argentina Spain 2010/  Crisis/ Crisis

6. 1 month after the World Cup. Spain won and unemployment has increased. / Hi! Mum, I’m living in a flat with other students. I haven’t found a job but I have already enrolled in university…

7. We are looking for waiters.

8. …I found a job in a cafeteria and next week I’m starting university.

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1. Waiter! No Sir,

2. Two coffees with milk and a question, you are not Spanish, are you?

3. I’m… my grandpa was Spanish.

4. Wait, I know that accent.. you are Argentinean! /  That accent is so cool! / Another Messi… as if it were a great thing. / EEEH… Thanks, I’ll be back in a minute. …Sorry, anything else?

5. A month later…/ Hey! Hey Argentinean! Come here! / Yes Sir, what would you like?

6. Three months later / This crisis is because of immigrants. It seems that stealing our jobs is not enough, they are also using our hospitals, on the TV, playing sport, without being Spaniards… and I’m still unemployed.

7. Well Carlos, your luck will improve. Come with me, I’ll buy you a coffee.

8. Waiter! / Yes Sir, What would you like to drink?

9. You aren’t Spanish, are you? / Er… no, I’m from Argentina

10. In your face! Have you seen! What have I told you? …These South Americans, these Indians come to steal us… let’s go somewhere else, with Spaniards.

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1. Chapter III from Spain to Croatia 2012. / Hi mum, hi dad! I got a scholarship to study for a year in Croatia. Yes, where grandma’s from… I’m so happy, I needed a break from the comments I hear everyday, there it’s gonna be different.

2. “Don’t worry Dieguito, just say that you’re Spanish…” / “No mum, never… a descendant of Croatians and Spaniards is enough. I’ll call you when I arrive, love you.”

3. Zagreb… / Good morning, before we start I want to inform you that we won’t speak Croatian… I want to know if there are any native speakers…

4. Me / Me / Here

5. Where are you from?

6. From Argentina / What’s your surname? / Fuentes Lovrenčić.

7. Can you modulate when you speak? HMM! And do not think that just because you’re a native speaker it’ll be easier for you. Here, we are going to speak Spanish, not Argentinean… and the other native speakers?

8. My name is Clara and I’m from Badajoz /  I’m Juan and I come from Barcelona.

9. Two weeks later / Who will read the story today? / Me! / Me! / Me! / Nobody? So… can anybody tell us what Galdo’s novel is about?

10. Ha, ha, ha! I guess you. No, not you. I’m asking the native speakers who, as you know, there are two of in this class… Clara and Juan.

11. Professor, we haven’t read it for today.

12. Well as nobody has read it, let’s read aloud what you had to read for today.

13. I’m tired, I wanna go home… this country sucks… at least next month we have Latin-American Literature…

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1. Excuse me, they have just changed my group. I am Veronika Marić. / Have a seat.

2. Who cares… what… what? What was I thinking about?

3. One month later / As you know Hispanic Literature has become quite popular after the “boom” in the middle of the XX century. The magical realism and great novels of Rayuela wouldn’t have been possible without Spain, without the Vanguard. That’s why we’re going to focus on Spain, since the peninsula made Latin literature strong and well known.

4. “…one more thing, in two months you have to write a seminar paper on a tale or novel that you have read.”

5. Three weeks later, in the professor’s office / Professor, I’ve prepared this paper about “El Matadero”. / I don’t think it would be a good idea for you to talk about an Argentinean story, but… as you want…

6. ok, let me see if I can change it.

7. Two days later /That’s it professor. It took me two days of hard work but I found a new topic and I’ve finished my paper. Though I still have one month to check it, I wanted to know if this is ok.

8. ok! Give it to me and I’ll grade it. / I told you that I haven’t checked it, I just wanted to know if… /  It´s ok, I like the topic, I’ll check it and I’ll give it back to you.

9. Hello! / Hello, how are you? / Ok… you can speak Spanish if you want. Ok, I was waiting for the trolley… would you like…?

