First of all, a hearty BONES FESTES and BON NADAL to all, the Christmas lights are on in Barcelona! I am so incredibly happy. I thought I was really wanting to be home, but considering the lighter-than-air ecstasy I am currently experiencing, I think I just wanted it to be Christmas. OH MY GOD. Barcelona looks so good! The "Christmas tree" (it's a palm. I know.) and the nativity set are still in the process of being put up, and the Christmas fair doesn't open until this weekend, but THE LIGHTS ARE ON! I was bummed this morning because I tried to listen to Christmas music on my walk to school, but since it was 55 and extremely sunny, I just couldn't get into the mood. But after my 5:30 class today, I walked out into Placa Catalunya and it was cold, windy, cloudy, and COVERED IN CHRISTMAS LIGHTS, so I knew the time had come. I spent an hour just wandering around the city, listening to Bing Crosby, Johnny Mathis, Perry Como, and of course Elvis (haha), and admiring all the wonderfully tacky and over-the-top decorations. The city is at least twice as bright now. Also! It started to rain on this walk! Barcelona was basically giving me everything I wanted - now if it could transplant my friends, family, and Rimsky's over here, I would never leave.
I had coffee with a girl from my lit class and my Spanish class today to "work" on our presentation, but we ended up just talking about Barcelona for an hour. She lives in a dorm with other Spanish students, and even she said that she can't make friends with them. She says the other students avoid them and clearly don't want to be friends, with the exception of a couple 16 year old boys from southern Spain who want to be more than just their friends. So that made me feel much better about the fact that 13 weeks have passed and I have no Catalan friends, unless you want to count Paula, Gonzalo, Pablo, and their cousins who stop by relatively often, Erik and Kirian. And of course, Carlota and Tomas, but I do prefer having toilet-trained friends.
School is stressing me out hardcore right now. Not so hardcore enough that I am studying much, but just enough to make me want to eat Nutella from the jar while hiding in my bed. Ha, this semester. Oh dear. Next semester will be ROUGH. Anyway. My grades are all riding on the events of the following two weeks, and that is very stressful. There is literally nothing else to balance them out, except in my Spanish class, where I have gotten As on everything so far (woo hoo for Spanish class). This brings up several points I have been wanting to make about school here. Actually, the points are completely unrelated to grades and finals, except that they're about school. One. Students drink beer all the time. You wouldn't think this would be so weird, but it is. Because when I leave my first class at 11 am, there are beer cans literally strewn about the quad-like thing. AT ELEVEN AM. Two. I think I've said this, but everyone speaks Catalan around me. And in my art history class, people give presentations in Catalan all the time. Bilingualism is weird. Three. Everyone smokes. I have seen groups of four or five people literally leaning against the giant (7 feet high), red no-smoking sign. Ummm there were many more, I'm sure. I can't remember right now. Oh! How about that about half the class has their motorcycle helmet on the desk next to them!
Anyway I feel bipolar because I just went from a morning of "sad, I can't even listen to Christmas music because it's so nice out... if only I was at home..." to an evening of "OH MY GOD CHRISTMAS IN BARCELONA I CAN'T EVEN BELIEVE HOW GREAT THIS IS." But since it's ending on a high note, I feel no need to question it.
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
Vinho? Obrigado!
Those are the two words of Portuguese I know. There are some others I know by accident, because they're the same as Spanish, but pretty much the only one I ever said was "obrigado." All the time. (It means "thank you")
So Lisbon is amazing! Seriously. There's a castle, a river, the ocean, a bridge that looks suspiciously golden and gate-like (see very small picture),
a boatload of references to the age of Portuguese dominance of the seas, lots of very friendly people, literally acres of Christmas decorations, and a ton of delicious food and wine. Basically a winner in my book. The majority of buildings in Lisbon are covered in colorful ceramic tiles (azulejo), which makes wandering around even more gorgeous than it is in Barcelona. Also, the city is built on seven hills (as you might have heard), which makes it more... shall we say 'heart-healthy' to get around than Barcelona, which only has a gentle slope down to the ocean, and a ferrocarril up the hill. To add to the San Francisco parallels, Lisbon is also covered with trolley tracks, and lots of both antique and new trolleys make up a good portion of the public transportation system. Basically, there wasn't anything about Lisbon I didn't like. Even our hostel was incredible - it had a kitchen we could use to cook meals (if we wanted), delicious breakfast MADE TO ORDER, linens and towels provided, free internet 24 hours a day, 
and the friendliest staff I have seen in any place of business in all of Europe. Plus it was on one of the main pedestrianized roads in the middle of downtown, so it was close to everything! This hostel pretty much had it all. They even had a tv room and a DVD collection. Still, the fresh eggs in the morning were my favorite.
