LynnTheSin

A por ellos!

2006-07-16T20:57:00.000-04:00

So, as you may or may not have known, the World Cup just ended (one week ago today). As I was in Spain for 95% of it, I was paying attention. While in Granada, I discovered a terrace restaurant that had an outdoor TV and ended up watching games every night when eating dinner (because it was better than eating alone). I watched the first two games that Spain played there, but got to Madrid in time for the third, so Amy, Meg, and I decided to go watch the game with thousands of other Spaniards...

Amy and I started out the day with nachos and a drink at Hard Rock Madrid, because I'd never been and she had a hankering for sour cream (almost impossible to find in Spain). In this picture, Amy poses with the huge drink we split (she paid extra and got to keep the souvenir glass):And I pose with the mountain of jalapeños, which neither of us wanted to eat:
We then crossed the street to Colón, the perfect place to set up a jumbotron, as it is the plaza in Madrid that, year-round, flies an enormous Spanish flag. Anyway, one of the Spanish TV channels, Cuatro, had set up an entertainment center and was showing the games there. We decided to partake in the experience...
... and part of partaking in the experience was making our own drinks. Meg brought beer and lemon soda to make "claras," an excellent summertime beverage. The crowd was young, mostly male, enthusiastic, and getting drunker:
Singing the song of the Spanish team - "A por ellos, o-e / A por ellos, o-e / A por ellos, o-e / A por ellos, e-o-e." ("A por ellos" translates, more or less as, "go at them."At this point, about 11 minutes into the game, Meg, Amy, and I decided we could take no more. So we left the 38 degree (approx. 106) heat and found an airconditioned bar nearby where we drank water and watched the game comfortably. Spain beat Saudi Arabia, 1-0. After three wins, everyone was pumped for the match against France. And then they lost, 1-3. And that was sad... At that point, I decided to root for Germany (the home team) and, to a lesser extent, Portugal, because I like the language and I'm an Iberian Studies major (and Portugal, while ignored by Wesleyan, is Iberian). So by the time the final rolled around, I no longer cared... Well, except that I hated the Italian fans more than the French ones. But in the end, it was fun just to have been in the same time zone as the games, surrounded by people from all different countries, all rooting for different teams. El mundial (the World Cup) is all right in my book.

Let me see you move like you come from Colombia...

2006-07-16T20:26:00.000-04:00

More posts! Aren't you happy?!

So, as mentioned earlier, I saw Shakira live in concert while in Madrid. Amy (Ulloa, of Vassar) told me a while ago that I should get to Madrid in time to go with her, and it just so happened that it worked with my travel schedule, so we went. The concert was amazing. And for that reason, I feel the need to post tons of pictures of Shakira.

The concert was at the Plaza de Toros (the bullfighting ring) at Ventas in Madrid. Amy and I got there at 7 (doors at 8), and then proceeded to get very confused as to which line we were supposed to be in. In the end, all the lines were correct and ours was shorter than the others.Then we got conflicting information as to which seats were "General Admission" so we climbed up to the top of the arena and got the best seats we could on the uncomfortable stone benches, only to figure out that, in fact, we could go down to the sand in front of the stage. So we did.
Amy and I then pulled out a piece of newspaper and sat on it, rather than on the sand where the bulls had died, and waited. The opening act came on at 9:30 and then Shakira at 10:30...
In the immortal words of Wyclef Jean, "I never really knew that she could dance like this / She makes a man want to speak Spanish / Como se llama, bonita, mi casa, su casa / Shakira, Shakira." Amy and I were a mere 15 people or so away from the stage, and while there was some minor pushing, the crowd was well behaved for the most part. (Except for the jerks with their cigarettes!)
Note all the lighting and costume changes in these pictures. This picture is blurry, but you can see the cool backlit screen with awesome designs.And enter Alejandro Sanz!!!! He came and they sang "La Tortura" and Amy and I swooned. In this picture, Shakira is tying up her shirt to show off her mad belly dancing moves.
Check out the flowy dress!
And back to rocking out, with clothes to match:
Her hips don't lie...
The packed Ventas arena cheering for more!And the encore (Ojos Asi). These pictures should give you a sense of the awesome lighting and whatnot employed throughout the show.
Quite possibly the best concert I have ever seen. Ever. Amazing songs, great voice and instrumentation, neat lighting and costume changes, and Alejandro Sanz. What more can you ask for? (Well, Wycleaf would have been cool, but let's not get greedy.)

Oh goodness, I adore Madrid

2006-06-26T16:44:00.000-04:00

I forgot how hard it was to find a cyber café in Madrid with Mozilla, with which I can upload pictures. Oh well, I'll put them online later...

Anyway - I'M IN MADRID!!! It's so unreal. And wonderful. And easy. It's like coming home after having been on vacation. Like my life in the US were just a vacation and this was where I was from. Of course, when I go back to the US, that'll flip, but for now it's nice to feel really at home here.

I got in on Wednesday night. Since then I have:
- had incredible food, and copious drink (though not to the point of drunkeness)
- hung out with Amy a lot, met her flatmates Luis and Lisa
- hung out more with Meg than I did all last semester (más o menos)
- met again/hung out with Emily (Gullick) and her friends
- met all kinds of cool people (Mexican, Brazilian, American) in my hostel, including Eddie (San Diego, Mexican-American) who will be here almost as long as me
- walked. a lot. (i've only used the Metro 8 times since getting here)
- discovered new plazas, neigborhoods, bars, cafés
- seen some amazing renovations
- seen the most amazing art exhibition ever at the Reina Sofía. and there's still more to see in the Prado (the other half of the monumental Picasso exhibit)
- met Mirta, a friend of the family, who chatted with me about my research and showed me around the Senate
- rocked out the microfilm in the Hemeroteca Municipal (local periodical archives)
- made all kinds of other appointments and plans for research
- gone out dancing (at Santiago Bernabéu, where I had never really been before)
- seen two movies
- seen SHAKIRA in concert

That's all I can say for now... More soon. Maybe.

Images of Granada

2006-06-20T13:17:00.000-04:00

So I leave Granada this afternoon, and as I've taken care of everything I had to do while here, I'm spending this last hour or so putting some of my favorite touristy images of Granada online, and then backing everything up to CD.

We start with the Albaicín, the old Arab quarter (so called because it was one of the few neighborhoods not destroyed after Fernando and Isabel took the city on January 1, 1492). It starts at the Plaza Nueva and goes uphill. Steeply uphill.
Walking uphill along the Carrera del Darro:And the "river" beside:
The very pleasant little plaza further uphill, which has an incredible view of the Alhambra on top of the hill on the right in the picture. I took a panoramic video with my camera, if you want to see it...At the top of the Albaicín (well, not the absolute top - that would be the Sacromonte) is the Mirador de San Nicolas. Mirador means looking place, and designates viewpoints. San Nicolas is the church pictured below:
So you walk uphill forever and find the church and turn a corner and then you see the view. This is quite possibly the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Maybe even better than the Parque Güell (see my post last November about Barcelona), and coming from me, that's saying a lot.
A more up close version of the view, from left to right:The Generalife:The Palaces of the Alhambra. Marissa and Ren, remember the Washington Irving rooms and how we looked out at the view? This trip to Granada wasn't the same without you two...
The Alcazaba:And Granada capital:I then descended the hill, and took this picture up toward another church, San Cristobal, to show how steep a climb that really was:
Granada at night... This is the Gran Vía de Colón (Columbus' Grand Way/Avenue), near my pensión.And the Alhambra at night. On some level, the Alhambra at night is a rip off. You pay the same amount as you would during the day, but only can get into 1/4 of the complex, and you only get 90 minutes, instead of 5 or 6 hours. But once you get past your monetary objections, you realize that the Alhambra at night is too amazing to skip. These pictures are pretty awful, due to technical limitations, but they at least give some semblance of how awesome the Alhambra is... (For better pictures, from the day, check out my post from last September.)
I included this one because I have a super cute picture of me and Ren at this edge last September...
The Christian parts of the complex (Carlos' palace and the church):
The view to the Alcazaba from the entrance to the Palacio Nazarí:
And the view to the Albacín and San Nicolas (the white turret on the left of the picture):Inside the Palacio Nazarí:And, finally, my/Marissa's favorite, El Patio de los Leones... I sat here and just started for quite a while.
And now it's off to Madrid. Amy (and our Shakira tickets), Emily (Peggy's sister), Gil and Nico (!!!!!!!), Cine Ideal Yelmo, my favorite tapas places, San Ginés and churros, and all the other wonders of Madrid. But mostly Gil and Nico! (Gil is my Spanish best friend, Nico is his boyfriend, and I miss them both very much.) I can't wait to see them! And they're taking me to Orgullo Gay - my first Pride will be in Spain, with the most fabulous gay men, who are also my favorite dancing and drinking partners.

Lynn's Secular Pilgrimage

2006-06-19T06:09:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, when I was hiking up the carretera (highway) from the center of Alfacar to the Parque García Lorca I realized what I'm doing. I'm not following the Ruta Lorquina (Lorquin Route? The Route of Lorca?), I'm on a secular pilgrimage to get closer to Lorca. Well, actually, to be fair, I'm on a pilgrimage to find out what other people might experience where they to do the same pilgrimage. But that's a very long story...

Federico García Lorca (June 5, 1898-August 18 or 19, 1936) was born in a small town outside Granada. He would become a great poet and playwrite, and would be strongly associated with the Second Republic, the Spanish goverment from April 1931 to July 1936, when it was overthrown by the military rebellion that Franco started. In the early months of the ensuing Civil War, many on both sides were summarily executed without trial for supposed crimes - Lorca was one of those. For his intellectualism, sympathy for the Republic, and more personal concerns (vendettas and the fact that he was gay), Lorca was taken from the home where he was hiding and shot at the ravine in Víznar, on the morning of either the 18th or the 19th of August. He was then buried somewhere along the highway between Víznar and neighboring Alfacar, either at the ravine itself or, more probably, beside an olive tree near Fuente Grande. I could tell you a lot more about Lorca, or you could just read my thesis when (if?) I finish it.

I started with the Huerta de San Vicente (see previous post) and then moved on the Lorca's Birth House in Fuente Vaqueros and then on to the Parque García Lorca at the spot where he is, presumably, buried. Fuente Vaqueros has little to recommend itself, other than Lorca, and that has been capitalized upon by the Ayuntamiento (local govt/town hall). From the center of town to Lorca's home is a long plaza, decorated in homage to Lorca:
The center of the Plaza is decorated with emblems that recall Lorca. The first one is the logo of El Barranca, the student theater group he created and toured with during the Second Republic:
Along the side of the plaza are six boulders with quotations from Lorca. This is the most political of them. It says, "War is something monstruous, criminal; incredible that still, after the bitter swig of [19] 14, there are those who think of it. I think that war is a shame for our civilization."
At the end of the plaza is this statue. The man has Lorca's face and under the waterfall are the words "The people to F. García Lorca."Turning left and crossing the street next to the fountain, one finds the house where Lorca was born.
No pictures are allowed inside the house. But I was able to snap this one of the patio of the house with the guide, coincidentally named Federico.
Then Monday I headed to Alfacar, to see the Parque García Lorca. Despite the fact that no exhumation has been done to determine the exact location of his body (which is another story entirely), this park was opened in 1986 to try to remedy the lack of a focal point for secular pilgrims. I wrote a paper about this park last semester, based on images found online, and was thus very excited to see it, despite having been told not to expect much. I got to Alfacar, and followed the road sign uphill. I hiked for 45 minutes before seeing any signs of life, and was afraid that I was lost. Finally, however, I got to Fuente Grande, bought a bottle of water, and got directions. The highway leads to the back entrance of the park, which was locked, but I walked along the road until I saw the following, which I recognized immediately from the pictures.
I walked up the steps, and noticed that the fountains along the side were turned off. Then I walked in and found that all the fountains in the plaza, which could have been beautiful, were also turned off. There was trash littered everywhere, many of the paths were unclear, and the whole site was falling apart.
See, for example, the broken bench in the dead center of the park......and the crumbling inscriptions. This one says, "If death is death / What will be of the poets and of / The sleeping things that now / No one remembers them?" What indeed, if this park is not taken care of?At the back of the park, a solitary olive tree has a small granite stone next to it. The stone says, "To the Memory of Federico García Lorca and of All the Victims of the Civil War." What poor homage to Lorca...And that, ladies and gentleman, will be turned into one chapter of my thesis.

...and then I woke up in Granada.

2006-06-16T12:39:00.000-04:00

(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.

Retroactive Post About London

2006-06-16T12:27:00.000-04:00

So let's try to make a more coherent narrative than my last post...

Despite major delays leaving Dulles, I got into Heathrow and off the plane only about 10 minutes late. In addition, there was NO line at Border Control, and I just walked straight through the "Nothing to Declare" lane at Customs, so despite the minor delays on the Picadilly line, due to major delays on the District Line, I still made it into Green Park by noon. Now, Green Park is only two stops away from Waterloo, where I was supposed to meet one Emily Popler at 1. So I decided that rather than waste time by sitting in a train station, I would get off at Westminster, and walk to Waterloo, talking the scenic route, walking west from Parliament along the North Bank of the Thames, across the Lambeth Bridge, and then walk back east along the South Bank of the Thames to the London Eye and then to Waterloo. After all, I adore London and it would have been silly to have a layover there and not see the city at all, and, furthermore, walking helps me forget that I should feel jet lagged and exhausted from only having slept two hours on the plane...

So I walked for an hour, and then met Emily. We went to Wagamama and had noodles and chatted about life, and then walked some more - further west along the South Bank. Somewhere between the Blackfriars Bridge and Millenium Bridge we parted ways, as she had to go back to the office and I still had some time to kill and wanted to walk some more. (Can you believe that I don't have a single picture of Emily? What kind of a photographer am I?!)

At this point, I decided to keep walking until about 3, and then cross back to the North Bank, hop on the nearest Tube stop and take the Central Line around to Liverpool Street. So I walked to the Globe Theater, but it was only 2:45. I then saw a sign that said, "London Bridge, 9 minutes" and decided to myself that I would walk to the bridge and cross it and then get back on the tube. What was Lynn's mistake here? The bridge that we all think is the London Bridge is actually called the Tower Bridge - the official London Bridge is a hideous thing a few minutes east of the Tower Bridge. But by the time I realized my mistake, it was too late to remedy it, as I was already most of the way to the Tower Bridge. So I crossed that bridge and got on the Tube at Tower Hill.

Now we get to complication number two - tube delays on the District Line, of course, lead to delays on both the Circle Line and the Hammersmith and City Line, but I hadn't thought that far ahead. So the Circle Line was almost not functioning, and while I could have probably taken the District Line to Aldgate East and then transfered to Hammersmith back to Liverpool Street, that seemed really risky. So, instead, I took the District Back to Monument, ran through the interchange to Bank, and took the Central Line to Liverpool Street, with enough time to buy a ticket for the Stansted Express and buy a sandwich before it left.

I got to Stansted with about 15 minutes before the check-in gate closed, and then made it through security and to my gate about 1 minute before I was supposed to be there for boarding. I was harried, sweaty, and stressed out, but everything was going to be fine. I was going to make it to Granada! Only then the sky opened and sheets of rain poured out. So they waited 30 mins or so to load us on the plane (Ryan Air = not so much with jetways - you have to walk across the runway, and doing that in the rain would have sucked). So then they have us all loaded on the plane and tell us that it will be about 40 minutes before we take off. It ended up being 90 minutes. Now you have to understand that this flight has literally 40 children between a few months and 9 years old. Mostly English brats, but there were a couple of Spanish brats, too. (Remember, I usually adore children.) So what happens when you lock 40 brats in a tiny plane for 90 minutes + 270 minutes (it was a three hour flight)? That's right, you get 4.5 hours of hell. Seriously. I was able to read and sleep through most of it, but that was by far the worst travel experience of my life.

So, at 11:45 PM I arrived in Granada, and wasted money on a taxi, so I could get to my Pensión as soon as possible. And then I went to sleep...

(That was probably way more detail about my travel plans than you needed. But you have to understand, I've never done intercontinental travel with two different airlines and no travel insurance by myself before. So I was a) very stressed out, b) very close to being screwed, and c) very proud of myself for surviving just fine...)

24 Hours Later

2006-06-14T13:00:00.000-04:00

6:30 PM, EST - Lynn leaves her home in Washington, DC for the airport.

10:40 PM, EST - Flight takes off, 40 minutes late.

10:10 AM, GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) - Lynn lands in London. Proceeds to walk around the city, meet Emily Popler for lunch, walk more and then hall ass to get to Stansted on time.

7:30 PM, GMT - Due to torment, flight takes off 90 minutes late.

11:30 PM, CEST (Central European Summer Time) - Plane lands in Granada, Spain. Lynn wastes money on a cab because she's too damn tired to wait for a bus to take her to the Pensión Londrés in central Granada.

You should note two things:
1) With time changes, and such, by the time I made it to my hostel at 12:30 AM, I had been traveling for 24 hours.
2) I am in Spain!!! (maybe that should have gone first) I'm here for four weeks, thanks to a Davenport Grant, doing research for my thesis. I think I want to update this lovely blog again, if I end up having time to do so. We'll see...

So keep yours eyes open, and who knows what you'll learn!

UC3M and UCM

2006-01-20T14:04:00.000-05:00

So, I posted about my classes, but I never mentioned my universities, so I figure now that I'm going back to Wesleyan in two days, this is a great time to mention the schools I attended last semester. The first of the two is the Universidad de Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M). Named after Carlos III, a reforming king, the university was founded in 1989 (that's right - it's younger than me and most other people who are reading this!) and is not actually located in Madrid, but in Getafe, a suburb which is about 20 minutes outside of Madrid (there are campuses in Leganes and Colmenarejo as well - other suburbs of Madrid about equidistant). Unfortunately, this semester the highway out of Madrid to Getafe was under construction, so it always took me at least 50 minutes to get there. It's a small university by Spanish standards - only a couple thousand students - which makes it great for exchange programs from the United States, and they know that. UC3M has an entire department called "Hispanic Studies" - basically Spanish and Spain for foreigners. I steered away from those - because there are no Spaniards in any of those classes - and took some of the mini-courses in the Humanities department. Unfortunately, UC3M specializes in Business, Economics, Government and related things, so I wasn't able to find classes that fit perfectly with my major, but that's another story.

Here are some pictures of the main section of the Getafe campus:
Inside the main cafeteria:
And the Humanities section of campus (three buildings where I had almost all my classes, including the choir):
A bust of Carlos III in the Humanities campus:Inside Buildings 14 and 15 (the buildings all have names, but for the most part no one knows them):
And the puny Christmas tree that the Humanities campus had up for a month or so:

Because I couldn't find the classes I needed for my majors, I slapped together a curriculum using an independent study, mini-classes, and one class taken at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM). I recently learned that the word Complutense refers to the Roman name for a city near Madrid (now called Alcala de Henares), and I have no idea why a university actually located in Madrid would be named after a suburb. When the university was founded in the 1930s (that makes it one of the older Spanish universities, not counting the two super old ones founded in the Middle Ages), it was named the Universidad Central de Madrid (the Central University of Madrid) and though I have no proof, I think the name was changed to distance the university from its past - as a battleground of the civil war and a site of major student uprisings under Franco. The campus is called Ciudad Universitaria (University City) and for good reason - it's huge. There are three different Metro stops that service the campus and numerous buslines, including about 10 designed just to circulate within the university campus. With about 100,000 students, it's immense and you would never meet anyone outside of your speciality, let alone outside your department (Spanish students specialize from the first day of their first year in college, and each department has its own building), so I would never want to go to the Complutense full time, but the history offerings were exemplary, so it worked out well for me. The campus is actually pretty close to where I lived, but walking to the school from the Metro took 20 minutes, and going by bus only shortened that slightly, so it still took me 35 minutes to get from my house to my classroom.

This 12 story building is the School of Geography and History (la Facultad de Geografia y Historia):One of the many buses on the highway that runs through campus:
And an expanse of forest between my department and the rest of campus (of course I had to go to one of the schools furthest from the Metro). If you see pictures of the battles fought in Ciudad Universitaria during the Spanish Civil War, they all look similar to this...

Vienna and Berlin: A Study in Contrasts

2006-01-15T12:18:00.000-05:00

Okay, so Vienna certainly has new zones and Berlin certainly has old buildings, but what you really notice from these photos is the contrast between the stately classicalness of Vienna and the modern/daringness of much of Berlin's architecture.