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1. One week later / I checked the paper, I liked it and I understand that for you, who are not native speaker, it’s difficult to write in Spanish… but don’t worry, correct the mistakes that I’ve marked and maybe you’ll get an 8.

2. Professor, here you’ve corrected lots of prepositions, for example “of the state” according to you is “from the state”… and… / You are the only one to correct these mistakes…

3. Hmm… I miss my home… / Why does it all have to be so difficult?… I’m tired… if only I knew why they are like this. They hate me and they don’t even know me… what did I do to them?…

4. In Argentina these things wouldn’t happen… but… bah! Who am I kidding?/ …Have you seen the awful Peruvian that works in the bar.

5. That was me 3 years ago… what we say without thinking is unbelievable… maybe it is bigger than us, maybe it is something we have inherited or heard, maybe to live it is necessary to understand and feel… in my case I arrived seeking a dream…

6. …I found a reality.

7. July 2013 / I don’t know anymore if I want my future to be secure. I guess that those abrupt changes, the unexpected ones, are the ones that cause the horrific uncertainty of life, for some people the imperfection of dreams that we have to avoid before they become a “maybe”, losing control of everything. I learned to love those “maybes”. Because, maybe someday I could tell my anecdote as an example of something… although, maybe I won’t be the writer I dreamt of being… In one week I’ll go back to Spain, but this time I won’t be alone… Veronika is going to study in Madrid… By the way, we have been together for two months. As I said, I am not the writer that I dreamt of being, but I am writing the best story of my life. The End.

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1. “You have to study to find a job” / My parents always told me this / … a lot!

2. So I studied…

3. Now, where is my “good job”? / Customer service good morning, how can I help you?

4. I was tired of surviving, I wanted to live!! / How can I pay them?

5. So I made my choice.

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1. With my heart full of sadness… / …I left

2. On the trip I had a lot of hopes…

3. Can you start tomorrow? / Do you want to work with us? / There is a place for you here / We were waiting for you! / … maybe too many hopes!

4. But real life is very different. / and now?

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1. Like a fish in a new ocean… / I felt lost!

2. Too many sad moments in just a day…

3. …and too much melancholy!

4. But I started studying, to integrate myself… / …and to discover this new world

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1. I started to meet new friends… / You speak this language very well / Thanks!

2. …and I found a good job! / Good morning! / You are welcome! I was waiting for you. Do you have a copy of your CV?

3. After a lot of sacrifice, I found it! / Yes, I did it! / My life can begin!

4. At the end I learned an important thing… / …national or regional borders are completely useless. / Now I don’t feel alone anymore because the entire world is MY HOME!

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1. When I arrived in Germany, I was very surprised that Germans couldn’t pronounce my name correctly. Karla / Galina / Gala / Eva

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1. In one year I’ve moved apartments three times and have slept in hundreds of beds

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1. People in the photo booth look happier than usual

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1. In Hamburg hares jump in the streets and nobody eats them

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1. It’s cold and damp sleeping in the grass near Alster at night

Page 6

1. The day of the mono-eyebrow

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1. I’m Gao Xingjian, and I’m in the office of an officer.

2. Why did you accuse my work of misleading young people?

3. Art is an individual need, you cannot restrict my freedom of expression! / …

4. Your attitude is antisocial. You are putting your own interest before that of the country. / Humanism and communism are incompatible.

5. This makes no sense…! / This conversation is over. / Please go away.

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1. Come on, do something! / You are my editor, why can’t you publish my work?

2. I’m sorry, I can’t do anything… don’t call me anymore, ok?

3. After this conversation the guards arrived…

4. And set fire to my manuscripts…

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1. Since I started studying French at the Foreign Languages Institute of Beijing and since I obtained permission to leave the country, I have travelled a lot in France. / I couldn’t stay in China any longer. I believed that in Europe I would be able to express myself freely, so in 1987 I obtained political asylum in France and moved to Paris.

2. In 1989 I read about the Tiananmen Square protest.

3. I immediately gave up my membership of the Communist Party and requested French citizenship, which I obtained in 1998.