I was traveling with Stacey, a friend of mine from IES, and her friend from high school, who is studying in Paris. They remembered their passports, so they were there on Thursday. But on Friday, when I arrived at the hostel at 8:30 am, we set off to conquer the city. We saw the castle, the remains of which date from the 13th century, which is on top of the tallest hill in Lisbon, and took in a beautiful view of the entire city. From there we happened upon a church from the 12th century, and wandered around the neighborhood of Alfama, just a few steps behind a tour group. Actually, we only followed them for about a block and a half before seeing an adorable old man playing with some dogs and had to stop to admire the picturesque-ness of the situation. We had lunch in a big praça (another
Portuguese word I know, but can't pronounce, but it means plaza) which was decked out with Christmas decorations, just like nearly every street we saw. From there we were pretty beat, myself especially, since I had left my bed in Barcelona at 4:15 that morning, so we napped in our wonderful hostel before heading out. We wandered around Chiado and the Bairro Alto, and found some delicious Italian food for dinner. I had tagliolini with mascarpone and black truffle - I nearly died, it was so epicly amazing - and we tried some Portuguese vinho verde. Although that translates to green wine, it was actually white. Also, in Lisbon, restaurants put out bread bowls, butter, olives, etc, but if you eat from them, they charge you about two euros per person. Um... not cool. It's times like these when I miss America - wonderful America, with overflowing bread bowls, free water without even having to ask for it, and prompt service. Regardless, our dinner was outstanding, and our waiter did give us some free limoncello, which Stacey's friend Lekha had some trouble drinking. It also made it so we spent an extra twenty (or thirty) minutes at the table, but that's the beauty of Europe! That table is yours, no matter how many people feel like waiting for it! We felt like we ought to hit the bars, since Bairro Alto, where we were at the time, is the area to go out in, but it was still early, and so we got ice cream instead. Then we decided we were all too tired anyway, and went back to the hostel where we watched Love Actually and dreamt of Christmas.
Saturday, we went to Belém,
where there is a big monastery built by King Manuel I for himself in the 16th century. It is STUNNING, but I've been to my share of old, religious buildings. Maybe someone else's share as well. I was hoping for some pretender to the Holy Grail or perhaps the body of a king, but I was denied. From there we walked to a huge monument dedicated to Portuguese sailing prowess (Monument to Discoveries) - you can sort of see it in the first picture, and you can definitely see it in the nine others on Photobucket. It's very cool - it has 30 extremely gigantic figures of important explorers and cartographers and such, all clamoring on the sides of a comically undersized ship. I don't know - I have trouble thinking of Portuguese as a huge exploratory force (even though I know they were), because the effect of the Spanish, British, and the French is so much more prominent in the sheer volume of countries they colonized. But I guess Brazil is really huge. From there we went to the Tower of Belém, a tower that is on the river, near the confluence(?) of the river with the Atlantic ocean. It used to be used for defense, and now it is a national monument. It is a really cool building but was literally empty, so it wasn't that exciting. There was a spiral staircase to the top, but it was also the staircase to the bottom, so we had a rough time getting up and then back down through all the foot traffic. From there, I nearly died of hunger, and we had some incredible falafel and batatas fritas (see, I know TONS of Portuguese), before slowly making our way back downtown. We stopped at a covered market that had closed only an hour before, where there was a dance going on upstairs! It was filled with adorable old Portuguese couples. We made it back to town, tried the traditional Portuguese pastéis de nata (cream tart), and decided we couldn't make it to dinner without a nap. Rejuvenated, we headed up to one of the many parks in the city to see the lighting of the city's giant Christmas tree! In fact, it is not a tree at all, but a 72 meter high metal and light contraption which glows green, gold, blue, or multi-colored, and also has animations (of sorts) of doves flying, and of a dove hanging a ribbon or tinsel or something around the tree. It was GREAT. The lighting was accompanied by tons of Christmas music, which was all in English. That was sort of surprising to me, but a wonderful surprise! From there we headed back to Bairro Alto and found one of the restaurants that was suggested on wikitravel (since I now get ALL of my information from wiki sites, apparently). We asked how long the wait would be, since the twelve tables were all full, and she said a table had already paid, so probably ten minutes. We decided to wait, and enjoyed a glass of wine on the street outside as we waited a good forty five minutes, never thinking to change our plans (we had wine! What were we supposed to do, leave our glasses and run?). Dinner was delicious once we were seated though, and I had the special, which was octopus served with roasted potatoes and spinach - and it was amazing. I was nervous about it being octopus, but it was delectable. For dessert, we had chocolate pudding, and then, exhausted from the wait, the meal, and the wonderful conversation, we headed back to the hostel, fighting the crowds of bar-goers (that can't be a word) who were all in the street. Apparently the good bars are too small, so you just order and stand outside all night. Not bad in Lisbon, where it was 65, but that could be rough in other places.