For example, the center of Vienna features statues of Marie Therese... ...Mozart...
...and Johann Strauss. One of the more "modern" buildings is the Vienna Secession, designed by the artists breaking away from the Vienna School of Fine Arts at the turn of the 20th century. One of the most famous secession artists was Gustav Klimt.
The Karlskirche (based on Trajan's Columns in Rome) and the Christmas Market in front:
A small and poorly explained monument to the victims of the Holocaust in central Vienna. The first photo is of a statue designed to represent a victim scrubbing the floor:
And this one shows stones actually taken from a concentration camp in Austria:
Inside the Vienna Staatsopera:The state treasury had both secular and religious treasures. These are some of the secular treasures - in this case keys that belonged to the monarch's stewards and chaplains:
And the largest cut emerald ever known:Including in the religious treasures is this awesome feather art from Mexico, which uses feathers from birds to make pictures of religious figures which then shine in different lights. Ooo shiny.
They also have one of the nails that nailed Jesus to the cross. (I make no comment, I just repeat what they tell me.)
Inside the Stephensdom:And outside:
Outside the Kuntshauswien:
The mission statement of the Kuntshauswien (worth reading - and if you click on the picture you should get a more readable version):
Now, in Berlin, a seemingly normal street, except for the marker of where the wall used to stand:Along Unter der Linden, the state library:The main building of the Humbolt University:
And the Monument to the Victims of War and Tyranny:
The Museum Island with the Christmas Market/carnival and the Berliner Dome in the background:
The Karl Friedrich Schinkel Museum, which is not a museum to Schinkel (a German architect who made a huge impact on Berlin) at all but rather a museum of sculpture inside a building built by Schinkel:Yet another Christmas Market, this one with a skating rink right nearby:
The skating rink had a warming pavilion with penguin decor:On a more serious note, the same plaza that houses the skating rink was the site where Hitler and related parties burned books. The monument pictured below is below the plaza and shows empty bookcases, an excellent way to mark the events that once took place there.Outside the Berlin Philharmonic...
... and inside.
The super cool international clock, which rotates and tells you the hour in major cities all around the world:I forget names of churches, but this one is the oldest in Berlin with the communications tower obscured by mist in the background:Inside they were reconstructing a mosaic with the help of visitors:
You could pay to buy some mosaic tiles and then fill them in on the plastic sheet, which was labeled like a color by number drawing, only it's a religious mosaic in the oldest church in Berlin:
And this is the church from which the Reformation was proclaimed in Berlin:
A statue to Marx and Engels in what used to be East Berlin:
A statue to George slaying the dragon:The old state palace for the East German leaders, now an asbestos hazard and closed:
The Old Museum, housing the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman collections. It has a neon sign outside which says, "All Art Has Been Contemporary."
The carnival at night seen from the steps of the Old Museum:Unter der Linden lit at night:The super cool and super tasty Indian restaurant:Chris shows his inability to handle candles:
Chris, Erica, and Robert:Erica and me:
The Holocaust Memorial is the first state funded Holocaust Memorial in the world. I'm not entirely sure I understand the symbolism, other than that it's supposed to be disconserting and confusing.
Mount Fuji. I mean, the Sony Center:
A memorial to the Soviet liberators. The tanks are supposedly the first ones to have entered the city when the Soviets took Berlin at the end of World War II:
Forgetting the name of this church, but it's an iconic image in Berlin. Bombed out during the war, a decision was made not to restore it to remember the destruction wrought upon Berlin.
Inside the Memorial to the Resistance, which works very well with colors and lights and pictures to convey their point:
Erica, Beth, and I inside the treehouse:
A close up of the memorial to those Germans who fought in the Spanish Civil War (as you can guess it's in what used to be East Berlin)...
...and around the corner a monument to the revolution of 1848:
The Fern something or other communications tower (can you tell that I've been too many places where I don't understand the language and have given up on learning the names?):
At the East Side Gallery, Beth and me:
Perhaps the most famous grafitti on the wall, it's a cartoon version of the famous kiss between the leaders on both sides after the wall came down:And this one is a reproduction of the super famous photo of the American soldier leaping over the barbed wire border:Chris, Christine, and Beth take down the wall, like the children depicted here:
I saw this one and thought of Katherine, for obvious reasons:
And finally, my personal favorite of the super artsy drawings:Beth rides the Ferris Wheel:
The Berliner Dom from above......the Old Gallery from above with the others museums on Museum Island behind...
...and Unter der Linden extending toward the Brandenburg Gate:

In which Lynn has to listen to German for an entire week and comes to miss Spanish and being able to understand the people around her

2006-01-14T23:18:00.000-05:00

So I am writing this more than a month after my central European experience, and I hope that means that I haven’t forgotten much… We’ll see. I can already tell that this will be a much less detailed entry than the others have been, but then I tend to write too much, so that’s probably a good thing. I’ve just been so busy with finals and my independent study paper that I haven’t had time to write this, much less upload it to my blog, but by the time you read this, I will have finished my paper and turned it in and be focused more on packing up and going home than on doing work. Which makes this the perfect time to update my blog.

Due to the wonders of the calendar, I had a week in December with no class. Tuesday, December 6^th was the Day of the Immaculate Conception – a holiday in Spain – and Thursday, December 8^th was the Day of the Constitution – the 27^th anniversary of the plebiscite that approved the current Spanish Constitution. Since Tuesday was a holiday, Monday was puente – a bridge day where no one works or studies de facto. I have only one class on Wednesday – my history class – and it’s taught by a teacher who understands students, so she doesn’t even bother pretending to offer class on a day between two holidays. And then choir that Friday got cancelled, so I had an entire week free, and I decided to use it to visit Stef Fisher in Vienna and Beth Herz (and Erica and Chris too, of course; they’re friends of Beth’s who I met when the three of them came to Madrid for a week and I showed them around) in Berlin. Of course, for anyone who loves history and art like me, a week was not enough to fully appreciate both cities, but it was certainly better than nothing.

Visit Number One: Vienna
A note of explanation: Josh Raisher and I went to high school together and were very good friends. Jill Hanson and Stef Fisher went to high school together and were very good friends. Jill and I go (I guess I should say went) to college together and are siblings, and Josh and Stef go to college together and will even be rooming together next semester. So, as you can guess, Stef and I have met each other many times, but never hung out. And then at the beginning of the semester we were talking online and I found out that she was in Vienna and she offered me a couch to crash on, so I decided to head to Vienna because a couch to crash on beats warm weather any day.

I got to Vienna Saturday night and Stef picked me up to avoid me from having to take the extremely overpriced tourist train from the airport to the city – the toolmobile. We hung out talking with her roommate until way too late, but I still woke up bright and early the next morning to hit the museums. So on Sunday I made it to the Art History Museum (the Kuntshistorische, a word I still can’t pronounce despite having been told at least 10 times how to pronounce it) and the Leopold Museum – which has the mid to late 19^th and early 20^th century art and at the time had a traveling exhibition from the Musee d’Orsay in Paris – which was great because I got to see all the things I didn’t get to see when I was in Paris. I spent the rest of the daylight hours wandering around and ending up at the Karlskirche, a gorgeous church with columns designed to look like Trajan’s Columns in Rome, where I found the first of Christmas markets. Set up all around Vienna (and Berlin too, as it turns out) during the month of December are little markets of crafts and art and jewelry and most importantly hot food and drinks. After a lovely day of getting a sense of the city, I met Stef and six of her friends to wait in line for standing room tickets to see the Nutcracker at the Staatsopera – the State Opera. So I waited for about an hour, paid €3,50, and then ran through the building to be able to get a good place in the section. After marking said place with my scarf so no one would steal my place, we went to get dinner and then came back. It was an amazing production of the Nutcracker – a modern reinterpretation in which good doesn’t triumph over evil until the last second. I can’t say that I preferred it to the choreography and sets I’m so used to, but it was amazing. And the Nutcracker has amazing music. A good first day…

Day two I spent doing more of the same – I went to museums, a church, and walked around, in this case I saw the Albertina – a museum which I really enjoyed at the time but I honestly don’t remember everything I saw there; it’s a small gallery with a little of everything – the Imperial Treasury, which was way too expensive, but nonetheless worth seeing, Stephansdom – Vienna’s iconic church – and the Kuntshauswien, which was the highlight of the day. The Kuntshauswien (or is that Kunst Haus Wien?) translates as the Vienna Art House and is the creation of Friedensriech Hunderwasser, an Austrian environmental artist and activist who died in 2000. It was an awesome museum, made from a house that Hunderwasser designed. All his architectural work is designed to be beautiful and good for the environment and his paintings are awesome. He designed a nursery school built into a hill so that the roof is covered in grass and can also be used as a play space, he redesigned a local incinerator to make it more attractive for the community and new flags for Australia and New Zealand to incorporate native signs into British dominated flags. Plus, his paintings are awesome. All in all, it’s a brilliant museum. After that I wandered around the Ringstrasse – the amazing boulevard that circles central Vienna and checked out the Rauthaus – the town hall which was decorated to be a huge advent calendar and had a great Christmas market in front. Dinner and hanging out capped off my last day in Vienna.

Visit Number Two: Berlin
Day three was spent waking up very, very early to take a plane from Vienna to Berlin. When I got there, I met Beth (a friend from Wesleyan; we lived in the same dorm freshman year) for coffee, she stowed my suitcase in her classroom and took some class, and I went for a walk. Along the way I took a wrong turn and found the row of cobblestones marking where the Berlin Wall used to stand, which was the first of many such things that I found so awesome about Berlin. As a European history major whose first college history class, and for that matter first European history class, was a FYI (First Year Initiative; Wesleyan’s only freshman only classes) on modern Germany, I was so excited to finally see the physical marks of all the things I’d heard so much about – the wall, the Brandenburg Gate, Karl Liebknecht Strasse, Rosa Luxemburg Platz, etc. After wandering a bit, I was hungry, so I took Beth’s advice and stopped in the Friedrichstrasse train station to have some yummy, yummy Asian food. Berlin certainly wins in the Asian food department – it’s super tasty, and, unlike in Madrid, not super expensive. I was very proud of myself because, with the help of my handy dandy European phrasebook I was able to order number 26 – “Secks-und-tzhansick, danke” (that’s not actually how it’s spelled, but you get the idea).

From there I went to one of the major centers of Berlin (the whole East and West thing makes for a number of centers) – Unter der Linden (Under the Lime Trees, the main boulevard in what was East Berlin that stretches East of the Brandenburg Gate). I checked out the amazing architecture and popped into the history museum. Unfortunately it was currently under renovation, but it had some neat temporary exhibits about immigration, of which at least some was translated into English, in a pavilion designed by IM Pei, who is the man (also the designer of the East Wing in DC, among other things). After some more wandering, including some in the Berlin Christmas markets – just like the ones I had left behind in Berlin – I met up with Beth. We took my suitcase back to her host family’s house, where I got a bed to sleep in (they have two empty bedrooms because their two children are grown up). My first day in Berlin was capped off excellently by a trip to the Berlin Philharmonic. Beth’s program was going there and she had managed to get me a ticket. It wasn’t the full orchestra – it was an orchestra with 17^th century instruments perfect for playing Mozart and Handel – and the soprano soloist was not my favorite (I would have preferred just instrumental music, no singers), but it was excellent. The building is super modern and cool, the conductor is quite something to watch, and it’s the Berlin Philharmonic!!! While there I met Lyra – the other Wesleyan girl on Beth’s program, someone who I recognized but had never met before. It was surreal, meeting someone I go to college with, and have friends in common with, at the Berlin Philharmonic. After that we walked through the Sony Center, a shopping center designed to look like Mount Fuji. No, seriously, I thought Chris was lying, but it really does look like Mount Fuji, though you can't tell as well from inside as you can from far away.

Day four was spent with a lot more sightseeing, churches and monuments and museums. I went to the church from which the Reformation was declared in Berlin, and another one which was the oldest church in Berlin, and then I went to the Museum Island. Berlin has an amazing deal where you can get a three day museum pass to almost all the museums in the city, with a 50% discount for students, so I got into all the Berlin museums I wanted to go to for €7,50, and I sure got my money’s worth. I went to the Old Museum (Egyptian, Greek, and Roman) and the Old National Gallery (which doesn’t have the oldest art; it goes from about 1820 to 1920, a great epoch for art), and then to the Berlin wing of the Guggenheim museums – the Berlin one is just a one room gallery, which happened to be showing something that I wasn’t that interested in, but what do I care? It was already included in the pass I’d bought. After that I met Beth and her friends Erica, Chris, and Robert. Then we went out for Indian in an awesome restaurant that was just a luxurious, heated tent which was followed by a trip to a German bar to hear a local band that one of their German friends plays in. It was a great show and all their songs are in English, so I appreciated that.

Day five was started in the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and then taking the bus west into the former Federal Republic of Germany. I saw the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, and the new Holocaust Memorial up close and then went to Helmut Newton’s photography museum, which was so different from everything else I’d been seeing, so I really enjoyed it. I checked out some more sites and then went to two more art museums – in retrospect maybe not the best use of my time because after three days straight of art museums I was honestly not able to take any more in, but I love art museums and don’t know when the next time I’ll be in Berlin is. What I did do that was different and totally worth it was the Museum to the Resistance, a small museum in a documentation center devoted to the German resistance to the Nazis, in all its facets. The museum is housed in the building where the almost successful assassination attempt against Hitler was planned, and in the courtyard of the same building the plotters were executed the day after the attempt. There was a free audio guide in English, but unfortunately a lot of the information wasn’t included in the audio tour, and I really wished I understood enough German to read the displays. After that I met Beth for dinner and then we met up with Erica, Chris, and Chris’ friend Christine who was visiting from Prague for the weekend. We went and hung out in a tree house – a small bar set up by friends of theirs who are squatting in an abandoned building. Apparently squatting while technically illegal is very common in certain neighborhoods and not something that bothers the neighbors. I met Stephen, the friend who had played in the band the night before, and he turns out to be an American Studies major who is dating an American and speaks very good English.

After so many days of waking up early to be touristy and staying up late to hang out with the friends I had been traveling to visit, I couldn’t handle it anymore and couldn’t wake up early. This meant that I had very little time on my last day in Berlin and wasn’t to do all of the things I had wanted to do, but I still made it to the most important thing – the memorial to the Germans who fought in the Spanish Civil War, which was around the corner from a memorial to the Revolution of 1848. Not only did I see two monuments to historical events that interest me very much, I also got a chance to wander through an otherwise uneventful East German neighborhood. Then I met up with Beth, Chris, and Christine and we went to the East Side Gallery – the longest stretch of the wall that is still remaining, which is decorated with some very well known images. After that we went to the Museum Island Christmas market, had hot chocolate and yummy food from street vendors, and rode the Ferris wheel – getting an excellent view of Berlin in the process. It was a great way to end my six days of tourism, and I enjoyed both Vienna and Berlin so much. Before I started traveling, I had this attitude that I never wanted to go back to the same place twice, to enable me to experience more, but after having gotten a taste of Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and many parts of Spain, I just want more. But I still have no interest in learning German…

Updated Country Count for my semester abroad: 7 (Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar, Morocco, France, Austria, Germany)
International capitals I’ve been in the past year: 7 (Washington, Jerusalem, London, Madrid, Paris, Vienna, Berlin)
And there it will stay for at least the next six months…

Te dejo Madrid...

2006-01-13T09:42:00.000-05:00

It's official. I'm finished. Well, actually, I'm not finished, as when I showed up to take my last final today, another professor told me that my professor hadn't recovered from her surgery and could I take the final next week. So I said no and that I would have to take it by fax from the US. But that's fine because I have more time to study, when I'm not sick and unable to sleep as I was for half of this week.

Today I'm meeting to find out what my tutor thought of my independent study paper, then going to choir, having one last drink with Rubén, and then going to see Sud Express at 1 am - it's a movie I've been wanting to see, and it just came out today, so there is no way I'm missing it. Then tomorrow I wake up early, put the last little bits and pieces in my suitcase, have breakfast with Katie, say goodbye to my Madre, and leave for the airport. In less than 24 hours I will be over the Atlantic Ocean going home to the left side. (It's not the right side, and I can't decide if it's the correct side, so let's just say it's the left side.)

If you're in DC, I want to see you, so get in touch with me, but I'm already busy Sunday, Monday, and Friday, and then I leave for Philly, and then for Middletown. Speaking of which, ResLife finally confirmed my housing assignment, and Nat and I are officially roommates! Yay!

So excited to go back to everything I've been missing, but so sad to leave a whole new set of things to miss.

[The title comes from an awesome Shakira song that makes me smile - it translates as "I'm leaving you, Madrid."
Ay me voy otra vez
Ay te dejo Madrid
Tus rutinas de piel
Y tus ganas de huir
Yo no quiero cobardes
Que me hagan sufrir
Mejor le digo adios
A tu boca de anis...]

Breaking News

2006-01-11T06:40:00.000-05:00

Well, it just so happens that I was going to update today, but let's just say that I'm updating because poor Pegret is lonely in London and wants news. I have finally written the post on Berlin and Vienna and picked out some great photos, and I went to my favorite internet cafe yesterday, intending to study from 12-4 and then when the internet turned on at 4.30 I was going to go online, update my blog, and then go back to studying. Of course, the one day in the past three weeks that I've put aside time to go to Faborit (the cafe) is the one day that their wireless suddenly stops working. And I am super busy today, tomorrow, and Friday and then I leave on Saturday, so you can expect a lot of retroactive posts from the United States - one about Berlin and Vienna, one about my universities, one about cultural stuff, one about the farewell banquet, and finally one about my parents visiting.

In the meantime, I thought you might like to now the exciting news about Spain - it's now smoke free! Well, not entirely, but as of January 1st, it is now illegal to smoke in public places - work, stores, theaters, dance clubs, concert halls, airports, in the hallways between classes - and large restuarants have to designate a seperate smoking and nonsmoking section, and this time we aren't just talking about a line on the floor - they even have to have seperate ventilation. Small restaurants and bars can decide to be smoking or non (and, of course, 90% have chosen to be smoking), but they have to advertise very clearly which they are. It's amazing not to have to walk through a cloud of smoke enterting the classroom three mornings a week, and I can't wait to be in the airport and not have the "smoking zones" which are just little rectangular boxes marked by tape on the floors - they don't even have walls. I wish I had had more time to appreciate the new smoke free Spain, but it is a little weird. What is Spain without people killing themself by smoking? (The majority of Spaniards don't smoke, but those who do, do it all the way... The average age that people start smoking is 12. And if that's the average, just imagine how young some people are when they start...)

So, I'm coming home on Saturday, and between now and then I have to finish studying for a test, then take the test, have my last meeting with my independent study professor and review my 27 page paper, go to the opera, do all kinds of paperwork, go to a museum or two I've been wanting to go to (not the Prado or anything like that - I've already done the big ones), pack, say goodbye to everyone, go to my last choir rehearsal, and try and see a movie that's debuting on Friday that I've been wanting to see. I doubt I'll make it, but I am going to try...

See many of you very soon - either in DC the 15th, in Phila the 21st, or in Middletown the 22nd. (Or, if you're Jess, Rosie, or Jim, I'll see you at spring break!)

I wish I could be in two places at once...

Feliz Navidad

2005-12-25T17:12:00.000-05:00

So, I can't believe that I forgot in my last post to mention La Loteria. Every December 22nd Spain has a huge lottery drawing. Lottery numbers are 5 digits long and then have 20 subdivisions. So, for example, the big winning number (el gordo - literally the fat) this year was 20085, but there wasn't only one ticket which said 20085. Anyway, everyone buys tickets and then splits them with friends. My madre and her friends, for example, each buy about 20 decimos (literally tenths, the name for each ticket) and then trade, so that if any of the numbers they've bought win, they all win. A series - all the decimos with the same 5 digit code - is sold in one specific geographical region, so that the gordo winners all bought their decimos in the same bar in Barcelona. The drawing starts around 8 am on the 22nd, with two large tanks with balls in them. Out of one comes one of the five digits codes and out of the other comes the amount of money that corresponds to that number and then two sort of adorable but really just annoying children in matching Catholic school uniforms walk around chanting, for example, "Doscientos ochenta y ciiiinco" "Tres milliones de eeeeuuuroos" (200085, €3.000.000). Actually, it sounds kind of like they're chanting Torah. I was sort of tempted to buy a decimo for the experience, but didn't have enough cash on me at the time and I don't really like gambling of any kind, so there you go. Anyway, the news all day Tuesday was happy Catalans running out spraying eachother with champagne.

Speaking of the Torah, synagogue was interesting. I'm glad I went, but I can't say I enjoyed it. The temple was practically empty, and while the men passed the service around, with different people chanting each part in no fixed order rather than having a rabbi lead the whole service, the women were seperated in the balcony upstairs (something which I have no problem with) dispassionately observing the service (something I didn't like). When I went to service with my cousins in Jerusalem, the service was passionate and the women were seperated from the men by a curtain, but they certainly were involved in the service. At Wesleyan, we have no such distinctions and the room is usually mostly full, and even if there are empty chairs, we fill the room with songs and dancing and sometimes even musical accompaniment. I miss passionate Judaism, because that's the religion I fell in love with, not an empty room with old men who are only getting older.

