To study or to learn a language

With my first year as a language college student coming to an end I'd like to write a little more personal blog post to reflect on how I experienced learning a new language, as well as to what I mean by to “learn” and to “study” a language and tell you a little about my linguistic background.

So far in my life I have “studied” and also “learned” a language. By studying a language I basically mean what we do in College or school. We learn vocabulary but also especially the grammatical system behind a language and its rules for conjugation, declination, tenses whatsoever. By learning a language I mean the “sponge” method. You don't study a language's rules and grammar, you learn some words yes, but you mainly learn to speak and especially to understand the language by being around people who speak it, being exposed to it, incorporating it into your life.

Studying a language is more tiring, it takes longer and is boring once you get on a high level as grammar and syntax get more complex. Learning a language is easier, you often do it unconsciously, only have to study little, but you don't know why you apply certain words and suffixes . Now what is the better way to do it? I myself only “studied” two languages, Croatian and Spanish. Although I had English in school since the age of 11(not counting elementary, because come one lets be serious this was just as useful as the french classes I had in elementary) I don't consider it a language I have studied. Why so? The first four years of English in school were a complete mess. Soon after the first semester started our teacher left the school for some months and was only to return every now and then. While she was gone we had a variety of other teachers who never knew which level we are on and so on. So yes in these critic four years which I suppose are important when learning a new language especially when its the first foreign language you learn were not very satisfying. It was already back then that I was very fond of the English language and American culture, and I wanted to be a part of it by knowing their language better than my middle school classmates. So when I was 13 I started to intentionally expose myself to the English language. I read lots of articles and books in English, I tried to watch English movies even if I didn't understand a lot. It was especially the everyday and slang language I wanted to get to know so I would remember these things from movies and so on and use them. By the time I transferred to another school where we received a decent education in English language I found that I had it easier than most of my fellow students and didn't have to study for the tests. So although my first years of English were chaotic I think I mastered this language without school. When I speak it today it comes natural to me, I don't think of what to say or write and although I still have to look up certain words ( especially specialist terms) I consider myself fluent.

Currently I'm doing both, I'm studying a language (Croatian and now also English) at college and I'm learning one with the sponge method, which I'd like to compare now. In not even one year we learned a lot in Croatian. I am able to communicate in everyday situations and to produce new sentences I have not learned by heart, but the way there was not easy. It involved a lot of studying vocabulary and grammar as well as text production.

Now with my girlfriend coming from a bilingual family (raised in Greek and Albanian) I find myself exposed to a multilingual environment everyday. I started to learn Albanian some time ago and being around this language speeds up the process(I haven't studied a word since I started Croatian and yet I keep improving). Whether it's her talking to her family, Albanian facebook statuses or songs, with time you remember certain words phrases and structures that enable you to produce language without a clue about grammar like cases and conjugation. Then again most of our communication happens in English. As she is the person I talk to most this makes English the dominant language in my life, it's our home language if you want to call it that way for one and a half year now. English playing such a big role in my life has helped me a lot to improve my language skills as it doesn’t allow me to neglect it and that helps a lot, also for school.

So why study a language? Why wasting your time learning rules and grammar? Well if you want to professionally work with a language you have to know these systems. Since I learned English by doing I have no idea about its grammar. When I have a grammar test I just write what my gut tells me to. If my teachers would give me a sentence to transform into this and that tense (we all know the nice complicated names some English tenses have) I would have no idea which tense they might mean. This is something you have to know as a professional Interpreter and or translator. So I guess it always depends on what you want to do with language. If you simply want to be able to speak and understand it regardless of knowing the system behind it the easier way is to “learn” it. If you want to work with it professional you have to “study” it. So what's the best thing to do now? I guess first you should try the sponge method and then start to study why you do certain things the way you are doing them. I personally enjoy the multilingual environment I'm currently in and hope to gain as much from it as possible. Also I'm looking forward to the next semester since I'm planning to start yet another language.

Culture days

The upcoming week we are finally having the Culture days at College, and I managed to make up my mind on which presentations I want to attend. As for my “homeculture” I picked The Boston Tea Party,The KKK and Mafia in the USA as the titles seem quite interesting to me. Furthermore I want to attend The life of Native Americans: before and during the interference of the settlers.  I'm also going to see Undocumented: Illegal Immigrants in the USA because the topic of immigration is related to my own paper and therefore quite interesting to me. The last two presentation from my homeculture I will attend are The Origin of the Chinese American culture and Private prisons: The booming business in America. The second one because I already got to read Hannah's paper and found it interesting as well as shocking as she showed how prisoners are exploited as cheap work forces in American prisons.