4. But my experience in France hasn’t been completely positive… / … particularly at the beginning.

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1. Why don’t you want to publish my work? / What’s wrong with my work?

2. You’re work is fine… per se.

3. But I don’t think it will sell.

4. You’re talking about sales?  What does it take to sell art?

5. You still don’t understand, do you? / I don’t care what a Chinese person thinks about this, this is a completely different world.

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1. Then I understood that artists must live at the “edges”. It was a difficult period of my life. I didn’t give up my freedom in China, and I wouldn’t do so in France.

2. I also started painting. / mmm…

3. Your prints are amazing! / Really? / I’d like to display them in my art gallery! /

4. …of course…/ Eh eh, greetings man!

5. In this way I began on a journey that led me to the Nobel Prize.

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1. My father said he was with his friends at the time. He and Stavrakos were in a basement café. There were others too.

2. When tear gas was fired they ran out without paying.

3. They went looking for Apostolopoulos who was with them earlier.

4. He lost them in the crowd when everyone started running.

5. He walked around and stayed hidden in some narrow streets in the centre all night.

6. Apostolopoulos was fine, but his arm was broken during the chase. This he found out later. He said in high school they were both caught by soldiers.

7. When they found out his father was in the military the soldier let them go. He retired a couple of years ago.

8. At around nine  in the morning he could finally take the bus to go home.

9. He lived with his parents in a Northestearn suburb of Athens. These were all houses given to ex-officers by the military.

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1. I hadn’t gone to class for months.

2. I was at a lecture with my sister. Something about Neolithic graves. I couldn’t even get interested in that.

3. During the coffee break I decided to leave and went outside. Every summer, contractors burn these mountains to build more houses.

4. I walked across the campus of the technical university to go home. I remembered the first time I walked here.

5. It was three years earlier. I was still drinking the same kind of juice and everything. Maria talked to me in front of the canteen.

6. Later in the city with an old friend. I hadn’t really seen him for a couple of years either.

7. I guess we spent a lot of money on drinks. The area was redeveloped and looked completely different. I was trying not to think, but wasn’t very successful.

8. Around May, having pizza with Apostolos. I remember the December riots, the whole place was burning, now it’s life again, like nothing happened.

9. I went exploring, I was a whale, maybe drink some more.

10. Hungover, I was staring at my pile of books for ages with my phone in my hand. Most of these I got for free and still haven’t read them.

11. in June I went back to Helsinki to avoid military service.

12. I was stuck working in the archive for eleven months. I was in Athens again the next summer.

1. My grandparents came from Latvia to Canada after the Second World War, like many Latvians

2. and not so directly: first they were sent to work in Germany during the Nazi occupation of the Baltic States

3. then they became refugees in Paris, where my grandfather finished studying to be a composer and was offered work in Canada

4. and much later I came from Canada to live in Latvia.

5. According to Latvian immigration law and convention I was born a “trimdinieks” or exile Latvian. / HI

6. Sometimes I feel Latvian here and sometimes I don’t. / Good day, a coffee, please (in accented Latvian) / Yes we have coffee (laughing, in English)

7. Plumber: I’ll be a while, I’m just here with this FOREIGNER / Client: No, we don’t have to pay you, that’s not how things are done here!

8. But in November 2012 the Latvian Post issued a set of stamps featuring composers. One of them was my grandfather.

9. Eight of these stamps, please. / These ones?? Are you sure? /Yes…that’s my grandfather!

10. The post clerk gave me some big stamps from the full stamp pages too

and with my grandfather’s stamps I felt properly Latvian.

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1. Once upon a time there lived a man. Every day, he did the same work,

2. ate the same food,

3. and saw the same scenery from the window.

4. One day, he heard that there’s a better place to live in.

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1. Being tired of the unchanging everyday life, he decided to travel to that place everyone spoke of.

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1. Once upon a time there lived a woman.

2. One day a man from another land came to propose to her.

3. He was a prince from a wealthy family. /  She fell in love with him and agreed to go to his palace in a faraway country.