Last night was Christmas Eve, and that's the big deal in Madrid, so I went with Angelines (my madre) to her sister's apartment around the corner where the five of us (my madre's sister is married with a daughter a few years older than me) had a very fancy dinner - crab salad, chorizo and ham, rabbit, lamb, and arugala and pomegranate salad followed by turrón (nougat - the most delicious dessert in every flavor available), the traditional Christmas dessert. Turrón isn't quite the same as Eleanor and Eileen's cookies, but I enjoyed it. Of course, the TV didn't turn off even for Christmas dinner - we watched the King's Christmas message to Spain, the Simpsons, and a special that was more or less Kids Do the Dardnest Things in Spanish. It was very different from the Christmas dinners I'm used to, but TV is great practice for my Spanish and makes potentially awkward situations much less awkward.

I've seen 4 movies this weekend - all my friends are gone, I can't work on my paper all the time, and with the holidays the movie theaters are about the only things open, not to mention that there are so many movies I want to see. I'll write more about the movies I've seen later, but if you're looking for an incredible movie, go see Go and Live (Leave and Live? I don't know what it's called in English). It's a French movie about an Ethiopian boy who poses as Jewish to escape Ethiopia in the 80s and it follows him and his life for the next 15 years or so. It's really incredible, but, as you can probably guess, a tough movie. Recently I've realized the powers of movies - it is after all what I'm writing this independent study paper about - and I want to share some of the more powerful movies I've seen.

I'm going home to do some work before I become busy again with my parents arriving. Merry Christmas to those of you who it applies to, Happy (almost) Chanukah and Kwanzaa to some of you, and general non-denominational Seasons Greetings to the rest. Or as they say here, Felices Fiestas (Happy Holidays and Happy Partying).

Holidays in Madrid

2005-12-23T11:30:00.000-05:00

In addition to Christmas lights, signs of the season are everywhere. Last Tuesday I met with Mike (Donnelly) for falafel in Sol and it just so happened that by the time he got back into Madrid from the airport (he went to Rome for three days; I'm so jealous) it was almost midnight. There was a huge crowd of people (about 100) gathered in Sol, and Mike asked me what I thought was going on. Since Sol is the place where the major New Year's festivities take place, I said that it looked like they were practicing for New Year's Eve, since they had grapes and champagne and were looking at the clock on the government building in Sol. He said that that was what he thought, too, so we decided to wait the 3 minutes until midnight to see if our suspicions were correct. They were. At 10 seconds to midnight the crowd starting counting down and then at the stroke of midnight the entire crowd got quiet as they stuffed grapes into their mouths, one for each of the twelve strokes of the clock. Then some rowdy guys started spraying champagne and everyone dispered. Mike and I were infinitely amused and unable to believe what we had just seen.

Last night was my choir's Christmas concert. We sang villancicos (Christmas carols) in English and Spanish, accompanied by the orchestra, and we all wore Santa hats and reindeer horns and tinsel and other such festive things. It was a lot of fun, and amusing for me - "We wich tyou ah meerri chrismahs, we wich tyou ah meerri chrismahs, we wich tyou ah meerri chrismahs, an ah happi nyew yeer." I will really miss my choir next semester, they're such a wonderful group of people, and I wish I had even more time to get more integrated into the group.

I promise a post on Vienna and Berlin (which were both amazing) soon. I'm just really busy with my independent study and trying to go to all the movies and theater I want to do and everything else that I'm running out of time to do.

Tonight, is going to be a Jewish night - synagogue for the first time now that I don't have chorus on Friday night. Then I'm off to see Go and Live, a movie about the Jewish evacuation from Ethiopia, which I really want to see.

I can't believe it's Christmas. The days are too warm and there's certainly no snow, and the decorations, while around, just aren't the same as the incredible lights displays of Northeast Philly, for example. But Mom, Dad, Sam, and Bruno are coming on Monday, so that's something to look forward to, and I will be home in less than a month.

Lynn is running out of time...

In which Madrid is beautiful

2005-12-13T12:05:00.000-05:00

Check out these street decs! Below is the Paseo de Recoletos, one part of the main north-south drag in Madrid, with it's crazy curly lights which go on for at least a mile:
The main part of the display is on Calle Alcala with the word "peace" in every language imaginable. My girls, Katie and Marissa, in front of the post office. The Plaza de Cibeles is right here and they've just replanted the fountains with poinsettias to get in the holiday spirit.Streets in Salamanca:

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

2005-12-11T08:16:00.000-05:00

So the night we got back from Cuenca we drove back into Madrid and noticed the lights and got excited. We had been waiting for them to light up the city for weeks, and, like any civilized place, the Christmas displays started when we had finished observing Thanksgiving. No one does Christmas like a Catholic country, and I'm really enjoying the state funded lights displays and concerts in the street of Christmas songs with Spanish lyrics. Just walking down the streets makes us want to break into song, which we have actually done in some cases. More pictures soon, once I'm not locked out of my apartment. And if you think that Madrid is awesome in December, just wait until I do a post about Berlin and Vienna...

A Christmas choir in Colon (the plaza dedicated to Columbus):
And the tree there:
Sol with its tree and the Town Hall behind - this is where the New Year's Eve celebrations happen.
The Calle Mayor (Main Street):
One of the 10 Corte Ingles stores in Sol:
Me with the Oso in Sol:
Cortylandia is the best Christmas display ever. 'Nough said. No, seriously, I don't know if you can tell from this picture, but Cortylandia is the most amazing thing ever. It's an underwater nativity scene on the side of a Corte Ingles store, complete with Baby Jesus in a manger and all the other traditional figures, but surrounded by mermaids and smiling starfish, and a lobster that looks suspiciously like Sebastian from The Little Mermaid. I was talking about its absurdness and how much it amused me to a bunch of Spaniards when they all started laughing and talking about how much they've loved Cortylandia since they were kids and then they started singing the Cortylandia theme song and I was terrifyed. At least Carlos was on my side. He, too, thinks Cortylandia is absurd...
I did my tour of Christmas lights with Marissa and her boyfriend, Kevin, who was visiting from the US. This is them in the Plaza de Jacinto Benavente with the super realistic statue of a street cleaner. The first dozen times I went through there, I could have sworn it was a real man, until I got up closer. We also took Kevin to our favorite piano bar - imagine a Spanish guy singing Sinatra and accompanying himself and really good Sangria, and you have the idea.
The bar, which is called Las cuevas de Sasamo (Sesame's Caves), has great artwork on the walls and quotes all over. Some of my favorites include one from Quevedo, the guy for whom my Metro stop was named, which says, "They may be ashes, but they will have feeling / Dust they may be, but dust in love." They also have up the quote from Proust, which says something to the effect of, "There is no paradise like that which you have lost" and much less profound sayings, too. The one above my head and to the right says, "Wake up and drink. You have centuries to sleep."

Thanksgiving in Cuenca

2005-12-11T06:41:00.000-05:00

So Thanksgiving Thursday was a normal day for us, with classes and work and such things, and Black Friday passed with only rumors of the insanity in the US. (The Spanish news covered some of the more absurd shopping tragedies. My madre did not understand.) But we had our last group excursion on Saturday to Cuenca, an adorable small town about two hours outside of Cuenca which has nothing interesting except an unfinished cathedral and a great contemporary art museum, plus some incredible scenery. To celebrate not-Thanksgiving, the program took us out for an incredible lunch, which was Spanish style and at 4 and huge, and thus sort of like a Spanish version of an American tradition, complete with our "family" here. All I'm saying is that I expect peppers stuffed with lobster and incredible chicken salad and champagne and sorbet between courses next year at my grandmother's house. (No, that's a lie - I would much rather have turkey, brisket, Mama Sandbergs and two other kinds of cranberries, yummy veggies and Karen's cakes...)

The view of the road we took to enter the town:Marissa and I with Cuenca behind. Note how the city is built on a cliff between two rivers.It was the coldest day yet in Spain and the program bought us cafe con leche. Katie and Jenine enjoy theirs...
... as does Vaughn.The walk through the gates...
... and into town:Me with the awesome Catedral behind. The open spaces are because they ran out of money; I just thought they were artistic touches until my madre told me otherwise.
Chilling on the steps of the Catedral, Vaughn, Lev, and Jenine:
The contemporary art museum had art that was almost as cool as the building...
... and great views of the city behind...
... which Pepe, Mike ...
... and Brenden appreciate in their own ways.
There was an incredible special exhibition of Lichenstein, including this super cool Tintin print:They also showcased a bunch of sketches and process designs which show how Lichtenstein gets from sketches...
... to color drawings...... to the finished works:This one really excited me, because it's a drawing of my favorite sculpture in the garden in DC on the mall:
And the Oval Office of course:Outside the museum...
... we found swings.The view of the town from closer up:
We had lunch down in that valley:
Marissa with some gorgeous old houses:The building that houses the museum is one of the many built on the edge of the cliff:
The view of the cliff from the bridge we had to cross. Have I ever mentioned that I don't like bridges? Well, I don't. Especially when they're wooden and icy.
The river valley where we ate:Entering the restaurant:
Table One, where I sat. To the left are Jaime (James Lipton, Program Director), Cuchi (Maria Cruz is shortened as Cuchi, the program assistant), Meg, Vaughn, and Marissa. To the right are Pilar (Jaime's "partner"), our bus driver (whose name I should know but never learned), Lev, my empty chair, and Mike:
Table Two, clockwise from the left foreground, featured Amelia, Rosanna, Annie, Katelyn, Callie, Jessie, Laura, and Brenden:
And finally, Table Three, again clockwise from the left foreground, Pepy, Janine, Karen, Rae, Kevi, Leslie, Naomi, Jocelyn, and Katie: Meg and Vaughn are, as usual, adorable:
Lev and I unintentionally recreate a photo from the Cena de Despidida in Santiago (scroll down to September and you'll see):And, last but certainly not least, Mike and I toast our palate clearing champange and sorbet, enjoying yet another amazing meal on the program:

Classes Ruin College

2005-12-01T07:54:00.000-05:00

No, that's a lie. I love school and class and learning, and in between traveling, and cultural life, and hanging out with friends, I have actually been having a great time learning cool things about 20th century Spain, that being the focus of my classes here.

So, as you may know, I love shopping for classes and planning my schedule. I mean, despite being in Spain and very busy, I even have a plan for Spring 2006. In fact, one of my first Wesleyan friends, Peggy (or rather, I should say Margaret, since this predates her being pegged with that nickname) Gullick and I bonded in the fall of our freshman year over our love for WesMaps. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that I had a plan for classes coming into Spain. However, when I got here and started trying to work the classes I wanted into a schedule, I couldn't and I decided that I needed to take at least one normal semester long class for Spanish students and furthermore I found that the classes which I had been thinking about taking, like Spanish History for foreigners, were primarily designed for people who know very little about history, and despite never having taken Spanish history, I know a lot about it from a variety of contexts and guessed that I would probably be bored out of my mind in that class. So I had to scrap my plans and start from scratch. The result has been an awesome semester full of a real mix of things and a lot of learning. I am less happy with my classes now that I have finals, but all in all it's been a good experience.

Here are my classes, arranged by type of class: (I'll do a seperate post later about my universities, once I take pictures of the Complu.)

Classes for foreigners: Spanish Language. A required class, this is my only class with all Americans. When we got here we had to take a placement test, and I was placed into the level right below bilingual, which is cool. The class is all in all, despite having had some very good language classes, the most useful Spanish class I've ever had. Our teacher, Fátima, assumes that we all speak Spanish well enough to express ourselves, so she focuses on teaching us how to express ourselves as Spaniards would. We have been learning how to greet people, how to thank, how to give salutations through a third party, how to ask for things (items or favors), how to order (in bars and restaurants), and other such things that I find myself using every day. We also do grammar review, and we're currently reading a movie script to get a better handle on coloquial language. We start every class by asking Fátima the exact meaning/uses of words or phrases we've heard on the street, which have a variety of meanings, or no meaning out of context. Useful and a good experience, but I am so worried about the final, because I don't know how to study for language tests, since I have learned Spanish by using it and not by studying it.

Normal classes for Spanish students: History of Spain since 1939. So, the university at which our program is based - Carlos III - is a great school with a lot of things that make it a great place to be a foreign student. However, it is mainly a economics/politics school, with a number of other departments that are also strong. History is not one of those. There is a School of the Humanities, but it's small and only offers a few history classes every semester. Luckily for me, Wesleyan has a convenio (accord) with the Complutense - the oldest university in Madrid (founded in the 1930s) which has a huge School of Geography and History. So I'm taking my history class there. The professor, Yllán, has been teaching since Franco was still in power (a shortage of professors led her to get hired as an associate professor straight out of college), and is thus a great reference, as she lived the subject she's teaching. A dry class, which can be really hard to follow at times, because she mentions all these names I've never heard about before and only sometimes stops to write them out on the board, I am also worried about the final for this one. Luckily, she's letting me take it early - since the class doesn't end until after Wesleyan starts up again - and I am taking it orally. She also claims to be concerned about trends and major events, rather than names and dates, since you can look them up in any reference book, which is very much the same attitude your average Wesleyan history professor would have, so I'm not too worried.

Mini-courses: Madrid during the Civil War. A note of explanation first - these classes are equivalent to a .25 or .5 Wesleyan class and meet for either 10 or 20 hours (respectively). They are humanities classes designed by professors based on their specialties/interests. This one was awesome becuase it was very similar to a Wesleyan history class, in that it used pictures and primary sources to explain the material, and I learned a lot about Madrid, geographically and historically. The final shouldn't be too bad - she told us which of the 5 units she's testing us on - and all the mini-courses are pass/fail.

The Causes of War. Taught by a visiting professor from the Spanish Army War College, this class would have been much cooler if I wasn't a history major already familiar with a lot of conflicts we talked about as examples. However, it was interesting to take a lot of stuff I already know and systematically examen it. And I always like it when I have to come up with my own theories for the final, and I will for this one - we have to turn in a paper entitled The Causes of the Wars of the Future, which I can't wait to start writing...

The Iberian States: A Comparitive Perspective. Basically a history of Portugal in the 19th and 20th century, this was my last class to start and my first class to finish, as it was a 10 hour mini-course which I did all this week (3.5 on Monday, 3.5 on Tuesday, 3 on Wednesday), and our final was an inclass response to one of the primary texts we read. The professor was visiting from Santiago de Compostela and spoke with a super Gallego accent, which pleased me very much. He was really good and very interesting and went on very informative tangents. Plus, I knew nothing about Portugal, and now I know a lot about it. Well, maybe not a lot, but a lot more than everyone else in the world. (No one in the class, and they were all Spanish, could name the current president of Portugal. His name is Jorge Sampaio, in case you were wondering). All in all, the best of the mini-courses.

Independent study: Memory and Harm in 20th Century Spain. So I was unable to find an interesting lit class, and that was bad, because I am a Spanish Lit major and I need to return to the US with Spanish lit credits. Jaime, our program director, recommended that I do an independent study and, while not originally thrilled with the idea, it has turned out to be awesome. The professor in charge of coordinating independent studies for American students, Montserrat Iglesias (Montse), just happens to be really interested in the stuff I wanted to do, so she took me on. We decided on the theme of the study - the title I listed above - and then she gave me a list of books to read and movies to watch and I went to work. The books that I have read have been amazing, and if you want Spanish books to read about Spain in the 20th century (all books written in the past 5-7 years), check out La voz dormida (The Sleeping Voice), El lápiz del carpintero (The Carpenter's Pencil), El pianista (The Pianist - not the same as the movie of the same title), Los girasoles ciegos (The Blind Sunflowers - one of the better titles for a book perhaps ever), and Soldados de Salamina (The Soldiers of Salamina, or The Soldiers from Salamina) - and I'm sure you can find translations of some of those if you like. Also amazing, which I read in Spanish, but was originally in English, is Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others (Ante el dolor de los demás). Good movies include The Secret Life of Words and En la ciudad sin límites (In the City Without Limits), and I hope to be checking out the film version of Soldados de Salamina and Sé quien eres (I Know Who You Are), if the library will stop checking them out to people who aren't me. So the research part has been awesome, but I have been so busy with the mini-classes that I haven't had the time to sit down and write, and while I still have plenty of time, I wish I had more. I'm writing my paper on different kinds of silence, the ability of literature to break that silence, and the moral responsibility of readers, focusing specifically on the case of Spain in the 20th century, but with peripheral examples, like The Secret Life of Words. And if I could incorporate this research into a history thesis and get to write about in English with historical theory and spend a year doing that, I would be in seventh heaven.

So. Classes. Are good. And almost over... Today is December 1st, and I have finals on the 12th, 14th, 20th, 22nd, and then one in January - probably the 12th - and then I leave (the 14th of January). And I really don't want to leave... Well, that's not entirely true. I maintain that I want to be both in Spain and in the US. So if you can figure out a way to do that, let me know.

It's Cold Outside

2005-11-29T08:11:00.000-05:00

So this morning I left the house for my nice and early morning class, and saw that the busstop thermometer said +00 and I thought that it was broken. Until I saw the next busstop thermometer, which also said +00. Neadless to say, I was all bundled up and not too bothered by the cold - actually it didn't feel so bad as there was no wind - but I am nonetheless upset that it is currently 15 in both Washington and Middletown. And that's not fair. Why should global warming only affect one side of the Atlantic?!

In the meantime, I like winter in Madrid. Because whether or not you can tell, the people here are still, at least in theory, Catholic. And when more than 70% of the country celebrates Christmas, the public government can go all out on decorations, as evidenced by the numerous huge trees and streets hung with gorgeous lights throughout the city. Last night I took a bus to go home instead of the Metro, so I could enjoy the lights. I'll try and take some pictures and post them.

Yesterday, my last class started and it ends tomorrow, so I'll be posting on that, and "Thanksgiving dinner" in Cuenca last Saturday, and then I leave on Saturday for an 8 day trip to Vienna and Berlin, which should be nice and even colder, which means I want snow. Because if I'm going to be surviving the cold in Central Europe for a week, I might as well get to appreciate imperial architecture covered in snow, right?

I'm not in the mood for dragging my laptop around, but Espresso Republic, this great café down the street, FINALLY got wireless (every week for the past two months it's been, next week, so I didn't ask this week, but my favorite waitress there recognized me and told me that the wireless was working), so I'll probably do some updates Friday morning over a cup of té verde con mente (mint green tea).

Oh - and a movie update. Last weekend I saw, Otros días vendrán (Other days will come - I'm too lazy to really translate that, but I'm sure there's a better way to say that in English), which was bad. It could have been good, but the ending was too easy. You can't take a drama and then have one of the characters decide to forget that his lover is responsible for the death of his son and have a happy ending. Or if you want to do that, there should first be a screaming match or some kind of struggle to come to terms or something. But the next day I saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Opening weekend in Madrid at the only theater in Madrid showing it in English - the place was packed, and not just with Americans - there were grown Spaniards and a lot of Spanish speaking kids too young to read subtitles who must have been bilingual. An incredible movie. Really incredible. True to the book, funny, but dark, and so entertaining. I want to watch it over and over again. And this week I've off to the ballet - Giselle on Thursday!

I just realized that I have only 6 weeks and 4 days left here, which is so sad because it means that my finals are in 3 weeks (with one exception), and I will be leaving so soon. But I look forward to seeing Mom, Dad, Sam, and Bruno on the 26th and getting back to JFK on January 14th. Hopefully, I will see you all sometime in the next two months...

Cultural Life in Madrid

2005-11-24T08:08:00.000-05:00

First of all, as our program assistant said to me a few minutes ago, "Feliz Thanksgiving." I hope you all are enjoying your turkey, stuffing, cranberries, and NFL. Oh, and that family thing, too.

So, I actually live in Madrid, which you might not be able to tell based on my series of posts on trips around Spain and in Europe. Now, I do take classes, but that’s not nearly as interesting as all the other things I do (actually, I’m just waiting until my last mini-class starts next week and I take some pictures to post on that), so I thought I’d update you on all the cool works I’ve seen – movies, theater, an opera, and even one dance piece. I promise no spoilers on the movies, but then you might have no chance to see some of them anyway. I’m sure I will see more interesting things before leaving Madrid – I have Giselle, Mayumana, an opera, and numerous movies planned, at least, but I figured I’ll start here and do a supplementary post later.