From the Irish culture I will attend The popularised Leprechaun, Irish as an official EU language and Is Irish a dying language? Because I'm interested in the Irish language and want to know if and how it is still practiced today.

I really enjoyed working on my culture project because we had the possibility to freely write about a topic we found interesting. I just wished we would have had the presentations a little earlier and not in the week of finals. There are so many more presentations I would really like to visit but frankly I cant even afford visiting the obligatory number of presentation without getting into time management issues for studying for my finals which unfortunately spoils this really great idea a little.

Eye exams on the smartphone

While there are tons of useless apps in the world out there like a virtual zipper or a watch that measures how long you can touch your phone with a finger, also some smart developments have been done in recent time.

Andrew Bastawrous has been working on apps dealing with diagnosis of eye diseases and I want to

introduce you to this idea. Now before one of you yells that's crap and should be left to a doctor, better keep on reading first. The app peek vision was not developed for the sole use at home without any professional supervision, no it was developed to improve health care in countries such as Kenya and other Sub-Saharan nations. Studies have shown that 80% of blind people in Africa could easily be treated and brought back to vision if resources allowed it. Another major reason is that more people in Africa have access to a smartphone than to clean water To know what surgery to perform one of course has to know the problem first, which requires a scan of the retina. Bringing bulky equipment to Africa requires a lot of money, people and effort, overall only checking the retina comes to 25.000 dollars. Andrew Bastawrous and his team developed a small adapter that is connected to a smartphone and only costs 5$ in production. In combination with the app and the adapter your phone is able to give you a scan of the retina and inner eye. The good thing about this is it only requires a single person and a smartphone, overall it comes to a cost of only 500$. The app also allows you to check the eyes reaction and to simulate what the world looks like for the patient, meaning how they sees it with their current vision. Furthermore the devices are linked with specialist all over the world, allowing them to send the diagnosis to doctors far away who then can start making plans for treatment. Once they are done they message either the patient or a local leader who is in touch with his people, to inform them about dates and details of their surgery. I think this is a great of modern technology and that this idea could change a lot. If you are interested in the topic here is the link of Bastawrous presenting the app: http://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_bastawrous_get_your_next_eye_exam_on_a_smartphone#t-182806

The languages of South Africa

!ke e: ǀxarra ǁke, meaning Unity in Diversity,- the motto of the Republic of South Africa, a country I have always thought to be very interesting. South Africa is an multi-ethnic country that encompasses a big variety of languages and cultures. First time I got in touch with one of the languages spoken there, called Afrikaans was when I heard a song of the South African band Die Antwoord. My fellow German speakers will already notice this band's name looks very German. German in South Africa? How so? Well Die Antwoord is not a misspelled version of the German word die Antwort, but its actually really means the same, die Antwort- the answer. The reason is the following; Afrikaans which is also refereed to as “Cape-Dutch” is one of the official languages of South Africa. It is indeed a variety of Dutch brought to the country by the former colonial rulers from the Netherlands. The African country's language's resemblance to my own mother tongue got me curious, so I started to do a little research about it. Although we might not be able to speak Afrikaans or understand it when it's spoken really quickly to us, we are actually able to understand it if we read it and know the context. I read some Wikipedia articles in Afrikaans and could understand a lot of the words since they were similar to German, just that we would maybe consider some of them to be archaic.

But Afrikaans is not the only language spoken in South Africa. The country actually has 11 official languages(Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Sotho, Swazi, Tswana, Tsonga, Venda, Xhosa and Zulu.), the most common of them being English, Afrikaans, Isizulu and Xhosa. So how does this work? Is every South African a polyglot that speaks 11 languages? Or do different people know different languages and can't communicate at all? No. In fact English is wide spread over the country and known by almost everyone. Most schools there are English and teach Afrikaans, Isizulu or Xhosa as second languages. There are some schools which are an Afrikaans or Isuzula medium and teach English as a second language. Generally home languages are Afrikaans for the white and Isizulu or Xhosa for the black population. To sum it up, almost everyone in South Africa is fluent in English so there are no language barriers in between the different natives.

                               Don't some of these words sound familiar to German natives?

„Fake“ fast-food

I'm currently in Tirana  and made an observation that I thought might be interesting for the food related topics we dealt with in class. Walking the streets of the city one will soon realize the fast-food restaurants here are not like the ones we know in western Europe or America.. but then they still sort of are, they are just made the Albanian way.