The next morning we once again enjoyed some freshly scrambled eggs, then headed out to do some last minute shopping before heading to the airport. I was glad to be back in Barcelona, but it is much colder than it was in Lisbon, and also I have to go to class here! That dose of Christmas was wonderful though, and I can't wait for them to turn on the lights in Barcelona! All of the Christmas lights are up, but they sit there sadly, just like me, desperate for the Christmas season to be in full swing. Only 27 days until I come home - I'm so happy to be here, but I definitely miss Portland right now. Especially knowing that a lot of my friends are home for Thanksgiving! But I have much more important things to focus on - like the term paper, the presentation, the five written exams, and the oral exam that are all due or taking place between Dec 1 and 18. Oh dear Jesus.
Sorry this one was so long - Lisbon is just THAT awesome.
So Lisbon is amazing! Seriously. There's a castle, a river, the ocean, a bridge that looks suspiciously golden and gate-like (see very small picture),
a boatload of references to the age of Portuguese dominance of the seas, lots of very friendly people, literally acres of Christmas decorations, and a ton of delicious food and wine. Basically a winner in my book. The majority of buildings in Lisbon are covered in colorful ceramic tiles (azulejo), which makes wandering around even more gorgeous than it is in Barcelona. Also, the city is built on seven hills (as you might have heard), which makes it more... shall we say 'heart-healthy' to get around than Barcelona, which only has a gentle slope down to the ocean, and a ferrocarril up the hill. To add to the San Francisco parallels, Lisbon is also covered with trolley tracks, and lots of both antique and new trolleys make up a good portion of the public transportation system. Basically, there wasn't anything about Lisbon I didn't like. Even our hostel was incredible - it had a kitchen we could use to cook meals (if we wanted), delicious breakfast MADE TO ORDER, linens and towels provided, free internet 24 hours a day, 
and the friendliest staff I have seen in any place of business in all of Europe. Plus it was on one of the main pedestrianized roads in the middle of downtown, so it was close to everything! This hostel pretty much had it all. They even had a tv room and a DVD collection. Still, the fresh eggs in the morning were my favorite.I was traveling with Stacey, a friend of mine from IES, and her friend from high school, who is studying in Paris. They remembered their passports, so they were there on Thursday. But on Friday, when I arrived at the hostel at 8:30 am, we set off to conquer the city. We saw the castle, the remains of which date from the 13th century, which is on top of the tallest hill in Lisbon, and took in a beautiful view of the entire city. From there we happened upon a church from the 12th century, and wandered around the neighborhood of Alfama, just a few steps behind a tour group. Actually, we only followed them for about a block and a half before seeing an adorable old man playing with some dogs and had to stop to admire the picturesque-ness of the situation. We had lunch in a big praça (another
Portuguese word I know, but can't pronounce, but it means plaza) which was decked out with Christmas decorations, just like nearly every street we saw. From there we were pretty beat, myself especially, since I had left my bed in Barcelona at 4:15 that morning, so we napped in our wonderful hostel before heading out. We wandered around Chiado and the Bairro Alto, and found some delicious Italian food for dinner. I had tagliolini with mascarpone and black truffle - I nearly died, it was so epicly amazing - and we tried some Portuguese vinho verde. Although that translates to green wine, it was actually white. Also, in Lisbon, restaurants put out bread bowls, butter, olives, etc, but if you eat from them, they charge you about two euros per person. Um... not cool. It's times like these when I miss America - wonderful America, with overflowing bread bowls, free water without even having to ask for it, and prompt service. Regardless, our dinner was outstanding, and our waiter did give us some free limoncello, which Stacey's friend Lekha had some trouble drinking. It also made it so we spent an extra twenty (or thirty) minutes at the table, but that's the beauty of Europe! That table is yours, no matter how many people feel like waiting for it! We felt like we ought to hit the bars, since Bairro Alto, where we were at the time, is the area to go out in, but it was still early, and so we got ice cream instead. Then we decided we were all too tired anyway, and went back to the hostel where we watched Love Actually and dreamt of Christmas.Saturday, we went to Belém,