Stage…

Theater
The Festival de Otoño – So every October in Madrid, there is a wonderful thing called The Autumn Festival, which is one full month of theater and dance in theaters all over Madrid with productions from all over the world. There were tons of productions I didn’t see – including Lithuanian productions of Hamlet, Macbeth, and Othello (translated into Lithuanian with super titles in Spanish – I was in Paris) and a British production of A Winter’s Tale done with an entirely male cast as it would have been in Shakespeare’s time (I really wanted to see that, but was in Barcelona). Despite not having seen all the productions I would have liked to have seen, what I did see was quite incredible.

Measure for Measure – A modern, British, multimedia production of the rarely staged “comedy,” which Professor Friedberg calls Shakespeare’s AIDS play. I’ve read it, and now I’ve seen it performed, and I doubt I will have the opportunity to see it again. Also, I’m pretty sure that half the audience spoke English. At least.

El Pianista (The Pianist) – Based on the book of the same title, which I read last spring for a Spanish class at Wesleyan, it was a production first performed in Barcelona and brought to Madrid for the Festival de Otoño. The book is the story of Albert Rosell, a young pianist living in Paris in 1936 who sacrifices his artistic future to return to Spain and fight for the Republic. The staging was excellent – the work was performed by two people, one read and recited the story of Rosell interspersed with piano pieced performed by the other man. As the program informs us, all of music utilized in the staging comes from Catalan composers whose lives were interrupted by the war. The fictional Rosell may end up poor and unknown with his talent unrecognized, but these real composers have finally been given their chance to shine.

That’s all for the Festival… Now on to everything else.

Fuente Ovejuna – A Spanish classic from the Golden Age of Spain (more or less the 16^th century), written by Lope de la Vega, it is the story of a Spanish town – Fuente Ovejuna – which is under the control by a malevolent commander and rebels to protect itself. When the King and Queen (Ferdinand and Isabella) send a representative to investigate, the citizens refuse to place the blame on any individual and all respond that the commander was killed by Fuente Ovejuna. At the end they receive the pardon of the kings. Technically a comedy, it’s not a very funny one. I enjoyed it, however, although not everyone agreed with me.

What was funny, though, was SIT, a silent production by the Spanish three man group, Tricicle (tricycle). It was a, mostly silent, two act show based around chairs and a family of men called the Chairwoods. Composed of gags and longer routines, it was really quite funny, although the rest of the audience thought that the funniest part was a Semana Santa (Holy Week, which is to say Easter, but Spanish style and thus a very big deal) joke, which we, as Americans, identified much less with. It’s hard to describe other than it’s what I imagine the Blue Man Group is like. Except I’m not sure if the Blue Man Group is comedy. Well, either way, it was really quite entertaining. And the coolest part was that instead of a program, they gave us a piece of cardboard which, when folded correctly, became a 6 inch tall paper chair. I’m unfolding it and bringing it back to the US.

Hamlet – I decided that it would be an experience to see an abridged amateur production of Hamlet in translation. And I was right. I mean, I can’t say that I enjoyed it, but it was certainly interesting. Lev and I went together, making us one third of the audience. They cut out some very interesting things – like the characters of Horatio, Polonius (who was killed offstage), and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Some of the most famous lines were cut, consequently, but they weren’t quite the same in translation, anyway. They did keep in the whole “Goodnight, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest” by moving it into the mouth of the narrator they created to make the cuts make sense, but in translating it they had to make it twice as long. (“Buenas noches, dulce príncipe…”) Not great, but the only truly bad thing was Getrude’s costume, which was not nearly queenly enough. I can’t say that I completely enjoyed it, but it was worth seeing.

Opera – Don Giovanni by Mozart
So. The Madrid Opera scene is amazing. The Royal, across the Plaza del Oriente (Plaza of the West) from the Royal Palace, is the largest theater in Madrid (to my knowledge, but I’m pretty sure about that), and is where all opera productions go up. For all productions at the Royal, 90 minutes before the curtain goes up last minute tickets go on sale at a great discount. Combine that with the under 25 student discount, and you only pay 10% of the face value of the ticket. On top of that, Don Giovanni was a cultural activity recommended by the Vassar Wesleyan in Madrid, which meant that the program reimbursed me 50% of the price I paid. So I sat in the 11^th row of the orchestra in the Royal and saw Don Giovanni for a grand cost to me of about £7. Yes, that’s right. At the exchange rate in October, when I saw the opera, that’s $8.54. It was, besides cheap, a very good production – set in the 20s in either Spain or Italy, but I think Italy based on the number of men in black shirted military uniforms. Don Giovanni is now the first Opera I’ve seen twice – first in DC when I was in high school and now in Madrid – for a total cost to me of $8.54. Good times.

Dance – Las Trece Rosas (The Thirteen Roses)
History Lesson: On August 1, 1939 – exactly three months after the official end of the Spanish Civil War – 60 young people were executed (by firing squad) for being members of a Socialist organization. Among those 60 were 13 women, known as the thirteen roses. This modern dance piece is their story, told mostly through flamenco, that started slow and became amazing. When the women are about to die, one says, “They’re not going to kill us; they’re going to erase us,” and this prediction comes true minutes later. Rather than watch them die, the stage lights fade to darkness. But the thirteen roses haven’t been forgotten, as the program reflects – “We hope that this work will prevent their names from being erased from history.” Indeed.

… and Screen

(In no particular order…)
Señor y Señora Smith (Mr. and Mrs. Smith) – Yes, I saw an American film dubbed into Spanish. It was the first and last time. Karen and I went in Santiago with Gil and José. If the movie was bad but entertaining in original form, it was just bad dubbed into Spanish. After said experience, I vowed never to see another dubbed movie ever again in my life, and other than the occasional movie shown on Spanish TV, I have yet to break said vow.

The Legend of Zorro – The only other movie that I have really disliked since coming to Spain. The first movie was entertaining, the second was just stupid. Enough said.

The Brothers Grimm – The last of the horrible movies I saw in Spain (note that all three were American Hollywood blockbusters), it was only made better by the fact that it was the first movie Pepy and I had ever seen in theaters with Spanish subtitles, which, were, for no real reason, absolutely hysterical at times. You would think with a good cast and a good basis, you would make a good movie. In this case, you would be wrong.

Princesas (Princesses) – An amazing Spanish movie about two prostitutes, one who is established with clients and a stable, if abnormal, life, the other a Domincan immigrant who can’t survive so far from her native land, but has to work the street to make money to support her family. A really, quite incredible Spanish movie, NOT directed by Pedro Almodóvar (contrary to popular belief, there are many of those).

Siete vírgenes (Seven Virgens) – Another Spanish film, which draws attention to some of the current problems of Spanish society. I can’t say I enjoyed it, but it was quite an experience. Except for the fact that it was set in Andalucia. And I still don’t always understand Andalucian Spanish. So I’m sure I missed a lot of things that I would normally understand. But it was worth seeing it.

Ninette – Based on a Spanish book, it’s the story of a man from Murcia, a more or less uneventful part of Spain, set in the 1950s, the blandest part of Spanish dictatorship. The man is bored with his life, understandably, so he goes to Paris, where he meets Ninette, a French girl with Spanish parents in exile in France, who changes his life. A sweet and romantic movie, but without resorting to clichés, it seems delightfully both French and Spanish at the same time.

Las muñecas rusas (The Russian Dolls) – Okay, so actually, the title of this movie is neither Spanish nor English, but rather French. But I don’t speak French (unfortunately), I speak Spanish and English, so there you go. It’s the sequel to the excellent movie L’auberge Espagnol (The Spanish Apartment) about the adventures of a group of Erasmus students who live together for a year in Barcelona. The second part of the story picks up five years later and is set in Paris, London, and St. Petersburg, making Gwyn about the only person in the world who can understand the entire movie in its original version. Well, except for the one scene in London when Xavi and Wendy are talking with the Spanish bartender who goes back and forth between English and Spanish. Perhaps the coolest thing about this movie is that I didn’t even realize he was changing languages, except when I noticed that when he spoke English, there were subtitles, and when he spoke Spanish, there weren’t. The second coolest thing about the movie was that I saw it right after getting back from Paris and I recognized places I had been only days earlier.

Inside Deep Throat – A documentary that Mike and I thought would be about the Deep Throat of Watergate, turned out to be about the apparently groundbreaking porn movie Deep Throat. We decided that we would stay and watch it even so, which turned out to be the right movie. Really interesting and hysterical at times, it’s a very well done documentary that looks at the impact of the movie on the people involved in its making and on American society in general. A must see.

Broken Flowers – Absurd and not quite a comedy, but entertaining. Bill Murray at his peak. I can’t say that I liked the movie, or that it was what I expected, but it was good.

Match Point – My first Woody Allen movie, I was horribly fascinated by it. I have to say I preferred both Jonathon Rhys Meyers and Scarlet Johansen in more entertaining roles, but both acted very well in this movie, too. If you hated Closer, don’t see Match Point. Otherwise, give it a try. It was a brilliant movie, but that doesn’t mean I liked it.

Elizabethtown – Adorable. Exactly what I want from a romantic comedy. Which mostly has to do with the presence of a not-blonde version of Orlando Bloom. Enough said.

Last weekend I saw ¿Por qué las mujeres siempre queremos más? (Why do we women always want more?), a French movie (of course with some other title, but again, I don’t speak French) which claimed to be in the style of Sex and the City. I’m still not sure what that means. It was, in whatever case, an entertaining variation on the simple romantic comedy – let’s call it the realistic romantic comedy. I liked it and enjoyed it, Marissa just enjoyed it.

Finally, the two best movies I’ve seen while here (which might change when I see Harry Potter on Sunday): first, The Secret Life of Words, an Isabel Coixet film. Of course, you’ve never heard of Isabel Coixet, which is a damn shame. She’s a Spanish director (which makes her the only one I’ve ever heard of, although others do exist) who lives in Canada and films in English. This movie stars Tim Robbins and is incredibly poignant and has a message that I think everyone should hear. Be prepared to cry a little – I shed three whole tears, and I never cry. Really, really good. It has inspired my research and is a high quality movie. Which I will be seeing again. When I have free time. Or something.

Second, The Constant Gardner, starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz. Set in Africa, it’s the story of a murder and the attempt to figure out what happened. While certainly a compelling story, it’s real merit lies in its portrait of the actual realities of life in Africa. It probably won’t inspire you to change your life and fight for equality in the third world, but it should at least make you think that you should be doing something to fix all the problems in the world. An excellent movie, and while it’s depressing, it’s also hopeful. Sort of.

Also, can I just point out to you that Spellbound was playing in one of the theaters in Madrid in September? I told everyone to go see it, and that I went to high school with the girl from DC, but I decided to skip it and check out something new with what little free time I had.

Movies I wanted to see but couldn’t because they were only being shown dubbed: Wedding Crashers and Serenity (SO jealous of everyone at Wesleyan who saw it!)

Movies I wish had only been showed dubbed so I wouldn’t have wasted my time or money seeing them: The Legend of Zorro and The Brothers Grimm

Movies I want to see and might still get the chance to: Obaba, Otros Días Vendrán, Malas Temporadas, Iberia, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Paradise Now, and more to come

Movies that I already have bought tickets to and will be seeing: HARRY POTTER 4!!! (Sol, the Metro stop, is plastered with posters announcing the upcoming release of the movie – it comes out this weekend in Madrid and I will be seeing it opening weekend like the other three, though this time not at the Uptown).

So. I enjoy living in a major European capitol, and I love movies. Remind me never to live in a small town, unless it’s Middletown and has an incredible film series... And do yourself a favor and check out Princesas, The Constant Gardener, The Secret Life of Words, Ninette, both The Spanish Apartment and The Russian Dolls, and Inside Deep Throat. All quality movies worth your time.

November 20, 2005

2005-11-20T16:10:00.000-05:00

Francisco Franco died thirty years ago today. So, Katie and I decided that today was the appropriate time to visit El Valle de los Caídos (The Valley of the Fallen), the huge monument constructed between 1940 and 1959 in the mountains outside Madrid. Franco built it as a tomb for the nationalists who died during the war, and it would become his own tomb. A huge cave cut into the mountain, it was constructed by republican prisoners of war, many of whom died in the process. As it is technically a monument to the victims of the war, technically speaking, the republicans, as the losers of the Spanish Civil War, can be buried there, too, but to my knowledge, none are. Anyway, the whole place is a grim reminder of the dictatorship, and Katie and I guessed it would be an interesting experience to go there on the anniversary of Franco's death, and we were right.

To get to El Valle, you have to take the train to San Lorenzo de el Escorial, a small town outside Madrid that is home to El Escorial - an impressive monastary built by Felipe II (that's Phillip II to you), that also houses the Pantheon - the burial place of all the Spanish kings but two.

The main entrance to El Escorial:
A model of the building, just to give you a sense of how cool looking it is:
Among the paintings on display, there are a number of El Grecos. Now, the ironic thing about that is that Felipe II really didn't like El Greco's style of painting...Me in the Pantheon, next to Carlos III, the man for whom my university was named:
A room commemorating Spanish victories over the "infidels" (which clearly means Moors, but they don't say that) and the Portuguese:
Note the Star and Crescent banners:
The view out onto the gardens of the monastery and the beautiful countryside:
Outside the monastery, looking toward the town and the mountains beyond:In a block of private residences, Katie and I noticed this Confederate flag. We're confused.
The huge cross marking the Valley of the Fallen. It can be seen from miles away and along a long stretch of the highway from Madrid to Segovia.The entrance to the memorial:
The entrance, with the huge Jesus cradled by Mary:
Inside the main part of the memorial:One of the lateral chapels (there are eight, each dedicated to a different virgin). Note the original rock that can still be seen between the arches.
The central altar:
The graves of Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera (the founder of the Falange, Spain's fascist party, who also died on November 20, though years before Franco)...... and Franco himself. (Sorry they're not great pictures, but I didn't want to spend any more time than necessary near the fascists and neo-Nazis who were standing there getting their pictures taken and doing the fascist salute.)
One of the chapels, dedicated to "Fallen / For God and Spain / 1936-1939 / RIP"
The mural in the ceiling of the chapel pictured above:Outside, some of the neo-Nazis. The flag he's wearing is the Spanish flag under Franco, which is similar to the modern one, except for the large reproduction of Franco's shield in the center. Surprisingly, there were very few older people, nostalgic for Franco, placing wreaths on his grave. Rather, the majority of the people there were about my age, and thus born after Franco's death - lots of skinheads and fascist salutes and even some swaztikas. There was even a group of Germans with a sign in German that said something like German Spanish Friendship and had a swaztika and the Spanish facist symbol. We didn't feel threatened, but Katie and I felt progressively more uncomfortable, and were very happy to leave.Neo-Nazis and young Spanish fascists are a fact of life here. I haven't seen any other than this weekend, but they exist. Last week our program director (Jaime) saw someone get beat up by a gang of them - it happens once in awhile. Of course, Jaime also saw the gathering in the Plaza de la Oriente (where Franco gave all his orations) to commemorate Franco, which happened to coincide with the annual traditional march of sheep into the city, and he says the sheep outnumbered and drowned out the Franco supporters. He has pictures.

Sheeps go to Heaven

2005-11-17T10:44:00.000-05:00

So, I was just going to include this in my post on cultural life in Madrid, but I think it merits a post of its own...

Last Tuesday, Janine and I went to see Cake. It was AMAZING. Really. It was almost an accident that I ended up going. Pepy and I were sitting in Pans and Company (think a Spanish version of Subway or Quiznos, only with less vegetables, although that is inherent in the fact that it's a Spanish version) about a month ago, when I noticed a poster announcing upcoming concerts at some locale in Madrid. Pepy was excited about some band on the list I'd never heard of, when I noticed that Cake was playing. She could have cared less, however, and I soon forgot about it. However, a few days later I happened to be talking to Janine, who had just bought tickets for said show, so I decided to buy one and go with her.

So we get to the club Tuesday, and there was absolutely no line (we had gotten there way too early), and lots of people who hadn't even bought their tickets yet. When we went in, we discovered that it was a very small venue - sort of like the 9:30 in DC, complete with a balcony, and we got really excited. The opening act was a band from New York named Ivy, and as they played (a decent set), the club got more and more full, until people were packed in. But, having gotten there early, Janine and I were up front - about 5 feet from the stage. Then, after lots of waiting and techies leaving the stage, the crowd getting their hopes up, and then techies coming back on the stage, at about 10:45, Cake finally appeared.

Now, have you ever seen a picture of Cake? Yeah, me neither. Well, they're good old Southern country boys. The lead singer had a full beard and a trucker hat, and the keyboard player/backup singer looked like he was nearly 40 years old (the other members were younger and hipper, but I get the impression that they joined the two first guys after Cake was founded - I could be wrong, but it seemed that way to me). It wasn't exactly what Janine and I had been expecting (we didn't know what to expect, but it certainly wasn't that).

The lead singer was a fucking character. He did amazing intros to songs, like the one to Satan is My Motor, which he started by talking about Retiro park. The intro went more or less like this:
"So today I took a walk through Retiro. That's an amazing park. I hope you take advantage of it, but you probably don't because you live here. I mean, how often do you actually go there? (People yell things out.) Once a week? Really? Are you sure? (More yelling.) No, I'm not talking to you, I'm talking to her. Once a week? Twice a week? Three times? Well, you really should go, because do you know what you have in Retiro? A statue of the Devil! [Technically "The Fallen Angel," but whatever.] You are the only city in the world to have a statue of the devil. And that's good. Because to control your evil, you need to first recognize it..." (etc, etc)
Long, winding, introductions. Luckily enough people in the crowd spoke English to be amused by him. Janine and I were cracking up.

They also did audience participation things in their songs, getting the left half of the crowd to compete with the right half, and then with the balcony, like during Sheep Go to Heaven. The chorus is Sheep go to heaven / Goats go to hell / Sheep go to heaven / Goats (pause) go to hell. So he had the whole crowd screaming this, including the ones who were Spanish and either didn't speak English or didn't speak it fluently - leading the crowd to be screaming Sheeps go to heaven / Goats go to hell, to which he would respond, "Go to hell." Amazing crowd control.

Anyway, they played a two hour long set (including an encore - they took a good 5 minutes to come back on stage) including most of my favorite Cake songs - Short Skirt, Long Jacket, Never There (the first Cake song I ever heard), Satan is my Motor, I Will Survive, Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps (!!!) - and lots of other lesser known but really good music. Because all Cake music is really good. And Janine and I were pleased. I bought the t-shirt, making it only the third band t-shirt I own (the others being They Might Be Giants and Dashboard Confessional).

I think that's all I have to say on the subject. Sorry no pictures, but I had no idea what the place would be like, and I didn't want to risk bringing my camera.

Sunday, Katie and I are off El Escorial (a neoclassical monastery in a small town in the community of Madrid) and the Valley of the Fallen (the nearby nationalist memorial built by Republican prisoners where Franco is buried). Sunday is also the 30th anniversary of the death of Franco. It should be interesting. Expect a slightly more serious post on that, soon.

Aranda de Duero and Santo Domingo de Silos

2005-11-15T08:09:00.000-05:00

So, last Saturday my choir was invited to a choir in a small town in Burgos, a province to the north of Madrid. The trip was a two day one including lots of hanging out and seeing small towns, so I went along for the ride even though I didn't know all of the songs well enough to sing (I should be ready to sing at the Christmas concert). I wasn't the only one who went along for the ride - there were 5 of us newbies. It was a lot of fun, and I actually have sort of made friends with a number of the people in the choir, and not just the sopranos who I sit next to every week!

What is the first thing we do in every new Spanish city? Why, go see the cathedral of course!
The sign announcing the concerts. We're the Univ. Carlos III, 2nd from the top. You can't read it in the this picture, but the first choir listed, which sang in this church in October, is from Arizona.
Arando de Duero:They took us on a tour of a bodega, a word which you have probably heard in another context. It's original meaning was wine cellar, and we got a guided tour of one of the bodegas in Arando. They used to all be connected for ventilation and other purposes.
This building, in Arando, was recreated (in its pre-rundown state) in the Museum of the Spanish Town in Barcelona, which I visited two weeks earlier. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of the reproduction.
We went into the town hall and checked out an awesome exhibit of a local artist, who was there and answered our questions.
Most of his work was of this style. He takes a flat sheet of metal and pounds it from behind to make the images you can see. Colors are not painted on but rather made from different metals, or by heating the metal. It was really quite amazing.
The choir sings in the Church of Saint Mary:
Later, we had dinner in another bodega and sang songs.
The one on the left is Mati, my new Bolivian friend:During Gaudeamus Igitur (the international college song), Nuria, our wonderful director:
Cristina, Virginia, Rosa, and me:Singing old songs and new as the adults had more and more to drink (Burgos is known for its quality wine):
One of the songs was a birthday song, which went through 12 verses, one for each month, where everyone born in the month raised their glass and took a drink while the rest sang. I was the only November. (I think this is July?)The next morning, on the way to the second village, we stopped at La Yecla, an awesome walk along a river between two huge slabs of rock.
Me. Unfortunately you can't see the snow capped mountains in the background. (It snowed for the first time of the year in many parts of Spain last weekend, but not were we were. It just rained ice.)
The second town, Santo Domingo de los Silos, which is known for its singing monks. We had lunch in the Hotel Meson, after mass (yes, I went - I had to go to at least one while here, and what better than one with singing monks).
The cloisters of the monastary, which have huge significance for the development of Spanish architecture. A cool place to visit, and an insane guide who spoke faster than I can think in English. I was proud to have understood most of what he said...

