Author: Clara
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The Day I Realised I Dream in Three Languages
It happened on a Tuesday. Which feels about right. Nothing dramatic ever happens on a Tuesday. Just small shifts that rearrange you quietly. I woke up annoyed. Not coffee-annoyed. Proper annoyed. In the dream I had been arguing with someone. I cannot remember who. But I remember the language. It was English. Precise. Efficient. Every…
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The Spanish Word I Can Never Say Without Sounding Drunk
There is one Spanish word that makes me sound like I’m ordering alcohol even when I’m stone cold sober. It’s not a complicated word, technically. It’s just… long. It has too many corners. Too many rolling bits. The word is ferrocarril. Railway. A normal thing. A train. Infrastructure. Very sensible. And yet every time I…
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Dos Bieros, S’il Vous Plaît (And I Knew I Was Back)
I ordered two beers the other day and managed to say, out loud, with confidence: ‘Dos bieros, s’il vous plaît.’ Just me, standing there, trying to be polite in two countries at once. The problem is politeness has its own muscle memory. In Spain, you can get away with a quick “dos cervezas, por favor.”…
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The Aubergine Argument (and the Organic Wine That Saved Me)
There’s a woman in the village market who no longer makes eye contact with me. She used to. She even offered me free parsley once. But ever since The Incident, she’s kept a dignified distance—like I’m a contagious form of idiocy she’d rather not contract. It all started with an aubergine. Or maybe it started…
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Cocks, Clocks, and Catalonia
There are moments when you realise—too late—that you’ve completely misunderstood the assignment. For example: showing up to a rural Catalan community gathering with a cuckoo clock in your arms, expecting praise, and instead receiving silence, confusion, and one elderly man whispering, “¿Pero qué hace ella con eso?” Let me explain. It started with a conversation…
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La lessive n’est pas une sauce: The Laundry Sauce Incident (feat. Dublin, of course)
I marinated a chicken in laundry detergent. Not on purpose. I wasn’t having a breakdown. I was trying to be rustic. That brand of accidentally-French rustic you think you’ve absorbed through osmosis from a cheese label or an overpriced cookbook with no photos. I thought it was garlic sauce. It was not garlic sauce. It…
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The Swedish Man Who Stole My Towel (and Other Spa Disasters)
I thought I understood European spas.You go in. You float around. You come out slightly calmer, a bit pink, and then eat something with olives. That was before Miquel told me about the one in town. Proper hydrotherapy, Paula. Scandinavian circuit. Ice, heat, more ice, more heat. It’s very good for your aura.Which is how…
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The Day I Mistook a Bidet for a Sink
There are moments in life when you realise you’ve lost touch with your home country.One of them is when you mistake a bidet for a sink — in front of a man who once saw you throw up behind a kebab van in Wolverhampton and still sends you birthday cards. Let me explain. Robert —…
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Flirting in Two Languages
There’s a particular type of danger that comes from thinking you’re funnier in a foreign language than you actually are. It starts small — a joke, a pun, a little idiomatic wink. But somewhere between your brain and your mouth, it transforms into something that lands either as confusing, vaguely offensive, or weirdly romantic. Or,…
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French Film, Spanish Wine, English Hangover
It was meant to be a cultural night. That’s what Marta called it when she posted the flyer in the bakery: “Cinéma, vino y conversación”. A trilingual promise of enlightenment. We were going to watch a French classic, sip something locally fermented, and have what she described as “a reflective group discussion.” I should have…