By this I mean that although there are no Western Fast-Food chains like McDonalds or Kentucky Fried Chicken Tirana has it's own version of them. For instance they have a place called “Albania Fried Chicken” in lieu of “Kentucky Fried Chicken”. The logo is the same but just with an A instead of a K and the whole restaurant is practically built to look like the original KFC

The closest thing to McDonalds is “Kolonat”, and well it comes pretty close. Basically Kolonat offers the same Burgers as McDonalds but additionally also serves Pasta, Pizza and Souvlaki. The biggest difference might be the prices as restaurants in Albania tend to be pretty cheap compared to the ones in Austria ( A big

Pizza at Kolonat costs 290 Leke which is about 2,90$).

The for me best Fast-Food restaurant chain there was “Goody's” a Greek restaurant chain with burgers, Souvlakis, sandwiches etc--

Although Albania and it's Capital might be the last European place to come to ones mind for traveling I say it's worth a visit. Tirana is an exciting lively city with lots of young people that offers a big number of shops and places to have coffee, lunch or dinner.

The problem called θ

What is the thing that most likely gives away your native language is not English? Most of my

fellow German speakers will probably agree it's the th (θ) sound. After studying English for a long time now I feel pretty confident speaking it but this certain sound still gives me trouble (I was just told yesterday how cute it is that I Say f whenever I'm supposed to say th)

I have to admit I'm not trying hard pronouncing this sound correctly, but frankly I don’t hear that much of a difference between th and f. I guess this comes from my native language not knowing this sound and therefore my hearing not being sensitive to it. It's the same when my Croatian teacher tells me there's a difference between č and ć as well as between š and ž. They sure are there but I have trouble hearing them especially when in a word or sentence.

There also wasn't a big focus on pronouncing that certain sound correctly in school. We were told if we cant manage the th we should say f instead, and never z like a lot of people here do which lead some kind of cliche. If we are honest what will an American do trying to mimic a German accent? Exactly they will put a z wherever a th is needed.

“Excuse me can you give me ze water? I'm zirsty. Zänk you very much.”

But well since German is one of the few Germanic languages without that sound I guess the only thing we can do is practice practice practice if we don't wanna sound like that.

How French is Canada?

Always interested in bilingualism I did some research on bilingualism in Canada and thought I might share it

with you. Enjoy :)

So I always knew that Canada had a french speaking population but I never really knew what this was all about. Is  it an official language? Are those a lot of people? Is french their mother tongue? Or did they just learn it in school as and that's what remained of “New France”? And most of all is it used in every day life?

Those were the things I had been wondering about so I did not hesitate to ask all these questions when I met a girl from Montreal. Speaking with her I soon noticed that although she spoke fluently and without mistakes she wasn't an English native. So I asked if English was her mother tongue and she said no.

She told me that French was along with English the official language of Canada and the sole official language of the province of Quebec. Quebec is the largest province of Canada and the second most populous. The province's capital is Quebec-City and the largest city Montreal.

So what about French now?

Well since Montreal is a big and multicultural city with people from all over the world English is wide spread there. It is established in services and everything, but she also said that this is something many French Canadians look sceptically towards. She made clear that French is the official language of the province and that if she didn't feel comfortable enough in English she would insist on being served in French.

79% of Quebecois listed French as their mother tongue, like the girl I have the information on all this from. They are raised completely in French, speak it at home and in everyday life and then learn English in school. This was something that really surprised me. I always thought those people were raised bilingual. She even said a lot of her friends don't speak good English at all and hers was just so good because she attended an English school. Also there are still tensions between the French and English speaking population, and Quebec even passed several laws that shall guarantee the importance and preservation of the French language. Also she said that Quebec City was completely French speaking and that some people might get unfriendly towards English speakers.

Also Canadian French is said to be different from European. One thing is that European French is more likely to use or borrow words from English which Canadians don't in order to protect their language. Here are some differences between Quebec and European French:

Quebec French	Metropolitan French	English gloss
abrier	couvrir	to cover
astheure (à c't'heure)	maintenant	now
chum (m)	copain (m)	boyfriend
magasiner	faire des courses	to go shopping/do errands
placoter	papoter	to chat/chatter

Here is a very interesting video on the differences:

I was really surprised by what I learned about Canada and in the End it turned out to be much more French than I thought. But I'm really glad my confusion about this was cleared up as I'm always interested in bilingualism in several countries, but most of the time also confused about it.