Birthdays in Madrid

2005-11-14T07:55:00.000-05:00

So, I already posted pictures of our first birthday meal (targeted at Amy in TGIFridays). Here are some from the birthday lunch my mother made me in our apartment and Pepy's birthday lunches.

The birthday flan that my madre made me...
...and blowing out the candle:
We only have four chairs in our apartment so I could only invite three people. I invited Pepy (because the fact that she doesn't eat the flesh of living things was no problem to my madre)...
... Jenine ...... and Katie.
Pepy enjoys her birthday cake, with Janine in the background:
Katie, Lev, and Vaughn:The birthday girls, Pepy (Nov 3), Amy (Oct 30), and Lynn (Nov 1):
Meg and Janine:

Gaudi, Erasmus, and other Europeans

2005-11-11T13:15:00.000-05:00

Amy, at the first rest stop on the way to Barcelona:
And Katie, my other traveling companion:The first night in the chupitos bar, from left to right, Margerita (Bulgarian), Amy (American), Manu (French), Mélanie (French), Katie (American), and, in front, Inna (Bulgarian. The guy in the background was some random Spaniard who hopped in the picture.
Us with our Blancos y Negros, Amy's 21st birthday shot:Touring Barcelona the next day in the pervading grey weather (which came and went), the statue of Colón (Columbus) on the waterfront:
The happy lobster with a Roy Lichestein sculpture in the background:
The ruins of a Roman temple are the only Roman ruins that you can see in the city (excluding the ruins of the old city below ground):The old Plaza de Toros has been lifted up on supports and is being fixed up to turn into a shopping center. It's raised 4 meters high on hydraulic supports!The outside of the Olympic Stadium, with the platform where the flame would have been:
Me, inside the stadium:
The Parliament of Catalunya...
... is inside an amazing park, which I've forgotten the name of:
I discovered the park while everyone else was wasting time taking a nap. The coolest part of the park was this awesome pond with statues and dragons. I stood there for a good 20 minutes just looking at it.The super cool Royal Plaza:In the Plaza de Catalunya:Katie points at the super cool and super scandalous statue:Las Ramblas, the center of Barcelona, is a huge street for pedestrians with little streets on the side for cars. It is always this crowded. Except at 2 in the morning, but even then it's hardly empty.
Las Ramblas is the home of street performers. Who, while amusing, scare children. Understandably.
The entrance to the Museum of the Spanish Town (people), which was built as a Spanish Epcot Center for the '92 Olympic Games, is designed to look like the gates around the city of Ávila, which is near Madrid and I really should go see... Inside the Museo del Pueblo Español, Andalucia... ... and assorted parts of northern Spain:
The random disco inside the museum, which people were starting to enter around 9 pm, very early for Spaniards.Katie and I relax on surprisingly comfortable stone chairs:
The exterior of the Casa Batllo, one of the Gaudi's masterpieces, which has only been open to the public since 2002:The entrance:
A fireplace with seat designed for the turn of the century realities. The seat closer to the camera is designed for one person and the one further away for two, so a woman and her date could sit on the far side, while her escort sat on the near side:
The awesome interior of the house. When I'm rich I want it for myself:
Katie enjoys her (hysterical) audioguide...As do Amy and Manu:
The patio out back was full of color:Katie, to the left, with a random German girl (who spoke much better English than Spanish) next to her. To the right of the picture are Pierre and Mélanie (both French, obviously).
The top of the back of the house is supposed to look like a crashing wave (the whole house is based on the sea and nature and animals and such):Back inside, Mélanie, me, and Katie:
The atrium of the house:The never ending series of escalators which take you into the Parque Guell. This time, thankfully, they were working (I had to walk up three years ago):
The highest point of the park is the hill with the three crosses on top.
All of Barcelona, panning from left to right. It's too bad it's grey, but it's not the prettiest city even when the weather is nice. I think that might be one of the reasons I didn't like Barcelona three years ago. In this picture you can see the new bullet shaped skyscraper and the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's unfinished cathedral.The two skyscrapers to the right are right near the Olympic Village, the really nice development that was built to house the athletes and remains very nice. It's where Barcelona's beaches are.
The Gothic quarter is in this direction, but good luck telling it apart from everything else.
Half of Montjuic is in the background:
And the other half:Katie, in the naturalistic part of the park:And me in the more artificial part. The windy bench I'm sitting on goes on for about a hundred meters around an oblong plaza.Originally the park was supposed to be a private park with houses for rich people. These are the only two houses that were built. One is a museum now and the other a gift shop.
SO COOL!A forest of pillars, Gaudi style:
The walk down from the pillar forest to the houses:And the iconic lizard, which was surrounded by people trying to get their picture taken in front of it. I didn't feel like waiting.
I don't know why, but there were tons of Mr. T heads in the Gothic quarter. It reminded me of high school and It's Academic. I was amused.
Halloween and my 20th birthday in the Irish pub! From left to right, Manu, Amy, Katie, Mélanie, and Taunge:
The three Americans celebrate Halloween in Barcelona!
Katie, Mélanie, and me:
My 20th birthday, back in the chupitos bar:Our favorite shot was this one, which was made by pouring something into a shot glass, putting an orange half on top, filling it with sugar and more licor, a splash of absynthe (probably very weak, as it was a cheap shot), some nutmeg, and then setting it on fire. You used a straw to drink the stuff out of the orange then squeezed the remainder in the shot glass below and shot it. It was yummy...

Barcelona, or my 20th birthday present to myself

2005-11-11T10:41:00.000-05:00

So. Two weeks ago I went to Barcelona with Amy, Katie, and the Erasmus Student Network. Erasmus, for those of you who haven’t seen L’auberge Espagnol (The Spanish Apartment – a movie which you should see), is a program for European (I think just for those who live in the EU) college students that lets them spend a semester or two (usually two) studying in some other part of Europe, usually a major city, without a lot of bureaucratic nonsense and often without them even knowing the language. It’s a great program, except when the block of Germans who sit behind you in class don’t speak any Spanish and talk in German when you’re struggling to follow a lecture about the economics of Franco’s regime in the 1950s. But I digress…

So, anyway, to facilitate cultural awareness and their need to party, there are numbers of Erasmus Student Networks in universities around Europe where native students plan activities for the foreigners. I, of course, am not European, but the ESNs allow non-Erasmus Europeans and non-Europeans to go along on their trips as long as you buy a membership card. Well, as it happens, the ESN at one of the two universities I attend was planning a trip to Barcelona from October 29th to November 1st, taking advantage of the fact that November 1st is a holiday, and despite the fact that Monday the 31st was not a holiday, there are no classes/people do not go to work on that day because they want to take advantage of the holiday to turn a 2 day weekend into a 4 day one. It’s a concept that Spaniards called “Puente,” which translates as bridge. I approve of puentes. Especially the puente in December, but I’ll tell you more about that next month.

So, Vassar Wesleyan in Madrid planned a group trip to Barcelona, but it happened to be the same weekend as my choir’s trip to Arando, which is to say this weekend, and I didn’t want to have to chose between Barcelona and a choir trip with Spaniards for a weekend. So I asked Jaime (Brother James Lipton, computer science professor, also our program director) if the program would pay for me to go with Erasmus and not with the other Americans, and he said sure. I pulled Amy and Katie along with me, and we signed up to go to Barcelona with a busload of European students who live to party. It seemed like a good idea at the time?

No – it was honestly a lot of fun.

We left Madrid Saturday morning bright and early and got to Barcelona two rest stops and 7 hours later. Along the way, I made Amy turn around and start a conversation with the two French boys behind us who, as it turns out, speak English and thus probably understood our ongoing conversation about how we would start a conversation with them. Ah well. So we met Manu and Taunge that way. And then when we got to Barcelona, we had to find three other girls to share a room in the hostel (right off Las Ramblas, which probably means nothing to you, but let me assure you it is the place to be in Barcelona), so we pulled in the two Bulgarians, Margerita and Inna, and one of the many Italians, Camila. After dropping our stuff off, we went for a walk, which turned into a pitcher of Sangria in the beautiful Royal Plaza and then dinner at an overpriced tapas place in the Gothic quarter. We met a ton of the other Erasmus kids, most notably Mélanie, an adorably sweet Parisian. Later, we met with Jordi (pronounced Gordi – that’s Catalan for you), one of the Barcelona ESN coordinators, who showed us around. We went to this great shots bar – it had a wall menu with more than 250 different shots, many of them flaming. And they weren’t that strong, but it was a lot of fun! At midnight it became Amy’s 21st birthday, and the bartender gave us a free round as was fitting. After that, Jordi took us to a bar where all of us went into the loft of the bar and had a round and then to a dance club where we were going to stay until the Metro reopened at 5 am. Only, of course, the time changed during the night, and so when I thought it was 4:30, it was only 3:30 and I could have stayed for another half hour, but not another 90 minutes in a jam packed dance club when I was tired and we had a group tour the next morning, so one of the French girls and I grabbed a taxi and went back to the hostel.

The next day, we took a bus tour of Barcelona, because, well the sites are spread out and the best way to get a feel for the city in on a bus. We drove past the Plaza de España and the old Plaza de Torros and then up to Mounjüic, the Jewish mountain, named so for historical reasons (namely the presence of Jews living on the mountain), from which we got a nice panoramic view of the city and saw the Olympic Stadium from 1992. From there, we drove around, checking out the sights of Barcelona. It was a good orientation to the city and very cool for me, because I was in Barcelona three years ago, the summer before my senior year of high school, with a group of other Americans, and I really did remember the city, places I had been and such things. Also, I didn’t like Barcelona when I was there in 2002, but I blame the other stupid Americans for that, because I loved Barcelona this time, which is certainly at least in part due to the fact that the weather was at least 10 degrees warmer in Barcelona, with its nice Mediterranean climate. When the bus took us past the beach, there were people swimming in the sea and playing volleyball and walking around in flip-flops, which Spaniards only due at the beach.

So, after the group bus tour, everyone went and took a nap, but I was not in the mood for wasting time, so I went for a walk instead and checked our the beach, a few parks, some of the grand avenues, the Plaza de Cataluña (or Cataluyna, if you prefer), and Las Ramblas. We had originally planned to go to the Parque Güell and watch the sunset from there, but we had forgotten the time change and it was already dark by the time I got back from my walk, so Katie and I decided to return to the Plaza de España in the hopes that the fountains would be lit up (they weren’t). We then went to the nearby Museo del Pueblo Español (which translates as either the Museum of the Spanish Town or the Museum of the Spanish Population) – a sort of Spanish Disney World. Basically, they built a Museum for the 1992 Olympics with buildings made to look like places all over Spain. So Katie and I wandered around and checked it out, had a coffee in the fake Plaza Mayor (which was still really pleasant), and laughed at all the people dressed up for going out who were destined for the discotheque in the middle of Spanish Disney World. Not really in the mood for going out, we met up with the Bulgarians for Pakistani food, and after an odyssey of waiting for everyone else to join us, it was nearly midnight by the time we paid the bill, so Katie and I went back to the hostel, checked our email, and went to bed.

The next day we were up bright and early for a tour of the Gothic quarter, complete with old buildings, narrow winding streets, and the umpteenth cathedral I’ve seen in Spain. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy the tour, just that it was less interesting than it would have been four months ago. After that, we did the Gaudí tour of Barcelona. For those of you who’ve never heard of him, Gaudí was an arcitecht who left his mark on Barcelona, most notably in a number of private houses (including the Casa Battló, which we visited), the impressive Parque Güell, and the crazy Sagrada Familia. After the Casa Battló and Parque Güell, Katie and I were sick of the group and we wanted more time in the park and the ability to move at our own speed and not have to wait for the dozens of Europeans who had no sense of punctuality. Furthermore, I remember not being that impressed by the Sagrada Familia (Gaudí’s unfinished modern cathedral) three years ago, and Katie and I both felt that after three months of touring and handfuls of different cities, we no longer felt the need to do a whirlwind tour of every city we visit. So we decided to skip the cathedral, enjoy the park, take a nap, go shopping in the tiny boutiques in the Gothic quarter, split a smoothie, and have dinner in a yummy vegetarian Arab place. After that, on our way pack to the hostel to meet up with Amy, we noticed a lot of people wearing Halloween hats and capes and such. Now, it is October 31st, but we were in Barcelona, so we were more than a little confused. Well, it turns out that the Irish pubs are the place to be on Halloween in Barcelona – they give out free Halloween garb with the Murphy’s logo to anyone who buys a drink. So Katie and I decided that we had to go to the Irish pub too. We went back to the hostel, grabbed Amy, Manu, Taunge, and Mélanie, and went to the nearest pub where Katie and I each ordered a Bailey’s on the rocks from the bartender who spoke no Spanish (he was from London) and everyone else got their draft beers, so we could get the hats. We then hung out, had our drinks, made fun of Manu for not being manly enough, and as it was turned midnight while we were there, they all sang Happy Birthday to me in English. We then went back to the chupitos bar and had a couple of rounds and Katie told the bartender it was my birthday. Instead of giving us a round, as they did for Amy 48 hours earlier, he gave me a “Monica Lebinsky” – which turned out to be a bottle of beer, with a plastic penis on top of the neck of the bottle and a line of whipped cream down the side. Despite my best attempts, I was laughing too hard to successfully lick all the whipped cream and then chug beer out of a dildo, thus spilling plenty of the beer on me. It did make for some really good pictures. After hanging out for a while longer, I decided that despite my original intention to go out dancing for my 20th birthday, I had already had enough fun for one night and I decided to go home and sleep, so I could take advantage of my last morning in Barcelona.

And take advantage of it I did. After trying to go to the Picasso Museum and failing (there were nearly 100 people in line – but I had been to the museum three years ago, anyway), I decided instead to go the Museum of the History of Barcelona, which I thought would be cool since its built on top on the ruins of ancient (which is to say Roman) Barcelona. So I checked out the main part of the museum, and then took the amazing time traveling elevator down to the basement where I wandered around the ruins. They were awesome! The paths over the ruins were built in such a way that you could look down and see the wine cellars and churches and houses and streets right below your feet. Unfortunately, they didn’t let you take pictures, but I bought a poster (the first one I’ve bought since coming to Spain) and then headed back to the hostel and then on to the bus. Nine hours, a number of delays, and rest stops, and rainstorms later, I made it back to Madrid and back to Number 5, Calle Gonzalo de Córdoba, where my madre made me a tortilla and salad for my birthday dinner. [At that point, I was unconsciously speaking Spanish with a French accent, which I have to say it really quite cool.] All in all, it was a good weekend. Will I keep in touch with any of the awesome Europeans I met? Probably not, since I don’t even bother calling the other people on my program most of the time, but it was a lot of fun and Mélanie did call to invite us to go out last weekend (I was not in the mood, but maybe some other time). If nothing else, I have great memories of Barcelona and the ability to speak Spanish with a French accent, when I put my mind to it (it’s already come in handy once).

I am still alive, I promise

2005-11-10T08:06:00.000-05:00

New entries are coming soon. I promise. No really... I just haven't sat down at my computer to write about Barcelona, but I will do that within the next 5 days or so, once I turn in the outline for my 20 page literature paper in Spanish...

What I have been doing is playing with facebook. A lot. I have some wonderful photo albums - of Spain and of my CTY coworkers this summer. I will also, at some point, be making ones for sophomore year (that's last year) and of me and my CTY friends when we were young. I promise pictures of me with a horrible haircut, a fake nose ring, and wearing a ball chain and a short plaid skirt. Ah, being a teenager. The point of this rambling is that if you want a substitute form of procrastination while I continue to suck and not update my blog, play with facebook.

It's become fall in Madrid - nice crisp fall, but without all the pretty color changes you get in good old New England. Leaves fall here, of course, but they're all yellow. And as we all know, yellow leaves are only useful to offset the beauty of orange and red ones. I've started wearing long sleeved shirts and sweaters and my madre keeps telling me, "¡Abrígate!" (Bundle up!), when I leave the house and I tell her, "Vale." (Okay.), and smile to myself because it's still really warm outside. Although, with the time change two weeks ago, the sun is no longer out quite so late and everything seems much more normal and less Mediterranean. And that's fine because I have tons of homework and such things to do, now that my classes are in full swing.

The Festival de Otoño is over, but it's not the end of theater for me. Next week, we're going to see an experimental theater troop and I've been seeing movies galore. After I see SIT I'll do a post about theater and cinema. My only piece of advice right now is DONT GO SEE ZORRO. I mean, if you feel the need to see it, fine, you're allowed. But it was horrible. And I really liked the first one...

I have to say that I miss apple cider. A lot. But then I will miss plenty of Madrileño food when I go home, so I'm not complaining (much). Saturday I'm off to Arando with my choir and then that's the last traveling I'm doing for awhile. I'll be in Madrid for the rest of November, although we are going to do a day trip to the Valley of the Fallen and El Escorial on the 20th of November - the 30th anniversary of Franco's death - to remind ourselves that fascists still exist. Then on December 3rd I will be off on a 7 day trip to Vienna and Berlin to visit Stef Fisher and Beth Herz. After that its back to work until Christmas, when my parents and Sam (my younger brother) and Bruno (the Brazilian exchange student who will still be living in my room when I return to the US) come to visit. After they leave, I have one more week in Spain... This semester is speeding by. Which is bad. And I should be doing more work on my 20 page literature paper.

Also - can I point out to you that Spanish libraries are absurd. And organized poorly. And limit the number of books you can take out. And don't let you keep books for more than a week. Which is to say there are no piles of post-ited books in my room this semester. Maybe next time...

See you all in a little more than two months!

Visitors

2005-10-28T10:37:00.000-04:00

So this past week, Beth Herz (Wesleyan) visited me from Berlin, with her friends Erica and Chris. We did all kinds of wonderful touristy things together , giving me a chance to show of my history major/tour guide/former quiz bowl captain collection of useless information (we also went to bars together - including my first trip to a hookah bar). At the same time, Mike's friend Fabian (Vassar) was visiting from Belgium and Amy and I wanted to go to an American restaurant (specifically TGIFridays) so she could order the large alcoholic drink she would have ordered if she were in the US for her 21st. The result was a very large dinner party.

The entrance to Fridays. The sign is the same here as it is in the US! One of the three birthday girls, Amy:

Me with Mike and Fabian:
Marissa, Meg, and Vaughn: Katie, Lev, and Pepy:
Chris, Amy, and Janine: Erica and Beth:
The whole group, except for me and Erica...

Toledo: In which Lynn realizes that you can only see so many mudejar buildings and winding old streets before you stop caring

2005-10-27T13:10:00.000-04:00

As you may guess by the heading, I was not super impressed by Toledo. I mean, it was interesting and at least slightly different from the other cities I've been too, but I've already seen mudejar buildings, synagogues, and cathedrals. Despite that, I have to prove that I've been and make you all jealous, so, to that end, here are 15 pictures of Toledo. Enjoy.

Meg and Jenine before seeing Toledo.
The view of Toledo.Meg and Jenine after seeing Toledo:
Me with the only two people on the program I knew before getting here, Rae, who I have known since WesFest (Apr 03), and Mike, who I have known since our first session at CTY (July 99):
Me with the teeny weeny mezquita. It was a visigoth church and then turned into a mezquita by the Moors:
Mike and Lucia pose while trying to avoid getting run over:
Jesus and Marissa - working the corner since Oct 05:
The random museum. It was a convent and is now a cultural center, with El Grecos and other random artifacts of Toledo:Our guide, whose name I don't remember. I've been on so many guided tours that I can't keep track. This one will just be remembered as that chick who had a headphone on and a speaker with volume control attached to her hip...
One of the two synagogues in Toledo built in the mudejar style. Bigger than the one in Córdoba, but not that impressive other than that. In fact, I liked the really intimate one in Córdoba more. This one was built by Samuel Levi, the treasurer for one of the Spanish kings (I think one of the Phillips?).The outside of the Catedral. You couldn't take pictures inside, which was too bad, because it was really beautiful. Last year was apparently a very rainy one and the roof leaked, so they cleaned the cathedral to get rid of the water damage, leaving the stones inside perfectly white, something that I haven't seen yet in Spain, and I have seen a ton of churches and cathedrals in the past 10 weeks.

