Barcelona mornings

Certain countries leave you with no illusions, you are a foreigner and all you can do is to accept your fate and try to get the best out of it. Having exhausted almost my entire Spanish vocabulary by ordering a café con leche with a bocadillo de jamon y queso, I recognize that my linguistic isolation is even worse here in Catalunya.

But it is all fine, sometimes it is relaxing to just walk around, be “the dreamer kind” and order a late-night mojito as if you never heard about Cuba. Right now I am reading up on the conference papers, the panel I will chair promises a diverse mix, everything from global democracy to the politics of Albania. Also, this year the ECPR Graduate Conference seems to have attracted quite a lot of people from Turkey as well as students abroad working on Turkish politics. Undoubtedly, Turkey is a crucial litmus test for the future and one can only be thankful that the drama of the summer came to a happy conclusion on 30 July when the Turkish constitutional court decided to not ban the ruling AKP party.