I'm trying out a friend's office-share today. (If you're not familiar with this concept, basically a bunch of freelancers all take up an office space together, so they have somewhere to work other than cafés or their own kitchen tables.) This particular one will probably only be as a short-term sublet, while my friend is away, but in generally I think looking into this could be a good thing, because I too am getting pretty tired of working from cafés and my own kitchen table.
It's a motley crew here: an Argentinian journalist/translator, a couple of French translators, a couple of Germans – and a baker. Who the others say is rarely here, presumably because most of the time he's, you know, baking.
The French translators also speak German, of course, and English too; then all of a sudden my Argentinian friend was speaking Spanish with one of them – and he was answering in fluent, perfect-sounding Spanish.
When they switched back into English, I asked him, "Wait, how many languages do you speak, seriously? French, English, German, Spanish...?"
He shrugged and said, "And a couple more."
"Sometimes I really hate Europeans," I said.
(And hopefully he understood "hate" as synonymous with "am deeply envious of, for the opportunity to grow up surrounded by other languages and thus become almost effortlessly multilingual.")
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