PARIS!

2005-10-21T10:54:00.000-04:00

The entrance to the Louvre. The cool glass pyramid thing was designed by IM Pei to create a central entrance to the museum. IM Pei tends to win at life.
One of the more famous paintings I saw at the Louvre (that one's for Jess and Brigette). Unfortunately they don't let you take pictures of the Mona Lisa (you can only take pictures in the less popular sections), but let me tell you, that Leonardo guy knew his shit.
The Louvre used to be a royal palace, which very few people know. One wing is decorated as it would have been when Napoleon III lived there. It's not Versailles (which I did not get to), but it was pretty cool.Me with the Venus DiMilo, which was surprisingly not marked on the Louvre's map with the other well known artworks:
The sphinx was given to France from the government of Egypt in recognition of France's work in figuring out how to read hieroglyphics:
Two of the more famous sculptures in the Louvre (which has incredible sculpture galleries):The view out from the Louvre:
The Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel outside the Louvre was originally topped by Horses of St. Mark's, which Napoleon "borrowed" from Venice, and then returned after he lost at Waterloo:
One of the many beautiful bridges along the Seine:
The Place de la Concorde was the location of the guillotine that took the lives of such famous leaders as Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Danton, and Robespierre. It was renamed Concorde after the Reign of Terror ended to promote peace and foregiveness. The obelisk was also a present from Egypt to France.
The view down the Champs-Elysees (before it becomes all commercialized) to the Arc de Triomphe:
The view from the Arc de Triomphe, 180 degrees around, panning from the Louvre south and then east to the Eiffel Tower (note the lipstick tube that is the Tour Montparnasse):
I don't know what this is. I just thought it looked cool.The entrance to the public toilets at Place de la Madeline:
The Opera:
The masoleum were Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette are buried. Today it's a park with children playing inside the gates...
Whistler's Mother, in the Musee d'Orsay:One of the many Degas:
And Van Goghs:
And Monets:
Renoirs there were too, but of course my two favorite Renoirs were onloan for a special exhibition...
The Musee d'Rodin:
A drawing of The Thinker done by Edward Munch:
The view from the Tour Montparnasse (in the first picture, note Notre Dame to the left in the middle and the huge Luxemburg gardens):
In the Latin American restuarant, Joanna ponders the Monday Night Jam Conspiracy:
About Katie Holmes being pregnant by Tom Cruise, this tabloid says, "He's neither gay nor straight." I was amused.The St-Chappele:Inside, below, the servant's part of the chapel:
And the solid stained glass for royalty:
The Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation, a really moving Holocaust memorial right behind Notre Dame:
Says St. Exupery, "It's not the same thing to die in free combat as to be erased during the night."The tiny vineyard in Montmarte, which actually produces wine - the only wine made in Paris:Street musicians. The one with the horn on his face terrified a small child...The three of us on the Seine, Gywn, me, and Joanna:
In the cemetary, the graves of Moliere...
...Jim Morrison...
...Chopin...
...and Oscar Wilde. It's good luck to kiss his, hence the lipstick stains. Also, there used to be a penis on the statue, but it was considered indecent and broken off.
And, finally, me with Joanna. The plants are evidence of her green thumb?

In which Lynn is in Paris

2005-10-21T10:21:00.000-04:00

(I apologize preemptively for my spelling of French words.)

Apparently the thing to do last weekend was go to Paris. When I walked into my last class of the week – language – last Thursday, it turned out that three of the thirteen students in the class were going straight from class to the airport to catch planes to Paris. And as it turned out, Holly (a girl from California) and I were both taking the same flight. Leslie (from Wesleyan) was the other girl going to Paris, and she was leaving class at 4 to catch a 6:30 flight, which I thought was crazy because we go to school in the suburbs of the south, southwest of Madrid, and the airport is in the far northeast corner of Madrid, and I’m used to international flights where you have to get to the airport at least two hours in advance. But, as Leslie pointed out, flights within the European Union are no longer international. In fact, when I landed in Paris, they didn’t even ask to see my passport. Actually, I was really upset by that, because there’s no stamp in my passport to say that I’ve been to Paris. In fact, since getting my new passport in May, I have been to Canada, Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar, Morocco, and France and I only have stamps from Spain and Morocco.

So I arrived in Paris around 11 pm and then by the time I got to Joanna’s apartment it was nearly midnight, so she and I went to bed soon thereafter (Joanna is, of course, my former CTY coworker). The next morning I woke up early to get in a full day of tourism. First I went to the Louvre, where I intended to check out only the highlights and only be there for a while. I failed in my attempt and even walking quickly through the galleries I toured, I was still there for about three hours. After that, I wandered from the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe and back, checking out Seine, the Champs-Elysees, the Opera building, the “zany Metro entrance” at the Louvre (quoting my guidebook) and the Places Concorde, Madeline, and Vendome. After that, I went back to Joanna’s apartment and we had dinner, which was followed by meeting her French boyfriend, a very nice guy who speaks enough English to be friendly, and their friends. We then met up with Gwyn (my dear sister in Alpha Delt) and went to a party with her Fulbright friends with good company and very yummy dessert. We stayed there until about 3 am, when a jerk from across the street killed the good spirit and ruined Mark’s pants, so Joanna and I walked back to her apartment. At this point, we were on the Left Bank, and pretty far south, and she lives on the Right Bank, and we’re not talking about right next to the river. So, about 40 minutes and two encounters with drunk men later, we got back to her apartment and went to sleep.

The next day, I woke up and went to the Musee d’Orsay, where all the impressionist works are – I was in heaven for a few minutes there – and the Musee d’Rodin, which was right nearby. The Musee d’Rodin was a hotel where a number of famous artists stayed, but it had fallen into disrepair, so when Rodin died he left money to repair the building and turn it into a museum. The grounds around are very nicely kept up and have copies of some of his more famous sculptures – including The Thinker, Balzac, The Burghers of Calais, and the Gates of Hell (or whatever that one’s called). After that, I met Gwyn and Joanna and we went up the Tour Montparnasse. As my guidebook pointed out, it is a lipstick tube shaped skyscraper and the great thing about going up to the top of it is that it’s the only place in Paris where you can’t see the tower. After checking out the view, Gwyn went home to do some work and Joanna and I went to the Cimetiere Pere Lachaise, the final resting place of some very famous people. We, unfortunately, got there later than I had hoped and we only had a few hours to find the graves we were looking for. After finding Louis Blanc (but not August Blanqui – and no one is going to get that because none of you have ever taken a Nat Greene class), Poulenc (that picture is for Chris White), and Oscar Wilde, we ran out of time and were kicked out. So we went and met Manu, Joanna’s boyfriend (who looks a lot like Moody – Gwyn, Joanna, and I all agree), and some of there friends at a British pub (they like kitschy pubs – the one on Friday night was called The Moosehead and served Canadian beers, was showing baseball and rugby, played English music, served American food, and was decorated with North American paraphernalia). Anyway, the pub was serving some really good beers – including Snakebites (not Snakebite and Blacks, but honestly I prefer Snakebites to Snakebite and Blacks; less bitter), which I introduced Joanna and Manu to. We then went out to a Latin American restaurant in the Latin Quarter (oh man – perhaps the best chicken burrito I have ever had) and then to another British pub, where I met many of Joanna and Manu’s friends, who all spoke enough English to be friendly.

The theme of the next day was churches, which was unintentional, but appropriate for a Sunday. First I went to Notre Dame, which I was honestly not that impressed by. I mean, it was pretty, but after being in Spain for two months and going to handfuls of cathedrals, I am no longer as easily impressed. Having already seen two panaromic views of Paris, I skipped the tower as well, and went instead to Ste-Chapelle – the holy chapel, which was designed for the royal family. One of the French kings bought what he, at least, believed was the original crown of thorns from a Byzantine ruler for an exorbitant amount of money, and the chapel was designed to be a fitting place to display such a treasure, along with other relics. The result was practically solid stained glass. When the revolution came, the chapel, as a sign of royalty and religion, was one of the first things to go and its treasures were dispersed. (The crown of thorns went to Notre Dame and is displayed every year on Good Friday.) Later, the chapel was restored to its original glory, and that’s saying a lot. After the chapel and an incredible Nutella and banana crepe, I met up with Gwyn and Joanna and we walked around the Latin Quarter, through the Luxemburg Gardens, back to the islands and then went and got some Berthillon ice cream, which may have been the best ice cream I’ve had yet, which is saying a lot, because Madrid has some really good ice cream, too. After that, we walked to Montmarte, met Manu, and checked out the tiny vineyard, the Lapin Agile, and Sacre Coure. (I, of course, forgot to walk by the Moulin Rouge. Ah, well…) We then walked back to the Seine and hung out on the quays there. Manu left at some point and Gywn, Joanna, and I had dinner together – just enough food to be full, but still leaving room for dessert crepes. This time, I tried a Grand Marnier one. They weren’t lying – it had Grand Marnier in it. Exhausted from walking all over Paris (for me it was the third day in a row of excessive walking), we all went to bed early.

The next day, Joanna had an appointment in the morning, so Gywn and I met and went back to the Cemetaire Pere Laichase, where we succeeded in finding more people’s graves – Frederic Chopin, Camille Pissarro, Ferdinand DeLesseps, Baron Rothschild, Jim Morrison, Moliere, and Maurice Thorez – as well as monuments to the Holocaust, French soldiers who fought in the Spanish Civil War, and Spanish soldiers who fought for France in World War II (but we never did find Gertrude Stein). Most importantly, from my point of view, we found the wall where the last remaining members of the Paris Commune of 1870 were killed in March 1871 after months of holding out in the cemetery.

After this, the three of us had lunch together in Joanna’s apartment, and then I left for the airport. I was so happy to finally sit down on the plane, and it’s probably just as well I only had three full days in Paris, or else I might have completely broken down and been unable to walk any more (three plus days of standing/walking all day long can really do a number on you). All in all – an incredible trip, because I’ve been to Paris now!

Updated Country Count: 5 (Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar, Morocco, France)
International capitals I’ve been in the past ten months: 5 (Washington, Jerusalem, London, Madrid, Paris)
Personal goal for the next three months: Get both of those numbers to 7 (Berlin, Germany and Dublin, Ireland?)

New Voices Web Wire

2005-10-19T12:24:00.000-04:00

First of all - as of about 10.30 am tomorrow, I will have been in Spain for two months. I can't think of anything less cliché to say, so all I will say about that is that time has flown by.

I will be publishing soon about Paris and the Festival de Otoño (the reason I've been going to so many theater productions) soon, but I am super busy and haven't really had time to write up the cool stuff I did/lug my laptop to an internet cafe so I can upload everything. So expect posts about that and my upcoming trip to Toledo in the not too distant future.

In the meantime, I thought I'd share with you guys something I wrote. My friend Josh Nathan-Kazis is the editor of a webwire that publishes the assorted ramblings of Jewish college students and he asked me to write something about my experience abroad. Below is the (very abridged) result. He asked me for about 800 words, and I originally sent him 1800 (I hope Jasper is reading this, so he can make some statement about color coded post-it notes). I just thought I'd share with you. It doesn't include all the things I originally wanted to say, but you get the idea. (For the rest of this issue of New Voices Web Wire, check out http://www.newvoices.org/cgi-bin/articlepage.cgi?id=431.)

Aren’t They All Supposed to be Catholic?
Preconceptions Confront Reality on the Iberian Peninsula

I have a Spanish friend named Gil. We met during my first week here in Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. One night in a bar, a group of Andalucian pilgrims were chanting something unintelligible over the music. Gil asked me if I understood them. I said no. He told me that they were singing, “Benedict, Benedict, Benedict, the sixteenth, the Pope.” Then he muttered, “fucking Catholics.”

The next day, a group of American girls were being followed by a pack of Spanish boys who claimed to be in Santiago on a pilgrimage. Gil chased the men away and then gave the girls a lesson – “Spain is not a Catholic country,” he said, “and those men are only claiming to be pilgrims to hit on you.” Spain is not a Catholic country? What on earth is he talking about? What about the inquisition? What about Franco, the Catholic dictator who ruled Spain for fifty years? Of course Spain is a Catholic country! Everyone knows that…

But when I stopped and thought about it, I realized that Gil might have had a point. Spain is not as Catholic as we all think. For instance, Gil’s older sister, Ana, is a practicing Catholic who teaches religion. Still, she has no problem with the sexuality of her younger brother, who jokes about taking advantage of Spain’s recent change of laws and marrying his boyfriend of six months.

In my first conversation with my host mother, Angelines, she told me that she was Catholic to the extent that she liked Catholic doctrine. For example, she told me that she likes men, and that as an unmarried woman, if she wanted to date, she was going to date, regardless of what the church had to say. Angelines also told me that homosexuality was a natural thing and that if she were a lesbian, she would want to marry whomever she liked.

My friend Michael, a gay Jew, told his host family one day that he was going out to Chueca, Madrid’s Greenwich Village. The mother of the family told him that that was great and that her kids liked going there, and then his host sister very kindly asked him if he was aware that it was the gay neighborhood. When he smiled and said, yes, that he was aware, she just told him to enjoy himself.

This isn’t to say that Spain is a fantastically liberal country where everyone is completely accepted. The prejudice directed at immigrants is sometimes shocking. Whether it is the product of racism or the brutal honesty of a culture unfamiliar with the concept of political correctness, it is present in nearly all levels of white Spanish society.

And yet, there are parts of the US where the same kind of prejudice exists. Further, just because many Americans wouldn’t dare make comments about all thieves being African immigrants without papers (as my host mother said at dinner early this week) doesn’t mean that there aren’t many Americans who would think such things. And while we may not teach Catholicism in public schools, as the Spanish do, the teaching of evolution is banned in more than a few of the United States.

Indeed, the Inquisition has been dead for almost 200 years, and Franco’s dictatorship ended in the 1970s. Spain is a modern country with a range of people representing a spectrum of cultures and beliefs, including native Spaniards and recent immigrants, among them Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and many others.

My preconceptions turned on their head, I move forward through the semester with a sense of wonder. Spain is a dynamic place. The culture is shifting as we speak. The question now is, can America keep up?

Linguistics

2005-10-12T12:45:00.000-04:00

So I had a realization this weekend, and I thought I'd share. So, in Spain, the time of day between midnight and dawn is called the madrugada. For example - when a movie has a showing at 12:30 am, it will be listed as 00.30 mad (oh, 24 hour clocks). Well, I just had a brilliant jump of logic, after our guide Francisco made some comment in Sevilla, which is that madrugada comes from Madrid, and it must refer to the fact that Madrileños have the, deserved, reputation for being the Spaniards who stay up the latest.

Also - I just added more pictures from Segovia, but I want everything to be in chronological order of when they happened, so if you want to see them, scroll down to 20 September. (Yes, I do write my dates European style and think in 24 hour time now. I am also starting to be able to think about temperatures in terms of Celcius, without having to change everything into Farenheit. I guess you can get used to anything?)

Way too many pictures. I hope you don't mind.

2005-10-11T10:27:00.000-04:00

In the Torre de Oro, paying more attention to the view than to the absurd nearby museum, are Marissa, Laura, Javi, and Lev:
Our guide, Francisco, explains how the cool wall tiles were made. The short version is that they were made very deliberately.
A few of the hundred pictures I took in the Alcázar:
While it may seem just like the Alhambra in Granada, the Alcázar of Sevilla does have some very clear differences. One is the prescence of castles and lions in the decorations, to represent Castilla and León, something that would have been both illogical and prohibited in a building constructed by Muslim rulers. To show the complete tolerance that sometimes existed in Spain, there are also some Stars of David in the architecture:
The hall were balls were held shows no sign of being part of a complex built in the Moorish style;
The gardens of the Alcázar streched on for 8 acres, or something ridiculous like that. So we skipped on walking all the way through them and just went up high to get a scenic view.An example of Grottesque architecture. The word "grottesque" comes from its similarities with grottoes under water.

Kevi and Rae imitate the statue behind them:The garden had plants from all over the world, including these Californian palms...
... and this Kapok tree.Mike above the gardens...... and the garden below. The view of the bell tower of the Catedral/former minneret from the entrance to the Jewish neighborhood. The south of Spain is full of such visible mixes of the three religions.
The Calle Juderia, which still should mean the street where they sell Jews:This bar, in the barrio of Santa Cruz, was, at least according to legend, once of the favorite haunts of Don Juan (the man behind all the stories, including Mozart's opera Don Giovanni, which I am going to see). Sevilla has spawned two famous legends - Don Juan and Carmen.Taking a break! Mike, Elsa, and Leslie:Marissa, Lucia, and Annie:The Catedral of Sevilla, the third largest in Europe:
Inside the Catedral: (If you think it looks immense in pictures, just imagine it in real life.)
The nave of the Catedral with the central chapel:
The most ornate altar you may ever see:

The Catedral was full of stained glass, and it was really striking. My camera doesn't always capture colors correctly, so imagine this with brighter colors. The part were it says 1685, for example, should be an even brighter purple.The tomb of Cristopher Colombus was originally in the Dominican Republic, where he asked to be buried. When Spain lost that colony, his remains were moved to Cuba, and then moved to Spain in 1899. His bones, or some part thereof, have been removed from the tomb to do some genetic testing to prove that these are his remains, as the Dominican Republic claims that the real Columbus is still buried there.In the bell tower:
Looking down on the Catedral:
Sevilla from above... note the bull ring.
The charity hospital. The sign says "Holy Charity / Poor Home / Stairway to Heaven."
The altar of the chapel in the hospital complex. At the top you can sort of see, in Hebrew, YHVH, the consonants for the name of God. The Plaza de España:
You see NO DO all over Sevilla. It comes from an old legend; a king died and wanted his sons to carry on ruling as he had, so he had NO DO written everywhere, to remind them that, "No me ha dejado" - which translates as, "You have not left me." The tradition continues and you see NO DO on modern things, like sewers and buses.A procession we stumbled upon. We think it was just a nice way of moving a ceremonial piece from one church to another. Sevilla is the center of Spain's Semana Santa celebrations - literally Holy Week, it refers to the week leading up to Easter, and is a huge deal in Spain.
In our hotel, Pepy and Mike play with matches, while Marissa shows her disapproval. The old synagogue in Córdoba. Note the balcony where women would have had to sit:
Showing again the three religions, this is a picture of a synagogue built in Arab style, which was later converted into a church:Like the Latin we saw in the Alcázar, this Hebrew script is the only clue that this building was not built for Muslims:
The ugliest enclosed Plaza I've seen in Spain. In fact, it's the only ugly one I've seen...Roman ruins, with no explanation of what they once were. The complete capitals are reconstructed, while the broken ones are original:
The outside of the Mezquita/Catedral of Córdoba:
And the inside, which is truly a forest of columns. (Or a grove, as they're a little too well organized to be a forest.) I promise I posted as few pictures of this as I could handle, but if you want to see more, I have about 50 just of columns...Some of the many Christian additions to the building:
This is what the Mezquita was like. Only more incredible and never ending...
Each succesive ruler tore down old walls to build new additions, but some of the old walls were preserved.The last Muslim addition, which is also the fanciest part of the building (well, apart from the chapel, but that's another story): The holiest part of the Mezquita is this mosaiced section decorated with Koranic versions. It's so gold that when you get close it sparkles.
Each of the columns is signed by the worker who built it, as a way of keeping track of how much each worker should be paid.
The chapel in the center, which destroyed part of the forest, but in the long run saved the whole building from the effects of the earthquake in Lisbon:
A spectacular organ:
Half of us with the monitores and Jaime inside the Mezquita:
We play in the fountains, having discovered that apart from the Mezquita, there is little to nothing to do in Córdoba:Marissa in front of one of the absurd diaromas in the most hysterical museum ever:
Is nothing sacred anymore?!

In which Lynn realizes that old cities are just inherently beautiful

2005-10-11T10:10:00.000-04:00

This past weekend we went on a group excursion to Sevilla and Córdoba, two gorgeous cities in Andalucia, the southernmost part of mainland Spain. We woke up nice and early Friday morning, arrived at Atocha train station as the sun was rising, and discovered that Jaime (Lipton, our program director was not there). He was caught in traffic and with him were our train tickets, without which we could not board the train. So about 6 minutes before the train was scheduled to leave, we asked Lucia, the monitor who works in the program office, was to do. She said, “Prepare to run.” So we did. When Jaime arrived with about 3 minutes left, he gave the tickets to the agent and we ran down the moving sidewalk onto the track and then along the track until car 5, which we all got on with enough time for the train to leave as scheduled at 8 am. It was quite an experience. Once on the train, we had a smooth ride as we were taking the AVE (an abbreviation which also is the Spanish word for bird), Spain’s incredible high-speed train which runs so smoothly you might not even be aware you’re on a train (as Anesa and Sarah demonstrate).