where there is a big monastery built by King Manuel I for himself in the 16th century. It is STUNNING, but I've been to my share of old, religious buildings. Maybe someone else's share as well. I was hoping for some pretender to the Holy Grail or perhaps the body of a king, but I was denied. From there we walked to a huge monument dedicated to Portuguese sailing prowess (Monument to Discoveries) - you can sort of see it in the first picture, and you can definitely see it in the nine others on Photobucket. It's very cool - it has 30 extremely gigantic figures of important explorers and cartographers and such, all clamoring on the sides of a comically undersized ship. I don't know - I have trouble thinking of Portuguese as a huge exploratory force (even though I know they were), because the effect of the Spanish, British, and the French is so much more prominent in the sheer volume of countries they colonized. But I guess Brazil is really huge. From there we went to the Tower of Belém, a tower that is on the river, near the confluence(?) of the river with the Atlantic ocean. It used to be used for defense, and now it is a national monument. It is a really cool building but was literally empty, so it wasn't that exciting. There was a spiral staircase to the top, but it was also the staircase to the bottom, so we had a rough time getting up and then back down through all the foot traffic. From there, I nearly died of hunger, and we had some incredible falafel and batatas fritas (see, I know TONS of Portuguese), before slowly making our way back downtown. We stopped at a covered market that had closed only an hour before, where there was a dance going on upstairs! It was filled with adorable old Portuguese couples. We made it back to town, tried the traditional Portuguese pastéis de nata (cream tart), and decided we couldn't make it to dinner without a nap. Rejuvenated, we headed up to one of the many parks in the city to see the lighting of the city's giant Christmas tree! In fact, it is not a tree at all, but a 72 meter high metal and light contraption which glows green, gold, blue, or multi-colored, and also has animations (of sorts) of doves flying, and of a dove hanging a ribbon or tinsel or something around the tree. It was GREAT. The lighting was accompanied by tons of Christmas music, which was all in English. That was sort of surprising to me, but a wonderful surprise! From there we headed back to Bairro Alto and found one of the restaurants that was suggested on wikitravel (since I now get ALL of my information from wiki sites, apparently). We asked how long the wait would be, since the twelve tables were all full, and she said a table had already paid, so probably ten minutes. We decided to wait, and enjoyed a glass of wine on the street outside as we waited a good forty five minutes, never thinking to change our plans (we had wine! What were we supposed to do, leave our glasses and run?). Dinner was delicious once we were seated though, and I had the special, which was octopus served with roasted potatoes and spinach - and it was amazing. I was nervous about it being octopus, but it was delectable. For dessert, we had chocolate pudding, and then, exhausted from the wait, the meal, and the wonderful conversation, we headed back to the hostel, fighting the crowds of bar-goers (that can't be a word) who were all in the street. Apparently the good bars are too small, so you just order and stand outside all night. Not bad in Lisbon, where it was 65, but that could be rough in other places.The next morning we once again enjoyed some freshly scrambled eggs, then headed out to do some last minute shopping before heading to the airport. I was glad to be back in Barcelona, but it is much colder than it was in Lisbon, and also I have to go to class here! That dose of Christmas was wonderful though, and I can't wait for them to turn on the lights in Barcelona! All of the Christmas lights are up, but they sit there sadly, just like me, desperate for the Christmas season to be in full swing. Only 27 days until I come home - I'm so happy to be here, but I definitely miss Portland right now. Especially knowing that a lot of my friends are home for Thanksgiving! But I have much more important things to focus on - like the term paper, the presentation, the five written exams, and the oral exam that are all due or taking place between Dec 1 and 18. Oh dear Jesus.
Sorry this one was so long - Lisbon is just THAT awesome.
Monday, November 17, 2008
With each step I am more certain
SO. Rodgers & Hammerstein are pretty much my personal heroes.
This seemingly random factoid comes to you as a way of introducing my London trip this weekend! On Saturday night, Charlotte and I (on a complete whim) bought tickets to see The Sound of Music in the London Palladium, which I SWEAR is famous somehow. I know it is the first place that the Beatles performed live on TV, but I thought maybe there was more? Anyway, it was magical (except that Captain von Trapp sort of was awful), and completely rekindled my love of all things musical theatre-related.
London!
I left Barcelona on Thursday night, immediately after my Latin Am Lit class. Unfortunately, we went on a field trip to the middle of nowhere, and I only got back to Placa Catalunya in time to catch my bus because I ran ahead of the group on the way home. I also ran across the airport to the check-in gate, where I found that the exceedingly slippery marble floors combined with my exceedingly slick black flats make for a very precarious running situation. And, just like last time I had to run to the airport, my flight was delayed. I sat next to a wonderful woman who is American but has lived in Spain on and off for the last 16 years. She lives with her daughter in a little pueblo on the beach just outside of Barcelona, and works in the city. Her mother, who is still in the states, sends them "love boxes" every month packed with US goodies that they can't get here - so we met when she turned to me and asked if I wanted anything from her giant bag of Halloween candy. Three Snickers, two Mars bars, and one Milky Way later, we were pretty much best friends. I lent her my copy of the Economist (I caved and bought it this past week because it not only had Obama, it also had a special report on Spain), we bonded over how difficult the Catalans are to befriend, and we shared the bond that only two stressed women eating chocolate together can really share.