Page 4

1.  Once upon a time there lived a man. / Every day of his life passed in hunger and poverty.

2. One day, he heard that a place where no one suffers does exist.

Page 5

1. Everyone moved to a new place. Days and months passed. / But in the end, none of them found happiness. /  The man got a higher salary than before, but had to pay even higher living expenses.

2. The woman discovered that she wasn’t the only one for the prince 

3. And the homeless man died on the streets, as he was treated like trash by others.

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1. “Foreigner!” / “Outsider!” /  “Stranger!” “/ Outlander!” / “Incomer!” / “Migrant!” “Alien!” / “Exile!”

2. “Outsiders! Outsiders!” all people around them shouted. Then, the migrants thought: / “How do we become “insiders”?”

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1. 2013 – Grenoble. An evening like any other at Mistral Park./ A half-pint of beer  for 3,50€: we will get a euro back when we give the glass back.

2. Tonight there are 4 of us. Sam is a Latvian guy. He has been a globetrotter for the last 18 months, hitchhiking and sleeping wherever he can. / Beware, Nicola, or you’ll get hurt! / Nicola speaks English perfectly, loves music and has hosted more than 40 people who have visited Grenoble, through the Couchsurfing website (where people offer a free bed to travelers for a short period)

3. Elisa, an Italian girl who loves France and comics by famous authors: she speaks English and French very well and has been livig in France for the last few months.

4. And then there is me. / I don’t speak English and French very well. I am in Grenoble for a three-month apprenticeship. For the guys who are here this is very normal. My friends in Italy thought it was something heroic.

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1. Not for her… / 1957 Melbourne, Australia / Here’s your coffee. / You have a very strange accent. You are neither Italian nor Australian, are you?

2. I am Croatian, Sir. I’ve been here for just three weeks.

3. Is it your first time in a refugee camp? / No, Sir. I left Croatia for Bari, and stayed in a camp there for a few months

4. I was born in a small countryside village, where people knew everything about everybody and lived with the fear of impending war. / There was nothing for me, there.

Page 3

1. There is nothing for me here in Modena / We’ve been friends for 12 years. Tomorrow she leaves for Berlin on a one-way ticket. / The coffee there isn’t as good as this, you know?

2. Next year I would like to take the specialist graduation in London or the Netherlands. / I would like to work, too, so I can pay for my trip back to Tokyo

3. 1998 / Ronchi dei Legionari Airport, Trieste

4. My uncles and  cousins left for Australia / I don’t think there is any opportunity for a future for young people here

5. I’ve grown up thinking that the place where you’re born is never the place where you find what you are looking for / Can you think about that? We should have been on that plane, 5 years ago

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1. Mum, have you ever regretted not coming back to Australia? / No, this is almost my home / When your grandma was young, people left home to see the world and see what it had to offer

2. We’ll be at Christmas Island soon! They say Christmas is celebrated on the beach here!

3. But now people move hoping to find a job and to have a family one day…/ Travelling, knowing and choosing where you stay is wonderful. My cousins are studying at school with people from all over the world! The youngest is engaged to a Filipino girl, and Alex has a classmate from Thailand

4. But not knowing your roots because there is no opportunity for a future in the place you were born…/ I find this very sad

Page 1

1. …About Bazyli it was quiet since some time already, while Michał II Kwiek became more active / In October 1934 he went to Romania.

Page 2

1. Where he participated in a meeting of gypsies and assured that he strives to „create a gypsy state in Asia, on Ganges, which is land of our origin.

Page 3

1. He announced that according to these efforts he goes from Romania to India.

2. However, after 10 days he was found in the woods near Kodz as organiser of gipsy assembly

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1. And election, on which he was elected as the king “for a further five years”

2. In his election speech, he declared abolition of horse-tax.

3. Just a few days later. King Michał II appeared in Czechoslovakia

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1. Where he was captured by police,

2. and soon after in London’s Hyde Park

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1. Where he said that Gypsies want to settle down for good – in Africa

2. Here comes the break of message about Michał