Lost in Translation

Two international students in a Spanish supermarket – a miraculous firework of colours, strange words, different smells and the sound of a language that is still foreign to us. The wonderland of the Carrefour (Karéefourrr, as the Spanish pronounce it) and the two of us just like children in Disneyland.

We manage to pull our cart full with delicious wonders of consumerism to the meat counter. We have to draw a number waiting for the obligatory moment of choice between all those delicacies. Michele, my Italian flatmate and companion in this adventure, points towards a bowl with pieces of meat, onions and peppers, dipped in a red sauce. “This looks delicious, let’s take it” he tells me in a schizophrene mix between Italian, English and what he thinks is Spanish. The sign on the bowl reads “Conejo.”
I ask Michele: “Do you know what conejo means.”
“I don’t know,” he tells me in his fabulous Italian accent and then continues with his laid back attitude: “But it doesn’t matter, the meat looks good. Let’s buy.” He buys half a kilo.

About an hour later – back in the kitchen of our L’Auberge Espagnol (for those, who don’t know the movie that is a flat shared by exchange students from all over Europe). Michele is preparing the meat that we just bought. Filippo, my other Italian flatmate sits at the table and eats a salad.
Michele tells him: “We bought such delicious meat, do you want some.” Filippo declines the offer and tells us that he will only eat salad tonight.

I ask him in English: “So, you are a rabbit tonight?” Filippo doesn’t understand the word rabbit, I don’t know the Spanish word for it and my explanation – in Spanish – of the animal with the big things you hear with – fails. I pick up the dictionary that’s in the kitchen constantly. I look up ‘rabbit’ and when I read the word ‘conejo’ I start to wonder: “Michele, what’s the name of the meat we are eating.”
“Conejo, why?”