I got to London about 40 minutes later than expected, and took a train into town from the airport, arriving just minutes after the tube closed. Weird side note: while on the train I was listening to my iPod and it froze at about a minute into "Tiny Dancer." This crushed me. I restarted my iPod, but I was desperate to hear the rest, so I went back to "Tiny Dancer," only to have it freeze again at the exact same moment! So basically I was very depressed because I had a taste of Elton but was DENIED. Anyway, I arrived at Liverpool St, David and Charlotte were there to greet me, and we began the very long and painful experience of finding our hostel. After no less than three buses, at least 40 minutes of waiting for buses, and a good 20 minutes of walking, we arrived at about 2:45 am. Char had already checked us in, and we went to bed - only to be woken again every hour by either someone coming back late or the EPIC snoring man in the bunk across from me.
The next day, David carted us around to all the touristy things, after having a delicious English breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, and tea (oh eggs!). We saw Big Ben & Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, a bunch of parks, St. Paul's cathedral, Millennium bridge, the Globe theatre, London bridge, Harrods (where we had afternoon tea), and then we absolutely died and had to have a nap post-tea. It was all cool, but both Char and I had been to London before with our families so neither of us really FREAKED OUT at seeing Big Ben or Buckingham Palace. That night, we made a delicious salad and pasta dinner in David's building (ps I miss chopping things. Weird?), and headed home so we could hopefully fall asleep before snoring man. Unfortunately, snoring man was gone and replaced by NEW snoring man, who snored less frequently but with similar intensity. I fell asleep to the dulcet tones of Amos Lee, and dreamt of Whitman in the spring.
Saturday, we went to Notting Hill, to the Portobello St market. Although I had a mission (candlesticks for Mom!), I was cut short by the impressive price tag on all of the good ones. Antiques are expensive, it seems. The market was incredible though, with basically anything old you could ever want. At the end there were some non-antique stores and food stands, and the entire thing was absolutely amazing. I would venture to say it was the best outdoor market I have ever been to. Definitely the best antique one, because I haven't been to many outdoor antique markets. I bought a gorgeous green & black pashmina, but didn't find the ideal chunky candlesticks I had in mind. I did bullshit my way through a discussion of 1870s style candlesticks, though, with a man asking 400 pounds for the candlesticks I was pretending to still be interested in after seeing the price.
From there we went to SoHo, which is DEFINTELY where I would want to live if I were to have billions of pounds. We wandered a little and had curry for lunch (so good), before discussing where exactly all our money had gone. We walked to Carnaby St, which was apparently THE place for mod people in the 60s (can people be mod? I don't really know how to use that), but now is just obscenely crowded and posh. Or yuppie. However you like. At one end though, is the Palladium, where we were enticed by the Sound of Music, and we bought tickets immediately. We asked about prices and availability, said we'd come back, and turned around before even leaving the building and decided we HAD to go. We killed some time pre-show by heading to Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square, where we had a bit of difficulty getting on the very large and slippery lions. Next we had a beer at a bar where Allison could watch the rugby game, and headed to the theatre, where Allison decided she had to see it as well. The Sound of Music just has a magical power like that. The Mother Superior was SO good, and Maria was good as well, but Georg just failed in line delivery and with his extremely nasal singing. It was the only time I have ever disliked Edelweiss. YEAH. Also, the couple next to us and their very chatty toddler had Chinese takeout and were eating it during the show! So inappropriate! It filled the entire area with the undeniable stench of noodles. After the show, we had Cornish pasties in Covent Gardens and took the tube back to West Kensington before it closed.
Another wonderful night... new snoring man - who by the way when we left that morning had been reading the paper in his bed, surrounded by sleeping people, even though there's a huge, nice lounge that was EMPTY - woke up at 4 am and started getting ready to leave, which involved turning the overhead light on and leaving it on, shaving in the room even though there is a bathroom next door, and generally making altogether too much noise. RUDE.
Sunday, we went to the British Museum, where literally the first thing we saw was the Rosetta stone. Everything else (minus Cleopatra's mummy) was kind of a let down after that. It was amazing but so so huge and we didn't have time to see everything I wanted to see, and we never got to go to the National Gallery, which is similarly huge and amazing. So basically I just want to go back to London. Museums are free there too! What is up with charging for museums? It shouldn't happen. Donations, yes. Admission, no.
We had lunch in Covent Gardens, went back to the hostel for our stuff, and headed back into town where I was told by my cab driver that trains weren't running to Stansted airport because of a breakdown! This turned out to be untrue, but certainly didn't help my Pepto Bismol-levels of stress at the time. Then I was kicked out of security for my contact solution because I didn't have a note from my doctor (airports I have declared and carried it through so far: Amsterdam, Milan, Barcelona), and I bought two little bottles which I was informed were not sterile and not appropriate for contact solution, and went back through. I got to my gate in time for final call, and made it back to Barcelona exhausted and shocked at how cold it was (55 degrees!).