Montreal

Pan-City and Pollo frito

Bank district

Today I want to introduce you to a city that I could scratch off my “Places I really wanna see list” from a previous post this February. Overall I spent 7 nights in Panama's capital during term break and can only say this city is fascinating. Being the economic hub of the country Panama-City enjoys all the advantages of thewealth the Panama Canal brought the country. The city is completely clean, banks and international companies have their skyscrapers shooting to the sky like mushrooms and lining up with luxury apartment complexes in the upscale neighborhoods Marbella and Bella Vista on the bay. By taking a cab around the city one will soon realize though, that with all this wealth come the contrasts as well. The problem with Panama is that most of the money they make with the Canal stays in the capital, and by taking a closer look at the city one will soon see it does not only stay in the city but also in the hands of a very few people. As impressing and beautiful this city is, if you move away from the fancy districts you will soon see yourself confronted with poverty and social problems. The circumstances most people there live under are unimaginable for the most of us I guess. Nevertheless I highly recommend this city to anyone who travels Middle-America. Here I summed up some of the must-see things in Pan-City and vicinity for you:

The coastal belt

The Coastal-Belt: My absolute favorite in Pan-City. Like a big grass verge this belt runs between the busy Avenida balboa and the pacific coast. This place is a true resort, it offers benches to sit down in a trees shadow, gym equipment free to use for anybody, soccer fields and all that with an amazing view of the city's skyline and the Pacific. It's a place you can sit at for hours just watching the sea and the people passing by.

Allbrook mall: The biggest mall in Panama and also the biggest I've ever been is located right next to the City's Central bus terminal. This place's food court is bigger than most malls here in Austria, you can find anything you want here. It offers all international fast food chains and also a lot of local ones. Most Panamanian fast food chains like Pio Pio serve pollo frito, fried chicken. Overall it is save to say, without being stereotypical that Panamanians love their chicken. You get it everywhere. One fast food chain even has a chicklet serving fried chicken on a tray as logo.. pretty macabre if you think of it right?

The food court

Are you serving your family?

Casco-Viejo: The city's old town has been renovated over the past years and some parts are still under construction. The heavy armed tourism police is omni present there so it's very safe during the day. This place is really worth a visit as you will think you landed in Spain.

Casco Viejo

Miras flores locks: Of course the Panama-Canal is a must see when in Panama but frankly this was one of the bummers of this trip. I imagined it to be more grand but its just a small lock where ships pass through while you fight with mostly 65+ year old tourist for a spot where you can snap a pic. What I really like about this place was the museum though.

A ship passing through the Panama-Canal

After all Panama-City really is a place that will fascinate you once you are there.

A little tip: To cope in the city you have to know at least some basic Spanish because no one there will speak English and cabs etc will rip you off if you don't speak their language. Also note that cabs cost maximum 2$ per ride within the city. So really try to learn some basics before visiting Panama. I fortunately had Spanish in school which I was very glad about since people won't even try to understand if you don't speak a word of Spanish

Miami- Lignano on steroids

This term break I had the chance to visit Miami in the course of my trip around Panama. Since I had never been to Miami or Florida in general before I was excited to see this part of the U.S.

I did not come there with the highest expectations like someone else might had because this city is so hyped, no I was actually ready to be rather disappointed because most people who have been there told me it's actually not that great and I know from my own experience the U.S cities never really live up to your expectations. And once I was there I have to say I was underwhelmed. But lets start from the beginning.

I went there in February at a time my hometown experienced heavy ice rain that froze over half the city, so I was used to very cold weather. Once you get out of the airport hot and humid air surrounds you completely while you take in the busy airport streets lined with Palm trees. That at least was a good first impression. Also the drive from the airport to Miami Beach was very nice as the highways also have a lot of palm trees around and you get a glimpse at the skyline of downtown Miami. Our hotel was on Collins Avenue in Miami beach, just one street next to the famous Ocean Drive. But that was it for the positive stuff for now. While I was ranting about the worst hotel ever in my post about Rome, I have to take back what I said because compared to the one there Rome was the Burj. If you go to Miami don't ever ever stay at the Berkley Shore hotel, it's the most run-down place I have ever seen in my life, and to me its still an enigma how a place like this can be licensed in a civilized country.

Miami beach itself wasn't so great either, it really reminded me of a huge Lignano in Northern Italy, which we call the “janitor-beach” in Austria. Everything was kind of old an run down, I really didn't see whats so special about it, If I came all the way from Europe for Miami only this would have probably been the most disappointing trip of my life.