Two hours later, we arrived in Sevilla. We spent the morning wandering around – our group checked out the Torre del Oro, the tower where they stored all the gold coming from the New World – and then in the afternoon we had a guided tour of the major spots of interest in Sevilla. Our guide, Francisco, took us through the Alcázar (fortress) and the Catedral of Sevilla. The Alcázar was a palace built in the Moorish style, but not by Arabs. There had been an Arab palace on the spot, but in (or around) the 14^th century, which is to say after the Christians had reconquered Sevilla, there was an earthquake that destroyed the palace, and they had to rebuild it from scratch. Luckily, the king decided to be tolerant and rebuilt it in the Arab style, but with little hints that show that it’s not really a Muslim palace. It was very similar to the Alhambra in Granada, only less grand and more Catholic. The gardens were immense and absolutely gorgeous. After that we went on to the Catedral, which is the third largest in Europe, after St. Paul’s in London and St. Peter’s in Rome. It was, as you might guess, immense. The coolest thing about it was that it is undergoing restoration, so all the stained glass windows (of which there were nearly a hundred) had been cleaned and were really shiny and bright. Pictures just don’t do these colors justice. After checking out the Catedral, we climbed the tower. The old minaret of the mosque that once occupied the site where the Catedral was built, it was expanded by adding a bell tower on top. The tower is more than 70 meters high (about 210 feet) and is accessible by climbing 34 ramps – designed so that the muhedin who went up there to call Muslims to pray could ascend by riding a burro in the case that he was unable to walk. It was a brutal climb, but worth the view from the top. We also took a brief stroll through the old Jewish quarter, which was mostly destroyed during the earthquake, and then rebuilt and the reconstructed neighborhood was given the name of the Barrio of Santa Cruz (the neighborhood of the Holy Cross), ironically.

That night, Mike, Marissa, Jocelyn and I went out for tapas and then we all went out to the Carboniera, an old carbon factory that has been turned into a flamenco club. It was really cool – most flamenco is scripted and rehearsed; this was not. There was one guy playing guitar, one singing and clapping, and a woman singing and dancing. At a few points in the night, people from the audience, dressed in street clothes, came and danced too. We watched the show and drank some Sangria and Agua de Sevilla (a tasty drink made from champagne, Couintreau, and fruit juice topped with cream and cinnamon). After a few rounds, we head off to bed.

The next day we woke up and discovered that the hotel had a full buffet breakfast – a wonderful surprise, so we ate a good deal and then went on another guided tour, this time of the Museo de Bellas Artes (Museum of Fine Arts – a converted monastery filled with art from monasteries around Spain that were closed when the republicans came to power) and a charity hospital. The hospital is an interesting story. There was a man, whose name I have completely forgotten, who decided that the rich people of the city needed to take care of the poor people, and not just by throwing gold on the ground and having all the people fight over it. So he started a brotherhood of the rich, which still exists, dedicated to taking care of the poor of the city. As part of the brotherhood, they set up a free hospital, which is still being run, and we were taken into the courtyard of the hospital and the attached church. Thus ended the guided part of our visit to Sevilla, but we did some more touristy stuff later. After a brief nap, Marissa and I wandered around and ended up near the university, which has some beautiful buildings, and from there we went through the gardens that are just there and ended up at the Plaza de España, a semicircular plaza (which we have never seen before, and we’ve seen a lot of plazas) which was, unfortunately, under construction, so while it looked like there was a moat going through and bridges to walk over said moat, there was no water. That night, we met up with Mike and Pepy for dinner and ice cream sundaes and then went to bed early, to be rested for Córdoba.

We arrived in Córdoba and got to were we had to be early, so Jenine and I took a turn through the Archeology Museum, which was awesome as it was basically a poorly organized collection of Roman ruins that they didn’t really know what to do with, so they were all put in a museum. After that we met our guide, Isabel, who took us on a tour of the Juderia, the name for the Jewish neighborhood. Juderia is a word which we all agree should mean a place where they sell Jews (think about it – they sell zapatos in a zapateria, carne in a carneceria, pan in a panaderia, etc). We visited the old synagogue, built in the Moorish style, which was later used as a church, talked about local philosophers (including Maimonides and Seneca), and wandered through some old buildings and courtyards. Then we had a lunch break, but, having indulged yet again in the breakfast buffet at our hotel, we were not hungry, so Jenine and I went and hit all the places of interest in the city – the hideous enclosed plaza, the Roman ruins, and the central plaza of the city. In 20 minutes. So we had ice cream and hung out, and that was fun. Up until this point, Córdoba was an interesting but unremarkable city. And then it was 2 pm and the Mezquita opened and I completely changed my mind. The Mezquita, Catedral, or Mezquita Catedral of Córdoba is an amazing building. Built by the caliphs of Córdoba, and expanded every few years, it’s an immense forest of pillars that stretches on as far as the eye can see and was later adapted by the Christian rulers of the city, so it has chapels around the outside and a huge royal chapel in the middle. Actually, that’s an interesting story. The king who ordered the chapel built had never seen the Mezquita, but after his wedding he visited it and lamented having ordered the chapel built. But then in the 18^th century, an earthquake hit Lisbon and the effects were felt as far away as Sevilla and Córdoba, destroying many buildings. The Mezquita, however, was not damaged, and scholars claim that this is because the chapel acts as a knot in the center of the building, holding up everything around it. So while a large number of the original columns were destroyed for the building of the chapel, it actually serves a very positive function, and it really is quite beautiful. Pictures do not do justice to any part of the Mezquita (I know – I saw professional pictures of it before going there and I was not impressed), so you’ll have to take my word for it. Or go there yourself someday, which I absolutely recommend.

After the Mezquita, we had more free time, so we had lunch and then Jenine and I took Mike and Marissa on a quick tour of the city, stopping again for ice cream and to play in the fountains. We then walked across the Roman bridge and checked out the museum on the other side, which called itself the Torre de la Calahorra: Puente entre oriente y ocidente, which translates at the Calahorra Tower: Bridge Between the Orient and the Occident. They gave us absurd headsets and when you went into each room, you pressed a button and wax figures gave speeches, or they talked about the music of water, or played wonderfully danceable music. The headsets also had two volume controls, one for French and one for Spanish, so if you turned up both, you could listen to the information in both languages at the same time. The museum was not designed to be hysterical, but we were all very amused. After checking out the view from the top of the tower, we head back to the city and wandered around, trying to get into the gardens of the Alcázar and failing. (Lesson: Córdoba is a small city with not much to do and things close early on Sundays.) At this point, we wandered back to the train station and hopped on the AVE back to Madrid. All in all, it was an awesome trip.

Tonight: Hamlet performed by Spanish actors with Lev. Tuesday: Don Giovanni at the Royal Opera House. Wednesday: Cervantes fair (think a Renaissance fair, but centered on Cervantes). Thursday: PARIS!

Also – is it bad that I’m upset that it’s finally raining in Madrid? I mean, I know Spain is in the middle of a huge drought (the worst year since the 1930s), but I hate having to go out in the middle of a downpour… Silly weather. Maybe it won’t be raining in Paris?

Funny words and beautiful art

2005-10-06T14:30:00.000-04:00

I don't have much to say, but first of all, I thought I'd share with you my favorite street name and my favorite bus sign. The street name is Santa Maria de la Cabeza, which translates as Holy Mary of the head, and is the street where Vaughn lives and also part of my bus route. The other funny name is a bus route. Buses here have on the front the name of their origin and below the name of their destination and there's a bus I go past on a regular basis that starts in Prosperidad and ends in Cristo Rey, or vice versa, so it says Prosperidad Cristo Rey or Cristo Rey Prosperidad on the front. That translates to Prosperity Christ the King, which is just so Spanish and Catholic. And I am amused.

Today I went to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemiza (say that 5 times fast). It's an art gallery that is comprised on things that were all once part of the private collection of a very rich man. When he died, his current wife, number four, happened to be Spanish, so she steered the collection to Spain. She also went on to collect art, and there's a small wing named after her. It's a great collection, but her husband's taste did not wear off on Carmen, whose collection is fairly lame in comparison. Less well known than the Prado and the Reina Sofia, it is nonetheless a very nice museum.

Tomorrow, I'm off to Sevilla and Cordoba, so more interesting pictures and stories should soon follow.

A Solar Eclipse and Shanah Tova

2005-10-04T12:07:00.000-04:00

So Spain had a solar eclipse on Monday, and as it happens Madrid was the place that was eclipsed longest (I don't know if that's the right way to say that, but you know what I mean). The whole city was put on hold at 10:57 am, the peak of the eclipse, and everyone was outside with their eclipse glasses. It wasn't something I wanted to watch for the whole 3 hours, but it was pretty cool. This is what we all saw:For more pictures check out the galleries at http://www.20minutos.es/galeria/440/
http://www.20minutos.es/galeria/442/
The best ones are http://www.20minutos.es/galeria/442/0/46/
and http://www.20minutos.es/galeria/440/0/14/

Monday was also the start of Rosh Hashanah, so Happy New Year to you all! I, unfortunately, had to tutor a kid in English Monday night and go to class/a really important meeting this (Tuesday) morning and I have tutoring tonight/class and a concert tomorrow morning, so I won't be making it to services this time. But Mike and I had apples and honey last night in the Plaza Mayor to wish eachother a sweet new year.

The Plaza Mayor

2005-10-04T11:32:00.000-04:00

So last Saturday my friends and I made plans to hang out and drink in the Plaza Mayor, and I got there early, so I was sitting on a bench, waiting for them, when I noticed a large group had gathered on the other side of the plaza. So I walked over and what did I find? A guy spinning fire! There no poi, and he didn't have the form of, say, Jonathan Clark, but he was technically really good, if less flashy than Prometheus, for example. So I stayed and watched for a while, and took some pictures. He was too far away for them to be any good, but you get the idea. I can find the Alpha Delt types in any city, it would seem...
Amy and I made plans for Saturday night, and since we had had so much fun playing cards in a cafe on Thursday night, we decide to play Asshole (a card game that involves drinking as you play) in the Plaza Mayor, because we like it and it seemed like a slightly less sketchy plaza than most of the ones in Madrid. When we got there, no one really wanted to play Asshole, so instead Amy and I taught them our version of Kings, which was really an amalgamation of Kings and Fotch, in which we combined our favorite rules from each. (The first rule was turned over by Lev very early in the game and he declared that everyone had to speak in Spanish for the rest of the game, which was an awesome rule.) Everyone was there, well, not all my friends, but a lot of them – Mike, Amy, Meg, Lev, Jenine, Pepy, Marissa, and me (all Vassar except Lev, who goes to Columbia; I am going to miss all my Vassar friends a ton when I go back to Wes). And it was awesome and we were having tons of fun and we were playing Kings in the Plaza Mayor! Okay, so this will be a lot of pictures of people you don't know. But I like the pictures of my friends and me hanging out, and you'll all probably hear a lot about them when you get back, so deal with it...

Meg and Lev:
Meg and me:
Lev claims he gave his friends the address for my blog. This amuses me to no end.Marissa, Pepy, and Jenine:Ice cream break!
Why is it always so adorable when I have pictures of Mike groping girls?
Mike and Amy:Amy:
Michael J:
Well, this was supposed to be a cute picture of me and Amy...
Me with Amy and Meg:
Now that's more like it!Amy and Meg:
Katie arrives!
I think Katie is happy in this picture?Pepy and Katie:
Chilling in our square (Pepy, Lev, Amy, Meg, and Katie):
Awww!
Mike and Marissa go on a doner kebab hunt. They were succesful, as one always is in Madrid.Lev and Katie:
Now I really hope Lev's friends are reading this:
Yes, this was late in the night. How did you guess?

More Palace Pictures

2005-10-04T10:09:00.000-04:00

Okay, I don't know why I didn't post these pictures before. But they're fabulous and must be shown off.

Marissa and Mike standing guard outside the palace:
Architectural detail in the dining room:Why yes, that is a Stradivarius. Now imagine a room full of Stradivarius instruments.
The music room, which is a different room from the Stradivarius room:
A fancy guitar in said music room:The museum part exhibited all kinds of cool stuff. This, for example, is the every day silverware:Apparently there used to be a crystal factory in Retiro. These are some of the things that were manufactured there:
I wouldn't want to eat off a plate with a picture of me on it, but then I'm not the king of Spain.
Ah, the Royal Chapel. It was gorgeous. Those Catholic Kings had classy taste. Unlike whoever built the ugly Royal Cathedral outside.
Another ceiling I love:
The duck helmet! Yeah, that dog might have armor, but he really isn't protected...

Giving credit were it is due, I stole these pictures from Mike. This one is Marissa and me being super cute:Mike in the entry way to the palace, showing how classy he is...Mike's camera is much better than mine and thus works much better even without a flash. This is what the apothecary really looked like.
And a better picture of the table ornament:This one I'm just including cause it's adorable:

Speaking of Kings and Queens...

2005-09-26T18:34:00.000-04:00

This post could also have been titled “Chueca (or Lynn shows herself to be a fag hag yet again)” and I really can’t decide which title I prefer. As you may have gathered, Chueca is the gay neighborhood of Madrid, but it is also the trendy, young part of Madrid. Chueca is the neighborhood around the Plaza de Chueca, and it is bordered on the west by Calle Fuencarral, which runs north to Bilbao and Quevedo, my Metro stops. In fact, I live practically at the corner of Calle Gonzalo de Córdoba (my house number is 5 and the numbering starts at Fuencarral, so we’re the third house from the corner). The simplest way to get to Chueca is walking – it’s a 15 minute walk, but taking the Metro would require at least one transfer and take me out of my way. The great thing about living in a city that stays up as late as Madrid is that there are always people on the streets, so there’s nothing unsafe about walking home alone after 4 in the morning, but then, I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself.

Friday night I had choir rehearsal in Getafe until 10 pm (it was a great rehearsal – more about the choir in another post) and then had to take the bus back to Madrid (I’ll explain geography some other time, too). By that time it was 10:45 and I had just enough time to take the Metro home, grab a döner kebab (what we would call a gyro – easily found in Madrid, one of the cheapest and at the same time tastiest foods in existence), eat it on the way home, change my clothes, and head back out to meet everyone at 11:30 in Chueca. I forget who exactly was there at the time, but throughout the night I hung out with the following people, in different combinations: Mike, Marissa, Amy, Pepy, Meg, Vaughn, and Karen. We also met and hung out with Marisol, Marisa, and Arjéniz. Marisol and Mike live with the same family, and Marisa and Arjéniz are Marisol’s friends. They all go to the University of California and are some of the other 150 or so Americans who are currently attending the University of Carlos III. We started out the night in a trendy, but surprisingly inexpensive, café/bar (when I say inexpensive I mean in comparison, it was certainly not cheap, but that is Madrid). We then went to Escape, a lesbian dance club that is free if you enter before 2 am. Most clubs in Chueca are that way – if you enter before 2, there’s no cover charge, because the majority of people hang out in bars until 2 or 3 and then head to the dance clubs, so the clubs are free early in the night to induce people to come earlier. Escape is a club with a good reputation – it’s right on the plaza, it plays contemporary danceable music, and even though it is mostly lesbian, it does attract a mixed clientele. So we went to Escape, danced for a while, and then decided to move on. On the way out, since we had been there for a while, they stamped our arms so we could get back in later in the night if we wanted to. [When we decided to leave I commented to Mike that he just wanted to leave because it a lesbian club. He then asked me if I had been interested in anyone there, and I told him that I hadn’t been, so he simply told me that at least one of us should get to enjoy some eye candy, which I recognized was a valid point.]

All throughout Chueca, and the rest of Madrid, are people handing out business card sized flyers that advertise the local bars and sometimes include special offers. Many include free chupitos (shots), which are usually just water and sugar, but it’s always fun to say that you got a free drink. So we went to one of those on the Calle de Bailén, where we got our free shots of apple liquor and then bought a mini of calimocho, which I split with Mike. A mini is a drink size, ironically titled since it is a liter, and calimocho is a drink made by mixing red wine and Coke. Karen and I really like them, Mike is indifferent, and Meg and Vaughn thought it was weird. We really liked this bar – the bartender was friendly and the drinks were actually cheap. We will certainly be going back there some day. After leaving the bar, we walked around for a while looking for other places to go. By this point, everyone had gone home except for Mike and me, but we ran into Karen and Pepy again, and then ran into Brendan, Jessie, Rachel, and Amelia in the Plaza de Chueca. After hanging out on the benches there for a while, we went our separate ways, with Mike, Karen, and I going back to Escape. The music was still good, but it was jam packed with people, to the point where it was impossible to dance or even move, and the ceilings weren’t too high, so it was really smoky as well. So Mike and Karen took a final turn around the room to look for the people they had been scoping out, and I walked home along Fuencarral, getting in just before 4:30 am.

At some point on Friday, we had made plans to bottelón and then go to Kapital. Translation: bottelón, which Mike’s dictionary explains as something like outdoor drinking, is a Spanish tradition, in which young Spaniards buy two liter bottles of soda, drink some, and then add alcohol to the bottles, which they then drink from communally in plazas. Kapital is a huge dance club with a large cover charge and something like seven floors of dancing. So, we made plans to meet at 11:30 in Sol and then go from there. Mike was running late, so while waiting for him, I had a caña with Antoine and his girlfriend, whose name is something very French that I have completely forgotten. They are Swiss students living in Madrid for the semester – she is doing an internship and he is taking classes at Carlos III with us. Mike and Brendan joined us near Sol and we all walked to Chueca while drinking our bottle of Coke with rum. We had given up on Kapital – because the cover charge was more than we felt like paying and because Kapital is not a mixed club; it is completely and thoroughly straight and Mike and Brendan were sick of straight clubs. Our destination was Long Play, a very fashionable and super popular club complete with bouncers and velvet rope marking the line to get in, where we were supposed to meet with Arjéniz and Marisol. Unfortunately, while Long Play is free on Fridays until 3 am, it’s only free on Saturdays until 2 am, and we arrived after 2, and Antione’s girlfriend didn’t want to pay to go in because she was already tired, so we walked around looking for cheap clubs. We found a Goth one that was giving out free drinks and had a foosball table (which Mike, of course, took advantage of) and two technically mixed but basically all male clubs which made me feel more than a little awkward. We also ran into a very nice Argentine in the Plaza de Chueca, who Mike had met another night. He was handing out flyers for a club (MIT) which was free until 2, and he told us that if we came back some other day of the week, we should find us and he would take us there. After a long conversation about such things as the state of the Argentine economy, we moved on, and decided to head back to Long Play. So Mike, Brendan, and I paid to get in, and the other two went home. It was certainly worth paying for – it’s a two story club with dance music (wordless) on the first floor and very danceable pop music in a mix of English and Spanish on the second floor, including at one point a sped up version of Moulin Rouge that made me miss CTY dances and Sami. It was also a truly mixed club, straight, gay, lesbian, whatever. We ran into Arjéniz, Marisol, and some of their friends there and danced the night away. Literally. We finally left at 5:45 am when we were so tired that we knew we had to leave so we would make it home before passing out. Brendan lives at Iglesia, one stop passed Bilbao, so he walked me home. When we got to Bilbao, at 6 in the morning, I started to turn onto my street, and I asked Brendan how one walked to his house from there. He said that he didn’t know, so I jokingly told him he should get on the Metro, which had just opened, and take it the one stop to Iglesia. At this point he decided that that sounded like fun and he walked down into the station. And that’s the solution. Rather than worry about getting on the Metro before it closes at 1:30 am, you just have to stay out late enough to go home once the Metro reopens at 6 am. It’s brilliant.

All in all, it was a fabulous weekend. Club dancing isn't quite as cool as the awesome abandon I feel at CTY dances, and it never involves skanking in the living room of the house, but it's also not some drunken excuse for getting hit on by sketchy people. It's just fun.

Oh, and for your own education – I learned two new words this weekend: mariposo and coño. Mariposa means butterfly and mariposo is a slang word for a gay man (much like fairy in English) and Mike taught it to me. Coño literally means the female genital organ (which is to say, cunt), but is not quite as strong a word as the English translation; it is used by young people as a greeting one yells out at friends across the plaza or down the street. So, for example, when I saw Brendan appear from nowhere Friday night across the Plaza de Chueca, instead of calling out “¡Hombre!” (man or dude), I could have yelled out “¡Coño!” and it would have been perfectly acceptable. (This word I learned in my Spanish class at the university. It's an incredible class.) Don’t you feel educated?