My entire host family is extremely sick, and I have only three weeks until finals and only five weeks left in Spain. All of the Christmas decorations are up in the city but they aren't lit yet, so I am feeling very teased with the prospect of the holidays. Also, I went to Flash-Flash today, a bar/tortilleria where Boom writers like Garcia Marquez used to hang out when they were in Barcelona. It was all white and super mod. I think.
I'm at a weird place, because I am feeling not at all ready to leave Barcelona, but I want it to be Christmas RIGHT NOW. Going to London felt like going half-way home, since everyone spoke English and I had access to a lot more American things I can't get here, and it made me miss home, but I'm so happy to be back in Barcelona. Every time I walk to class I just die of happiness from the beauty of the city and the intense fabulousness of my life.
This seemingly random factoid comes to you as a way of introducing my London trip this weekend! On Saturday night, Charlotte and I (on a complete whim) bought tickets to see The Sound of Music in the London Palladium, which I SWEAR is famous somehow. I know it is the first place that the Beatles performed live on TV, but I thought maybe there was more? Anyway, it was magical (except that Captain von Trapp sort of was awful), and completely rekindled my love of all things musical theatre-related.
London!
I left Barcelona on Thursday night, immediately after my Latin Am Lit class. Unfortunately, we went on a field trip to the middle of nowhere, and I only got back to Placa Catalunya in time to catch my bus because I ran ahead of the group on the way home. I also ran across the airport to the check-in gate, where I found that the exceedingly slippery marble floors combined with my exceedingly slick black flats make for a very precarious running situation. And, just like last time I had to run to the airport, my flight was delayed. I sat next to a wonderful woman who is American but has lived in Spain on and off for the last 16 years. She lives with her daughter in a little pueblo on the beach just outside of Barcelona, and works in the city. Her mother, who is still in the states, sends them "love boxes" every month packed with US goodies that they can't get here - so we met when she turned to me and asked if I wanted anything from her giant bag of Halloween candy. Three Snickers, two Mars bars, and one Milky Way later, we were pretty much best friends. I lent her my copy of the Economist (I caved and bought it this past week because it not only had Obama, it also had a special report on Spain), we bonded over how difficult the Catalans are to befriend, and we shared the bond that only two stressed women eating chocolate together can really share.
I got to London about 40 minutes later than expected, and took a train into town from the airport, arriving just minutes after the tube closed. Weird side note: while on the train I was listening to my iPod and it froze at about a minute into "Tiny Dancer." This crushed me. I restarted my iPod, but I was desperate to hear the rest, so I went back to "Tiny Dancer," only to have it freeze again at the exact same moment! So basically I was very depressed because I had a taste of Elton but was DENIED. Anyway, I arrived at Liverpool St, David and Charlotte were there to greet me, and we began the very long and painful experience of finding our hostel. After no less than three buses, at least 40 minutes of waiting for buses, and a good 20 minutes of walking, we arrived at about 2:45 am. Char had already checked us in, and we went to bed - only to be woken again every hour by either someone coming back late or the EPIC snoring man in the bunk across from me.
The next day, David carted us around to all the touristy things, after having a delicious English breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, and tea (oh eggs!). We saw Big Ben & Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, a bunch of parks, St. Paul's cathedral, Millennium bridge, the Globe theatre, London bridge, Harrods (where we had afternoon tea), and then we absolutely died and had to have a nap post-tea. It was all cool, but both Char and I had been to London before with our families so neither of us really FREAKED OUT at seeing Big Ben or Buckingham Palace. That night, we made a delicious salad and pasta dinner in David's building (ps I miss chopping things. Weird?), and headed home so we could hopefully fall asleep before snoring man. Unfortunately, snoring man was gone and replaced by NEW snoring man, who snored less frequently but with similar intensity. I fell asleep to the dulcet tones of Amos Lee, and dreamt of Whitman in the spring.
Saturday, we went to Notting Hill, to the Portobello St market. Although I had a mission (candlesticks for Mom!), I was cut short by the impressive price tag on all of the good ones. Antiques are expensive, it seems. The market was incredible though, with basically anything old you could ever want. At the end there were some non-antique stores and food stands, and the entire thing was absolutely amazing. I would venture to say it was the best outdoor market I have ever been to. Definitely the best antique one, because I haven't been to many outdoor antique markets. I bought a gorgeous green & black pashmina, but didn't find the ideal chunky candlesticks I had in mind. I did bullshit my way through a discussion of 1870s style candlesticks, though, with a man asking 400 pounds for the candlesticks I was pretending to still be interested in after seeing the price.
