...and then I woke up in Granada.
(This shall be a very quick post - by my standards - which is mostly because I haven't done much for the past three days.)
So, when you have been awake for 33 hours and traveling for 24 hours, it's a little hard to have the reality of the being in a new country sink in. Somehow the signs in Spanish, the stamp in my passport, and the conversations with the taxi driver and Pensión owner weren't enough. It was, therefore, very surreal to wake up in Spain... I don't know how to describe it. Just plain unreal. And a little disappointing, because I woke up in Granada. The thing about Granada is when I was here for two days in September, I didn't it very much, despite the wonderful company, great food (¡Naturi Albaicín! Chinese menú del día for €5.50), and the Alhambra. I guess I just didn't have room in my heart for Granada...
Alright, so I get here, planning to get to work soon. Only, I find out that it's Corpus Christi - Granada's most important festival, so of course everything is closed. So I spend the first two days watching the World Cup (which was fine), eating tasty food, and reading outside. Sounds great, right? Well, it wasn't. Traveling by oneself = not fun. So I had two miserable days, and then woke up today and everything was better. We'll see how I feel tomorrow...
The view from the hallway of my pensión, looking east. Granada is surrounded by mountains, which means you never know what you'll see when you look down a street.
The pensión's terrace has a view past the Albaicín (old Arab part of the city) to the Alhambra. My dinner tonight is going to be supermarket food on the terrace watching the sun set. How could anyone be miserable with this kind of life? Oh, right. I hate being alone for days at a time.
The first night I was here, I stumbled upon a French band singing romantic classics. I stayed for a few songs, but due to tiredness I retired shortly thereafter. (Actually, it was less tiredness and more depression. But I'm not depressed, I swear. Wow this post sounds pathetic...)
Thursday morning - The Corpus Christi parade. It's like any Andaluz parade - lots of religious symbols and brotherhoods of men who struggle to lift huge religious icons (I fail to understand Spanish Catholicism and how it can move people. It's so mournful...) This parade starts with the Three Kings, and then has groups of people representing the different eras of Granada's history from the founding of the celebration in the 13th century to the present. You can see the funny looking costumes below to represent the past - the present is represented by what I presume where 20 (30? 40? an endless number of?) Spanish families marching with candles and their family shields, and then the icon.
And that, my friends, is what the whole fuss is about. Really not moving for me... The band accompanying it, however, was pretty awesome. Mournful music that filled the air. I don't understand the whole tragic thing, but the music did make it much more emotive.
Clearly some Spaniards are impressed. Like this woman, standing on a balcony where the parade route turns from Gran Vía de Colón to Carcel Baja. Now, at this bend in the road, the route gets much narrower, so everything bottle necks. She clearly new this and came prepared, with FOUR full bags of confetti, which she proceeded to empty, one handful at a time, on the float. This got her an prolonged ovation from the crowd.
Okay, so all of that was cool, but a waste of time and solitary. Friday (today) was when things got better. With the bulk of the official fiesta over, everything reopened. Including the sites I needed to visit. So I went to the Huerta de San Vicente, where I talked to a Swiss girl with a Spanish mother, an American from Indiana who was doing a post-doc in England and didn't speak Spanish very well (I translated for her!), a very interesting Lamanchan (La Manchan?), and, most importantly of all, a tour guide and a recepcionist who gave me very usual material for the thesis. I spent the rest of the day planning when to go where, and now I feel confident that all will turn out well in Granada.
I hadn't been impressed by Granada - my rambles over the past two days had found pockets of beauty surrounded by modern hideous construction. But then I walked west of Recogidas and was surprised by what I found - this view. I stand corrected. It may not be my favorite place in Spain (how could it ever compare with my home in Madrid, Gaudí in Barcelona, the sheer charm of Cuenca, and the Gothic beauty/clubs of Santiago?), but Granada ain't half bad.
So, when you have been awake for 33 hours and traveling for 24 hours, it's a little hard to have the reality of the being in a new country sink in. Somehow the signs in Spanish, the stamp in my passport, and the conversations with the taxi driver and Pensión owner weren't enough. It was, therefore, very surreal to wake up in Spain... I don't know how to describe it. Just plain unreal. And a little disappointing, because I woke up in Granada. The thing about Granada is when I was here for two days in September, I didn't it very much, despite the wonderful company, great food (¡Naturi Albaicín! Chinese menú del día for €5.50), and the Alhambra. I guess I just didn't have room in my heart for Granada...
Alright, so I get here, planning to get to work soon. Only, I find out that it's Corpus Christi - Granada's most important festival, so of course everything is closed. So I spend the first two days watching the World Cup (which was fine), eating tasty food, and reading outside. Sounds great, right? Well, it wasn't. Traveling by oneself = not fun. So I had two miserable days, and then woke up today and everything was better. We'll see how I feel tomorrow...
The view from the hallway of my pensión, looking east. Granada is surrounded by mountains, which means you never know what you'll see when you look down a street.
The pensión's terrace has a view past the Albaicín (old Arab part of the city) to the Alhambra. My dinner tonight is going to be supermarket food on the terrace watching the sun set. How could anyone be miserable with this kind of life? Oh, right. I hate being alone for days at a time.
The first night I was here, I stumbled upon a French band singing romantic classics. I stayed for a few songs, but due to tiredness I retired shortly thereafter. (Actually, it was less tiredness and more depression. But I'm not depressed, I swear. Wow this post sounds pathetic...)
Thursday morning - The Corpus Christi parade. It's like any Andaluz parade - lots of religious symbols and brotherhoods of men who struggle to lift huge religious icons (I fail to understand Spanish Catholicism and how it can move people. It's so mournful...) This parade starts with the Three Kings, and then has groups of people representing the different eras of Granada's history from the founding of the celebration in the 13th century to the present. You can see the funny looking costumes below to represent the past - the present is represented by what I presume where 20 (30? 40? an endless number of?) Spanish families marching with candles and their family shields, and then the icon.
And that, my friends, is what the whole fuss is about. Really not moving for me... The band accompanying it, however, was pretty awesome. Mournful music that filled the air. I don't understand the whole tragic thing, but the music did make it much more emotive.
Clearly some Spaniards are impressed. Like this woman, standing on a balcony where the parade route turns from Gran Vía de Colón to Carcel Baja. Now, at this bend in the road, the route gets much narrower, so everything bottle necks. She clearly new this and came prepared, with FOUR full bags of confetti, which she proceeded to empty, one handful at a time, on the float. This got her an prolonged ovation from the crowd.
Okay, so all of that was cool, but a waste of time and solitary. Friday (today) was when things got better. With the bulk of the official fiesta over, everything reopened. Including the sites I needed to visit. So I went to the Huerta de San Vicente, where I talked to a Swiss girl with a Spanish mother, an American from Indiana who was doing a post-doc in England and didn't speak Spanish very well (I translated for her!), a very interesting Lamanchan (La Manchan?), and, most importantly of all, a tour guide and a recepcionist who gave me very usual material for the thesis. I spent the rest of the day planning when to go where, and now I feel confident that all will turn out well in Granada.
I hadn't been impressed by Granada - my rambles over the past two days had found pockets of beauty surrounded by modern hideous construction. But then I walked west of Recogidas and was surprised by what I found - this view. I stand corrected. It may not be my favorite place in Spain (how could it ever compare with my home in Madrid, Gaudí in Barcelona, the sheer charm of Cuenca, and the Gothic beauty/clubs of Santiago?), but Granada ain't half bad.
posted by Lynn at 12:39 PM
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