[Addendum. So I was reading this week’s Guía del Ocio on the Metro this Monday when I noticed that in the nightlife section there was a special about lesbian clubs, in which Escape was featured, proving yet again that it is an incredible publication. The Guía had this to say, approxiamately of course, because I’m translating:

Plural feminism: Escape exchanges the style “rude girl” for the “lesbian chic,” with it’s new design {Note that both rude girl and lesbian chic were originally written in English.}

Escape is the female bar par excellance in Chueca. Due to the increasing demand and many women coming out of the closet, a few months ago it changed it’s decoration (with green minimalist tones) to offer a slightly more feminine touch with a design focused on women. Commercial music, a good team of public relations, themed parties, costumes… all so that everything goes divinely for ellas {they female} and ellos {they male} (they don’t discriminate against men at all). The times of camión {a Spanish word that translates as butch, someone who is butch is camionera} are long past in Escape, which is now a bar of strong women, but also feminine.

Okay, that was much better before I translated it. But you get the idea.]

The Palacio Real

2005-09-25T11:00:00.000-04:00

So this Saturday we decided to be super touristy, go to the Palacio Real (royal palace), and take tons of pictures. Check, check, and check. There was no flash allowed inside, so some of my pictures are very blurry. I will try to supplement the pictures I took with the ones taken by Mike, who has a better camera than I do.

Outside the palace are two rows of statues of old Spanish kings. These statues predate the existence of Spain, so we wondered what they were kings of. We're still wondering about them. (There are other gardens, but we were so sick of walking after 3 hours in the palace that we're leaving the gardens for another day.)
If only this still were the pharmacy. Maybe they could have made Marissa feel better.The gang: Lev, Mike, Marissa, and Vaughn:
Marissa and I demonstrate what we think of the Catedral Real. Wait, no, the other thing. We hate the Catedral Real and find it to be hideous.
What a terrifying statue. With no explanation. It might be Franco?
Me with the Palacio Real in the background.The main staircase into the palace. Imagine walking into this room every day.
One of the many amazing ceilings. Each room had an incredible one. I am resisting posting all the pictures, but these should give you some sense of how spectacular the palace is.
Marissa, lounging in her future home.
This room had good lighting. So I'm posting this picture. But I don't have any idea what room it was. At this point, they all run together.
The boys:Marissa is not impressed by the Throne Room. Having become accostomed to such fancy accomodations, she is now bored by opulence.A full view of the Throne Room. Now imagine hundreds of rooms like this...
Um. Wow. There are no words.
Another room:
More incredible ceilings:
The fancy dining room. The palace is still used for special occasions, which leads me to think that Spain's state dinners are held here. Which has got to be really intimidating for the visiting dignitaries.
Each room had a completely different color scheme. This is not one of my favorite ones, but it's still pretty cool.
A table ornament. Which doesn't leave much room for a table.The more modern rooms start out with a 19th century billiard room...
...and include this neat Japanese inspired room.We take a break and sit down, thoroughly exhausted from the opulence we've been viewing.The Royal Armory:
Alright - someone needs to make a pair of these and bring them to the next Quest game.
We were looking at the view to the west of the palace. It has been spoiled by high rises built during the times of Franco. So instead I bring you this lovely picture.
Even the most macho of men can't be on their feet all the time.

Sunday in the Park with the Grandparents

2005-09-20T14:36:00.000-04:00

These are some of the things that Safta, Grandpa, and I saw when we were walking this Sunday. Check them out!

The Plaza Mayor:
The cyclists on the Vuelta a España take their last turn and head into the home strech along the Paseo de Relectos:Paseo de Relectos was closed due to the cyclists, so after they passed through all the assembled people ran over to the Plaza de las Cibeles to take pictures up close. Never one to think for myself, I joined the masses. Cibeles is one of the best known sights in Madrid and it also where Real Madrid supporters have their victory rallies. In the Parque del Buen Retiro (park of good retreat/withdrawal), the former royal luxury park where all Madrileños seem to go on Sundays:
The Fuente de las Alcachofas (The Artichoke Fountain):The Main Estanque (some word that means a type of body of water I can't really translate, but can mean pool or pond) and the monument to Alfonso XII:The drum circles that happen every Sunday:

Lynn’s New Best Friend: The Guía del Ocio

2005-09-20T14:32:00.000-04:00

As recommended by Jaime, our program director who you might know better as Professor James Lipton, I bought the Guía del Ocio for the wonderful price of €1 on Friday and, let me tell you, that was €1 well spent. What is the Guía del Ocio, you ask? Well, literally it translates as the guide of idleness or leisure, and it is a list of everything that is happening in Madrid in the next week, and major events in the near future. And when I say everything, I mean everything; all the movies, both a list of what movies are playing and where and a list of all the theaters and what each one is showing, every special exhibit in the museums, all the theater and dance performances of the week (this week’s edition also included the entire 2005-2006 theater season for all the companies in Madrid), the prime time TV schedule, all the concerts in Madrid, lists of restaurants, by name and type of food, and other information of note. It is the most amazing book, periodical, guide thing ever and I am going to buy it every Friday for the rest of the semester.

So now you say, alright Lynn, we don’t really care about this… what did you DO this weekend? Well, I say to you – are you sure you want to know? You won’t be jealous that you aren’t living such a fabulous life? You sure? Well, at least you can’t say I didn’t warn you…

Last Wednesday , I was reading 20 Minutos (20 Minutes – one of the at least three free periodicals distributed every morning at the entrance to most Metro stops) and I saw that there was a free Carlos Nuñez concert in Majadahonda that night. Carlos Nuñez, for those of you who don’t know (which is to say everyone who’s reading this except for Gil and Miguel, if they are even reading this), is a Galician musician who plays the gaita (Galician bagpipes) and at least five different types of flutes. Unfortunately, it turns out that Majadahonda is way out in the suburbs of Madrid and it would have been difficult to get there and nearly impossible to get back, and besides we were having dinner with the monitores that night and I didn’t want to skip out on that. So, I reluctantly gave up on the concert. Luckily for me, Carlos Nuñez seems to love giving free concerts and, as I was reading the Guía del Ocio, I noticed that he was giving another free concert Saturday night at 11 pm in the Parque de Atenas, a nice park next to the Palacio Real (Royal Palace) with an outdoor stage. In the spirit of things conspiring against me seeing Carlos Nuñez, that day the temperature dropped 10^oC over night (which is to say, from about 90^oF to about 72^oF), we left late for Segovia and left even later coming back to Madrid, but we got back with enough time to go back home and change and walk to the park, which we found after a slight detour (when two streets cross on a map, you expect them to cross and not for one of them to be hundreds of feet below the other one). But it was worth all of the hassle, because it was perhaps the best concert I’ve ever seen. (Well – perhaps the best professional one. I’ve seen some damn good concerts at Alpha Delt in my day.) The concert was basically Celtic music from all over the world including Ireland, Scotland, Spain (both Galicia and Asturias), Cuba, and perhaps some other place I’ve forgotten. Carlos Nuñez was accompanied by his brother (the percussionist), a guy named Paco (who played a mandolin-like instrument), and two female violinists (one of whom also played the tambourine). They also had a “chorus” of eight bagpipe players come on for a few songs and twice during the concert they let local musicians who had showed up before the show come onstage and play. They were all incredible and by the end of the concert all of the people were so into it that they forgot to be cold. Everyone was clapping along (except when they were playing so fast as to make it impossible) and waving their arms and it was impossible to keep from moving along with the music (you couldn’t really dance to it, but you certainly couldn’t stand still). It was the awesome. And if you thought that having as many as eleven different bagpipe players on one stage at a time was inherently a bad idea, you were dead wrong. Actually – it’s funny. Not counting college bands/concerts at Alpha Delt, because there are so many of those I can’t keep them straight, the last two concerts I’ve been to have been modern Celtic (or at least Celtic-inspired) music with a twist that I saw in Europe. I am referring, off course, to Dropkick Murphy’s in London last spring break and Carlos Nuñez last Saturday in Madrid. Two very good concerts…

Then Sunday I spent wandering around with Safta and Grandpa (my maternal grandparents). We hunted for a church that was listed in a 50 year old guidebook that they had, failed to find it, and settled for San Francisco Grande, which has a cupola even larger than St. Paul’s. We then went to El Rastro, the Camden Town of Madrid, which I will write more about after I have some more time to explore it, and from there to the Plaza Mayor, where we found the same string ensemble I found two weeks ago, and when we walked over they were playing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and just like two weeks ago we showed up just in time for Winter. After stopping for a brief listen, we ate lunch in a Galician inspired restaurant (mmm, pimientos de padrón) and then we walked some more until we got to the Paseo of Relectos, the main drag in Madrid, where we sat and waited for the end of the Vuelta a España (the Spanish version of the Tour d’France, only with many fewer cyclists) after which we dared un paseo (how you like that Spanglish?) through El Retiro (the park that used to be a royal possession; like a more majestic and less woodsy Central Park). We finished the day off with dinner at my apartment, during which I tried very hard to translate between my Señora, henceforth referred to as Angela, and my grandparents. The Spanish to English was very easy, but when translating what my grandparents said I had to use a lot of hand gestures and approximations. It worked out fine, but it was a little tiring.

All in all, a good weekend.

More Segovia pictures, because Lynn is silly and forgetful

2005-09-20T12:21:00.000-04:00

I stole these pictures from Mike for one of three reasons:
1. He has a better camera than mine and it takes better pictures.
2. When he tries to be, he's a better photographer than I am.
3. I managed to delete some pictures from my camera...

The countryside around Segovia was spectacular!
A view of the Alcázar from below, on our scenic detour:Views of the octagonal church:Mike and Vaughn feel the mystical energy of the center of the church:
As I said, Mike is a better photographer than me, and this picture of Meg is Exhibit A:Do you ever wonder why there are so many goofy pictures of Lev? Yeah, then you obviously have never met Lev.The aqueduct:
Mike and Katie with the new part of the city behind. (Note that even the new part of the city looks old. I love Europe!)Vaugh, Meg, and Mike. All I have to say is, "Awww..."And, finally, a cute picture of Amy and Janine:

Segovia

2005-09-20T10:22:00.000-04:00

Rather than describe our group excursion to Segovia, I will let the pictures speak for themselves. I was going to post a picture of lunch, but abstained as I know there are many vegetarians reading this who probably don't want to see a picture of the baby pig they served us.

The most famous thing in Segovia is the Roman aqueduct, which is beautiful:All streets seem to lead to the Gothic Catedral in the center of town:
Juan Bravo was a man who lead a rebellion against the king, who was at the time, I think, Phillip III (or Felipe III, if you prefer). He lost. Not withstanding there is a statue of him in the city and many other things (shops, streets, etc) are named after him.We were in Segovia on the same day as the annual Roman festival. These men are practicing fighting so they can fend off the Roman attackers.
The entrance to old Jewish quarter. Note the Sephardic restuarant at the end of the street.
The old Jewish cemetary can be seen on the hill:Me in front of the Alcázar or Castle. One of the kings, this time I think it was Carlos V of the Holy Roman Empire, which is Carlos I of Spain, made them strip the red tile roof and put on a more European grey one, which is why this is one of the only fortresses in Spain that looks like other European castles. Cuchi (our program subdirector) claims that it was the inspiration for Walt Disney. Others claim that the inspiration actually was the mad German prince's castle, but I think both are just theories...
At the entrance to the Alcázar, Marissa, Annie, Pepy, and Javi (one of our new monitores - not as cool as the Galician ones, but still cool):In the courtyard:Inside the castle, Marissa, Jessie, and Naomi:
The throne room with a painting that shows the crowning of Isabel, which happened just outside the Alcázar: The royal bedroom, where, presumably in this bed, Isabel of Castilla (or Castille if you prefer) once slept:What are Lev and Jessie doing?
In the armory:
Castle windows and the view of the barren countryside below:Note the octagonal church. Not as cool as an octagonal room, but rumored to have magical powers even so. (I hope some of my octagonal room friends are reading this!)
The view from the towers above the castle:Lev, Katelyn, and Javi:
Me with the view of the city behind:
Pepy shows off her incredible strength:
As do Laura and Jessie:
Ah English signs made by people who don't speak English...

The First Full Week in Madrid

2005-09-16T17:55:00.000-04:00

I was going to write a post about my general observations of Spain and Madrid, but it would probably have been overly general and I decided that I need a few more days at least before I can pass judgment on Spaniards. So instead, here’s an update on life in Madrid.

I have now spent a full week in Madrid and I am in love with it. Completely and totally in love. As I think I’ve mentioned before, it’s just a magical city. Every corner you turn has something new and wonderful to discover. Streets are winding, but semi-parallel, so you can take new routes to wherever you’re going each day. And each part of the city is distinctly different, so you can get on the Metro and then get off a few miles away and feel like you’re in a completely different city, or you can walk around and watch the neighborhoods gradually change. I can’t wait to get to the point where I know how all the neighborhoods fit together, but for the time being, I’m very happy just to wander around.

So I got back from southern Spain Saturday morning and spent the weekend just hanging around. That day I hung out around the apartment, went for a walk, and suddenly remembered that it was the day of the first board meeting of the semester and since I had a wave of home sickness hit me, I called the house phone and talked to Chris, Meg, Raoul, Katherine, and Gavin, which cheered me up greatly. Later, I met up with Karen, Pepy, and Mike and we went out for sandwiches, really good ice cream, and then to Chueca, the gay neighborhood, with a bunch of friends. Uncharacteristically, I left early and went home to sleep. The problem was twofold. First of all, we were all Americans and had no idea what was cool to do in the area, and I was not in the mood to wander around in the hopes that eventually we would find a happening place. In addition, the Metro here closes at about 1:30 (later depending on how close to the end of the line you are), and if you stay out past that you have to either catch a night bus (a Buo), something that I am sure I will eventually end up doing but could still be a bit sketchy, or you have to take a taxi, which costs money. (I don’t usually have to pay for transportation because the program buys us a monthly go anywhere in the city by bus or Metro pass.) So if you want to go out, you have to decide at 1 whether you want to go home then or stay out and risk suddenly crashing at 1:45 and wanting to go home, but either have to wait for a bus for up to half hour or have to pay for a taxi. So since there was no guarantee that we would have fun and since I hadn’t had much time to sleep while traveling, I went home and slept in.

Then Sunday, after doing nothing for a while, I went for a walk, taking a very convoluted route to Sol (which is pictured below), where I met Pepy. The night before we had talked about going to a movie, but never did, so we decided to hunt for a theater free of American movies dubbed into Spanish; we were fine with movies in Spanish and movies in English, but dubbing is unacceptable. We decided on Princesas, a beautiful and heart wrenching Spanish movie about two prostitutes and their sad but hopeful lives, and saw it with Mike, Vaughn, and Ashley. The story about Ashley… So, Milton, our friend from our trip to Tánger, doesn’t have a cell, but at one point he called me from his friend Ashley’s phone. We wanted to see if he wanted to see Princesas with us, so I called her phone, but he wasn’t around, so I told her that she could come solo if she wanted to, and she did, so we made a new friend. (I like the random encounters that just happen in cities.) After the movie, we got in touch with Milton and met up with him and a bunch of other people and had sangria and tapas for his birthday. We, unfortunately, all had to wake up early the next morning, so there was no one who wanted to stay out and go dancing with him, but we promised we would go out on Wednesday, his last day in Madrid. (That never happened; he didn’t call us and we didn’t have a number to reach him. Oh, well.)

And thus starts the week. I won’t bore you by going through day by day; I’ll just give you the TV news highlights. Theoretically, the week was spent in orientation for all the American students who will be attending the University of Carlos III this fall, but since I’m not taking any of the classes designed for American students, with the exception of the language class that I’m required to take, I didn’t actually have to go to most of the orientation. (Avoiding the Americans on other programs is my new goal for the semester. I am not a fan of them, in general.) So I spent the week hanging out, spending hours trying to find course schedules online and figuring out the jigsaw puzzle that is my schedule (almost finished with that), trying to talk to professors, taking a language proficiency exam (which I passed – I am not only proficient, I am superior), and exploring Madrid. More about classes and the university once a) I figure it all out and get registered and b) I have some pictures to illustrate my points.

Cool things I did this week: Well, Thursday night we went out (all of VWM, which is Vassar Wesleyan in Madrid, with Prof. Lipton, aka Jaime, and the monitores) to the theater. We saw Fuente Ovejuna by Lope de la Vega; it’s a play from Spain’s Gold Age (the 15^th century) about a town that rebels against a corrupt military leader who is raping women. They outnumber the soldiers, kill the commander, put his head on a pike, and then refuse to turn on each other when tortured by the messenger of the reyes católicos who want to know who is responsible. They then go to king and queen and plead for pardon, receive it, and the women, despite having been raped by a corrupt commander, end up happily with the men of their choice and what was a tragedy ends happily. I really enjoyed it, but that’s probably just because I was proud of myself for understanding the majority of what was happening. In fact, while I didn’t get any of the jokes, I think I understood the entire plot, though it took me a while to get into it. Afterwards, we went out to this great middle eastern restaurant (quite possibly the best food I’ve had in Madrid) that also had good mojitos and gave us each a free caña (beer on tap) to apologize for the incredibly slow service. By the time we finished all that, it was after midnight, so we took a long walk and ended up at Sol, from which I took the Metro home (I was tempted to walk, but Pepy didn’t feel like taking the Metro home alone, so I went with her).

Even cooler, however, is what I did tonight. To make a long story short, I told myself that I was going to join the University chorus and I did. It’s super cool – there are about 25 members, and it meets Friday nights from 7-10 with sections one hour a week and individual lessons for another half hour a week. The repertoire includes songs in every language imaginable – including Spanish, English, German, Italian, Latin, Japanese, and Basque. There are only three new members this year; the rest are all returners who, while slightly rusty, sounded great rehearsing old songs and have this great camaraderie. The all seem really friendly and cool. Also, one of them looks like a 25 year old version of Stef Fisher (Fischer?) which is very cool, but also really odd. Each time I looked at her I thought I was looking at Stef… Most of the concerts this semester are going to be of songs from their repertoire, so the (super cool) director told me since I can only fake being able to read music, I probably can’t sing with them in most of the concerts, but that’s fine with me. I just want to sing and meet people in the process. I will, at least presumably, be able to sing with them in their Christmas concert, since that’s all new material they’re starting to learn soon, so I’m excited about that. The coolest part about all of this is what one of the women said about me. When I first got there today, I said hi to the director and she told me where to sit. So I sat down and the woman sitting next time was like, “New? Don’t worry about it, we were all new once.” So she and I have a super brief conversation. Then a few minutes later, she officially introduces the three of us who are new, and gets to me and says, “This is Lynn, she’s with us from the US until January” and the woman I was talking to says, “Wow – I didn’t even notice she had an accent” and then later when she was getting my contact information, she told me that I spoke really good Spanish. As they say, it was the awesome. I felt so cool. I’m really looking forward to this whole choir business. I think just being around a large group of Spaniards and listening to them talk rapidly about choir politics and joking about each other for four hours a week while be really good, because I have to keep paying attention because every now and then someone says something serious. But don’t get me wrong – this is no Wes Singers with Ron Ebrecht. These people are serious and they sound amazing; at the same time, they’re chill and are fine with me bolting for a weekend or two… It’s the perfect balance between making quality music and having fun.

At some time tomorrow I will have been here for four weeks. On some level, I can’t believe that a month has gone by so quickly. At the same time, I have accustomed myself to living here without any problems. I miss always knowing what’s going on around me, of course, and being able to joke around all the time (I have become much more serious around Spaniards, because I can’t quite joke around with most of them – I miss being able to joke with Gil, etc. in Santiago), and it’s not easy being here, but I’m not scared of it, and I’m not really homesick much, and I am happy and I know that I won’t want to leave in January. But I keep telling myself that I have to, because I really do. I think whatever I do in the spring a little part of me will regret the decision – either I’ll leave Spain and regret not spending a whole year abroad when I have the chance to, or else I’ll stay here and regret missing the last semester that the class of 2006 is in college, and the sesquicentennial of the Phi, and my chance to go to St. Louis for spring break, and the prep time I need for my thesis, and taking the classes I need to take for my majors. It’s sort of win-win, because I know I’ll be happy no matter what I do, and it’s sort of lose-lose because I’ll miss something either way. Ah well.

Tomorrow – group excursion to Segovia. Sunday – Safta and Grandpa are visiting me!

[The pictures are of various wonderful things in Madrid. I don't feel like explaining all of them, but if you want to ask me specifically what they are, ask away!]