From there we went to SoHo, which is DEFINTELY where I would want to live if I were to have billions of pounds. We wandered a little and had curry for lunch (so good), before discussing where exactly all our money had gone. We walked to Carnaby St, which was apparently THE place for mod people in the 60s (can people be mod? I don't really know how to use that), but now is just obscenely crowded and posh. Or yuppie. However you like. At one end though, is the Palladium, where we were enticed by the Sound of Music, and we bought tickets immediately. We asked about prices and availability, said we'd come back, and turned around before even leaving the building and decided we HAD to go. We killed some time pre-show by heading to Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square, where we had a bit of difficulty getting on the very large and slippery lions. Next we had a beer at a bar where Allison could watch the rugby game, and headed to the theatre, where Allison decided she had to see it as well. The Sound of Music just has a magical power like that. The Mother Superior was SO good, and Maria was good as well, but Georg just failed in line delivery and with his extremely nasal singing. It was the only time I have ever disliked Edelweiss. YEAH. Also, the couple next to us and their very chatty toddler had Chinese takeout and were eating it during the show! So inappropriate! It filled the entire area with the undeniable stench of noodles. After the show, we had Cornish pasties in Covent Gardens and took the tube back to West Kensington before it closed.
Another wonderful night... new snoring man - who by the way when we left that morning had been reading the paper in his bed, surrounded by sleeping people, even though there's a huge, nice lounge that was EMPTY - woke up at 4 am and started getting ready to leave, which involved turning the overhead light on and leaving it on, shaving in the room even though there is a bathroom next door, and generally making altogether too much noise. RUDE.
Sunday, we went to the British Museum, where literally the first thing we saw was the Rosetta stone. Everything else (minus Cleopatra's mummy) was kind of a let down after that. It was amazing but so so huge and we didn't have time to see everything I wanted to see, and we never got to go to the National Gallery, which is similarly huge and amazing. So basically I just want to go back to London. Museums are free there too! What is up with charging for museums? It shouldn't happen. Donations, yes. Admission, no.
We had lunch in Covent Gardens, went back to the hostel for our stuff, and headed back into town where I was told by my cab driver that trains weren't running to Stansted airport because of a breakdown! This turned out to be untrue, but certainly didn't help my Pepto Bismol-levels of stress at the time. Then I was kicked out of security for my contact solution because I didn't have a note from my doctor (airports I have declared and carried it through so far: Amsterdam, Milan, Barcelona), and I bought two little bottles which I was informed were not sterile and not appropriate for contact solution, and went back through. I got to my gate in time for final call, and made it back to Barcelona exhausted and shocked at how cold it was (55 degrees!).
My entire host family is extremely sick, and I have only three weeks until finals and only five weeks left in Spain. All of the Christmas decorations are up in the city but they aren't lit yet, so I am feeling very teased with the prospect of the holidays. Also, I went to Flash-Flash today, a bar/tortilleria where Boom writers like Garcia Marquez used to hang out when they were in Barcelona. It was all white and super mod. I think.
I'm at a weird place, because I am feeling not at all ready to leave Barcelona, but I want it to be Christmas RIGHT NOW. Going to London felt like going half-way home, since everyone spoke English and I had access to a lot more American things I can't get here, and it made me miss home, but I'm so happy to be back in Barcelona. Every time I walk to class I just die of happiness from the beauty of the city and the intense fabulousness of my life.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Teaching English, the caganer, and CHRISTMAS
So I have now been teaching English to Carlota (age 4) and Tomas (age 5) for two weeks. It is really fun, and I wish we had set it up earlier because I would have loved to do it for much longer. It's really fun, except that I often find that I speak much less Spanish than I think I do, because they start rambling in this odd castellano/castalan mash-up and I just smile and nod. Also, their books are all in British English, so when I read "dummy" for pacifier, I thought to myself, "What a weird word. Please! We all know it's a binky." And then I felt like an idiot. Or when I teach them words like "wastepaper bin" and think I should be teaching them "garbage can." There are other funny ones I can't remember - but dummy v. binky was my favorite. Some were just such weird words I can't even remember them. I'll write them down next time.
Also, playing with toddlers is like playing with a puppy - tone of voice and facial expressions say it all. They don't care what I'm saying or what language I'm saying it in. In fact, they rarely notice at all. The first time I went, all we did was blow up balloons and then let them fly around the room for a full hour. They learned about three words: "Please," "balloon" and "thank you," and those only because I refused to blow up the balloons unless they said please and then thank you, and everytime they let go of the balloon they would yell, "BALLOON!"
This week, Tomas cried for about fifteen minutes when I had to leave. He made such a huge scene and kept demanding "two more minutes! Two more minutes!" I was flattered but also embarrassed because then I left and they had to deal with a screaming monster child.
WARNING: The following may be inappropriate for those who don't like to talk about bowel movements.