Also Miami airport was just a pain in the neck. When I went home from Panama I had to connect in Miami and almost missed my flight. The problem was: Anyone also if you're just connecting must enter the country, which means go through immigration again, claim your baggage, go through customs drop off your baggage and go through security again. And now try doing this when you only have a two hour lay over. Immigration was just a joke, there were hundreds of people lining up and all they had open were three counters while most of the staff just stood there bossing people around rather than opening another counter.

I had to go through this whole process again too although I still had a valid entrance permission stamp in my passport from my prior trip there. When asking the staff for help all you get is rude comments. How ever I managed to get placed in another shorter line and just was on time for boarding. A guy I guess he was in his 80s had only 15 minutes to his flight when still lining up for Immigration, I'd be surprised if he caught that flight. So if you are going to America I advice you taking a flight that flies to your destination directly without landing in the US prior because connecting there really sucks.

There were some peaks to Miami though: Whats really cool is walking down south beach at night to the marina from where you have a view of the skyline of downtown. As for food I'd suggest a BBQ burger at the art deco diner, which was one of the best I've had.

A fun fact about Miami: I did not hear a lot of English there. In fact it ranks number three behind Spanish and German. Due to the high population of Latin Americans Spanish can be heard everywhere and most signs are in English and Spanish. At the airport most of the staff automatically spoke Spanish to me because my ticket said Barcelona and Panama. As for German.. well I guess there were just a lot of tourists.

Travel the world from your kitchen

This semester food is gonna be one of the major topics in English class, so I guess I will be posting about that topic a couple more times, but as for now I'm starting out with this one. First of all I like to cook in general, but the thing I like best about it is that it's also another way of getting an insight on other cultures. So my

Khoresht-e fesenjān

favorite things to cook are dishes from foreign countries as it allows at least your taste buds to travel there. A week ago I read a great book called "Prisoner of Tehran" by Marina Nemat (I might review it in a later post) which arose my curiosity to learn more about Iran and Persian culture. After reading another book about Iranian politics and people's everyday life there i decided to try out a Persian recipe. The Persian cuisine uses pomegranate a lot which is one of my favorite fruits so I decided to make Khoresht-e fesenjān. It's some kind of stew with a sauce made from pomegranate syrup and walnuts. The dish was easy to prepare and turned out to have a great taste. While the first bite may be a little strange because it tastes nothing like familiar to anything else (at least to me) the combination of the sweet fruit , chicken and nuts with Persian rice is great.

As I said the thing I enjoy most about cooking is getting to know dishes and eating habits of other cultures and there are some good blogs out there related to that topic. I once read one where a woman was alphabetically going through all the countries of the world and prepared a typical desert. Sadly I didn't find it anymore but this one is quite interesting too: http://globalcookies.blogspot.co.at/ . In this blog you can find a variety of cookie recipes from all over the world.

If someone is interested in the fesenjan recipe here is the link to the recipe i used. It's in Ferman but if you google you can sure fnd an English one too

http://www.chefkoch.de/rezepte/993901204707395/Huhn-in-Granatapfel-Walnuss-Sauce.html

What good bloggers do

While looking through the list of best blogs I tried to determine what makes them so good. I soon realized most of them don't have an elaborate layout. And this is something I really liked and also keep on my own blog. I like it simple and easy to navigate, like you have one post chronological after the other. I once took a look at a blog you could see the owner really put a lot of effort into, especially the layout. And frankly after two post I got tired because finding your way through this blog was not the easiest. As for the layout I would say one should keep it simple.

Another thing, maybe the most important I realized is that the author really needs to be interested in the topic they are writing about. You could clearly see in which posts they put a lot of effort into and how much they actually enjoyed writing about it. And this is something that really improves the quality of posts. I also realize that when I'm writing stuff my own. Like this post here, frankly we were assigned to write it in class, and this is not really a topic I'm into and I had to force myself into writing this post while when I write about culture or travel related stuff it's easy as I keep having so many ideas about what to write. And that's why you can also expect some more posts on these topics.