Now. I don't know how much y'all (I wish English had a collective "you") know about Christmas in Catalunya, so let me tell you about
my favorite tradition. It's part of the nativity scene, and it's a character that doesn't really appear in the Bible version of Jesus' birth. It's called the caganer - Catalan for "crapper" - and it is a figurine in the nativity of a person pulling down his pants and pooping. It comes complete with a little bit of poop too, in case his stance alone doesn't make it clear. Huge, life-size nativity scenes are apparently traditional (it hasn't made it's appearance yet), and the caganer is apparently a staple in Catalunya (and the Basque Country as well?). Now, the book I read about Barcelona before coming didn't explain this very well, except with the fact that the catalonians are "obsessed" with scatological humor. Wikipedia cites many reasons:
Anyway all this talk of nativity scenes just makes me hungry for CHRISTMAS, which Barcelona is already prepared for (minus the city-wide nativity scene I am told is on its way) - nearly all the streets have lights that say "Bon nadal" and "bones festes" and other things I assume mean "Seasons Greetings." PS How lame is that phrase? Seasons greetings? It's also getting colder - my comforter got upgraded to a big comforter, but it's not really cold enough for this massive mountain of down. So I have to sleep with one leg freezing and the other sweating. I'm sure everyone can relate to this drama. Tonight I'm going to an FC Barca game, which I'm extremely excited about, except for the fact that I have to get up and go to poetry at 9 am tomorrow. AND a bunch of people are already starting their oral exams for my history class, and I am not at ALL prepared for mine yet. It's not for a few weeks, but still.
In better news, my Catalan Thanksgiving dinner, courtesy of the Huerga househould, is only two weeks away - which also means the semester is only three weeks from being over. Not that I want to leave, but I also want home to be here. So... if everyone could just relocate? Thanks.
Also, playing with toddlers is like playing with a puppy - tone of voice and facial expressions say it all. They don't care what I'm saying or what language I'm saying it in. In fact, they rarely notice at all. The first time I went, all we did was blow up balloons and then let them fly around the room for a full hour. They learned about three words: "Please," "balloon" and "thank you," and those only because I refused to blow up the balloons unless they said please and then thank you, and everytime they let go of the balloon they would yell, "BALLOON!"
This week, Tomas cried for about fifteen minutes when I had to leave. He made such a huge scene and kept demanding "two more minutes! Two more minutes!" I was flattered but also embarrassed because then I left and they had to deal with a screaming monster child.
WARNING: The following may be inappropriate for those who don't like to talk about bowel movements.
Now. I don't know how much y'all (I wish English had a collective "you") know about Christmas in Catalunya, so let me tell you about
my favorite tradition. It's part of the nativity scene, and it's a character that doesn't really appear in the Bible version of Jesus' birth. It's called the caganer - Catalan for "crapper" - and it is a figurine in the nativity of a person pulling down his pants and pooping. It comes complete with a little bit of poop too, in case his stance alone doesn't make it clear. Huge, life-size nativity scenes are apparently traditional (it hasn't made it's appearance yet), and the caganer is apparently a staple in Catalunya (and the Basque Country as well?). Now, the book I read about Barcelona before coming didn't explain this very well, except with the fact that the catalonians are "obsessed" with scatological humor. Wikipedia cites many reasons:- Tradition.
- Perceived humor. [Perceived? This shit is hilarious. GET IT? Excuse my language.]
- Finding the Caganer is a fun game, especially for children.
- The Caganer, by creating feces, is fertilizing the Earth. However, this is probably an a posteriori explanation, and few cite this reason for including the Caganer in the Nativity scene.
- The Caganer represents the equality of all people: regardless of status, race, or gender, everyone defecates.
- Increased naturalism of an otherwise archetypal (thus idealised) story, so that it is more believable, taken literally and seriously.
- The idea that God will manifest her/himself when s/he is ready, without regard for whether we human beings are ready or not.
- The caganer reinforces that the infant Jesus is God in human form, with all that being human implies. [Oh HO! Those italics say it ALL]
Anyway all this talk of nativity scenes just makes me hungry for CHRISTMAS, which Barcelona is already prepared for (minus the city-wide nativity scene I am told is on its way) - nearly all the streets have lights that say "Bon nadal" and "bones festes" and other things I assume mean "Seasons Greetings." PS How lame is that phrase? Seasons greetings? It's also getting colder - my comforter got upgraded to a big comforter, but it's not really cold enough for this massive mountain of down. So I have to sleep with one leg freezing and the other sweating. I'm sure everyone can relate to this drama. Tonight I'm going to an FC Barca game, which I'm extremely excited about, except for the fact that I have to get up and go to poetry at 9 am tomorrow. AND a bunch of people are already starting their oral exams for my history class, and I am not at ALL prepared for mine yet. It's not for a few weeks, but still.
In better news, my Catalan Thanksgiving dinner, courtesy of the Huerga househould, is only two weeks away - which also means the semester is only three weeks from being over. Not that I want to leave, but I also want home to be here. So... if everyone could just relocate? Thanks.
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