On bilingualism and how real-life practice boosts your language skills

Although the many vocab tests we have every second week in Croatian classes can be stressful and annoying sometimes I'm still glad we have them. If there's something I realized over winter-break it's that languages have to be practiced permanently in order not to forget everything. By that I mean studying grammar and vocabulary as well as to actually use it. And although you of course have to study all the grammar and words in order to be able professionally work witth it, I realized that practice is the most important thing for languages learners. My mother tongue is German and as for now I'm learning three other languages, and while I got to use my other two foreign languages a lot over winter break I found myself making great progress at them even without sitting down and studying. Not so with Croatian. Unfortunately the only chance I had to practice Croatian was a little conversation with my uncle at lunch who spoke a messy mix of Croatian and Slovene. He never learned the languages per se because my family stopped teaching their kids Slovene and Croatian one generation before he was born, something I'm really not happy about because I don't understand how parents can decide not passing their mother tongue on to their kids no matter where they live. Over the years, I've heard the silliest justifications.Wheres the harm in knowing it? It's not even that big of an effort, you just speak it with them, the kids will learn it and as they grow older they will learn to keep their two languages apart. You see there is not reason not to raise your kids bilingual. But this also supports my point about practice being the best way of learning a language. Everything my uncle knows he picked up visiting our relatives in Slovenia, and while he says he can understand what they say, forming whole sentences is difficult, but that's how it is, understanding is easier than talking. Another maybe not so smart thing was that I did most of the tons of homework we got in the beginning at once so I would have my peace the rest of the break. What I'm trying to say with this post is that if you are learning a language, try to apply it in your everyday life as much as you can. I could literally feel my English and Albanian improve as I was talking/texting in those languages while I had a somewhat bad conscious about neglecting Croatian over this time. And another thing is that if you have the possibility, raise you kids bilingual, there is no advantage in withholding the gift of effortless learning a second language Even if it's a language that's only spoken by a few people, there is no harm in knowing it. In the End you can really say “use it or lose it” is something that definitely applies for language learning.

Why getting to Cuba is so hard

Havana

With term break around the corner ( although it's still winter break) a friend of mine and I have been thinking of traveling for a month since we will be off for the whole February.

The problem is our tastes concerning the destinations are not really the same. He prefers Asia while I like going to the US. Then we came up with South and middle America. He said he wanted to go for some time now but didn't speak any Spanish. Well I had two years of Spanish in school, but out of the five languages I “speak” I'm the worst at this one.. frankly I wouldn't even consider myself speaking that language although I was a straight A Spanish student in school. But whatever I'm sure you can cope there even without being a Spanish expert. So finally we ended up checking flights to the following destinations: Bolivia,Peru and Cuba.

While flights to Bolivia and Peru were found quickly, even if a little more expensive than we thought we couldn't find any to Cuba.

Every time I entered Havana or Varandero the search engine wouldn't recognize it.

I found this quite strange so I started to do a little research on the internet later when I got home. I thought maybe it was the smart phone and tried again on the computer, but still nothing. After googling for flights instead of looking for some directly on travel sites I found one airline flying into Havana.. yes only one.

I wanted to know why that is, I mean I know Cuba is quite isolated but since even grocery stores like Hofer offer trips there I thought they had quite the tourism. So I googled again and found some interesting things. While the lack of flights from Europe is explained by Cuba not really being a point of interest the one from the US had other reasons. While I had already heard that it was somewhat hard for US-citizens to go to Cuba I found out it was even more than that.

In 1960 President Eisenhower placed an Embargo against Cuba after the Cuban government had disowned Americans and American companies there for about a billion dollars. From there on it was prohibited to export any goods to Cuba except for medicine or food. Financial support of the regime in Havana was prohibited in any way and Bill Clinton even expanded the embargo by disallowing foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies to trade with Cuba. What Clinton allowed though was the export of other American

products.

Now this Embargo also effects normal US citizens who want to travel there. While Cuba does not mind them coming there they are not allowed to go there by the US. The reason is that if you stay there for longer than a day it is only logic that you are going to spend money and support the government. This the reason you can't go there without a special license. Those license are available for Journalist, people who do academic research, people who do government business or visit their family there.

There are no such rules for Europeans although you should be careful with what you bring with you, for instance you should only bring one laptop, cell-phone and camera. It is prohibited to bring GPS-devices with you although it is tolerated if your cell-phone has GPS, and what I found most funny: You are not allowed to bring air conditioning.

While I found it quite interesting to learn these things I don't think I will be going to South or middle America this February and stick with my plan on going to Greece instead.

Even-though seeing Bolivia or Peru would sure be interesting I feel like I wouldn’t have enough time to plan that trip and I'm not sure I would feel safe there without planning ahead really well. Cuba on the other hand is out for me as for now because flights there are too expensive since I only found one single airline that would go there.