I know that that is sometimes the nature of travel, that no matter how much training in a language you have, unless you grow up in a place, there are certain things that you will never learn in a book. Take for instance the time Ben and I tried to buy a ticket to Ripoll.
"A donde va?" asked the guy at the ticket counter.
"Ripoll," answered Ben.
The guy looked at him quizically. "A donde?"
"Ripoll," Ben said a little louder. Maybe he was somewhat hard of hearing.
The guy looked at Ben with the universal I have no idea what you're talking about look etched across his face. He leaned his head toward Ben.
I pulled out the train schedule and pointed.
The man nodded in understanding. "Ahhh...Ripohhhwlllllllya."
"Si," I said, nodding vigorously in my attempt to overcompensate for not knowing how to speak his language while expressing my enthusiasm at his ability to read.
Of course there is no way of knowing that you have to hold out the "l" and add a "w" sound to the "o" unless you live there. Plus things are a little more different here since Ripoll is in the heart of Catalan country. To get around here, you have to wrap your mind around the fact that even though you are in Spain, Spanish will not be spoken here. Actually, there is no such thing as a Spanish language, but in fact "castillan" (translation: language spoken in Castilla").
Now before you pull out any of your hair or start riots and begin looting your local hardware store over this new information, let me give you a little Catalunyan and Spanish history (I've borrowed heavily from my Let's Go guide). You see, Catalunya is the most prosperous as well as the proudest provinces in Spain. Located in the northeastern section, it was colonized by the Greeks, Carthagians, Moors, and the Romans. It was even considered to be part of Charlemagne's domain for a time. In 989, Catalunya declared itself independent then united itself with the throne of Aragon. Jumping ahead 900 years, you find Catalunya trading with the Americas. In another one hundred years, they're having what is called the Catalan Renaissance which gives rise to the Modernista movement which gave rise to artists such as Picasso, Dali, Miro and Gaudi. (And what would life be like without these guys other than boring, unimaginative, and lacking a good surrealist sense of humor?)
Unfortunately for Catalunya there was this dictator named Francisco Franco and over the course of his 36 year or so reign, catalaneses (the Catalan people) were persecuted (think imprisonment and death) like no other group in Spain. The Catalan language was no longer allowed to be spoken, taught, or written and declared to be only a dialect of Spanish instead of a a completely different language (which it is. It would be like saying that French is a dialect of Spanish just because they're both romance languages and you like Spanish better.) It was not until Franco died in 1975 that the language was able to flourish once again.
Of course this is all beautiful and good until you're trying to get somewhere and no one has any idea what you're saying. Especially somewhere way up in the mountains. But I'm just being a naysayer. Ripoll, though rainy the whole time we were there is actually a gorgeous town located on in the foothills of the Pyrenees with two rivers running through it, a big fancy door on the front of its monastery and the gateway to all things fun in the mountains - skiing, hiking, and the tiny country of Andorra.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Monday, April 13, 2009
Tarragona
Tarragona - one of the most surprising cities Ben and I have visited. We went there because of promises of sun drenched beaches and 2nd century Roman ruins littering the city. but when we arrived, I wondered if we had made a bad decision. The place seemed dirtier than the other towns we had been to and to be honest, on the ugly side. Fortunately, the problem was all about location and after exploring the city and thinking we were heading to the beach, we ended up at an overlook above the ruins of an old Roman colisseum that had the Mediterranean as its backdrop. It was weird to think about the thousands of people that died for the entertainment of others in such a gorgeous setting.
However, the most unusal thing that happened was after dark. Ben and I had been wandering around, admiring the roman ruins hidden away in random nooks and crannies and incorporated into the buildings that had been built over them. How about I explain it like this:
You are wandering narrow streets in the evening after twilight has passed. Everything is fairly quiet except for the kids playing soccer, people walking their dogs, and a curious number of locals that all seem to be heading in the same direction. A church bell rings and more people continue to quietly rush in the toward one of the narrower alleys where more people are already standing, some with children on their shoulders. Of course Ben and I follow. From afar all we can see are the tops of candles and lights flickering against the walls of the houses and buildings lining the alleys and streets. When we reach the small crowd of 10 people lining the streets, that is when we see them; people of all ages dressed in white, walking down the street in parade formation, murmuring silent prayers, some holding candles, one holding a full size crucifix, and others wearing long pointy masks that look very similar to what someone in the KKK traditionally wears. Occasionally a a priest will say something and the others will repeat what he says in unison. Then they will stop and a small group of high school and middle school aged kids will play a short, solemn medieval sounding song using only a clarinet, violin, cornet and drum. When they finish, the parade moves on. What had we happened upon? The regular spring ritual in which the town would sacrifice their annual tourist? A world record for the largest seance? Nope, it is Tarragonaś version of Semana Santa.
However, the most unusal thing that happened was after dark. Ben and I had been wandering around, admiring the roman ruins hidden away in random nooks and crannies and incorporated into the buildings that had been built over them. How about I explain it like this:
You are wandering narrow streets in the evening after twilight has passed. Everything is fairly quiet except for the kids playing soccer, people walking their dogs, and a curious number of locals that all seem to be heading in the same direction. A church bell rings and more people continue to quietly rush in the toward one of the narrower alleys where more people are already standing, some with children on their shoulders. Of course Ben and I follow. From afar all we can see are the tops of candles and lights flickering against the walls of the houses and buildings lining the alleys and streets. When we reach the small crowd of 10 people lining the streets, that is when we see them; people of all ages dressed in white, walking down the street in parade formation, murmuring silent prayers, some holding candles, one holding a full size crucifix, and others wearing long pointy masks that look very similar to what someone in the KKK traditionally wears. Occasionally a a priest will say something and the others will repeat what he says in unison. Then they will stop and a small group of high school and middle school aged kids will play a short, solemn medieval sounding song using only a clarinet, violin, cornet and drum. When they finish, the parade moves on. What had we happened upon? The regular spring ritual in which the town would sacrifice their annual tourist? A world record for the largest seance? Nope, it is Tarragonaś version of Semana Santa.
Sevilla and el pasion de jesucristo!! OR Benś FOURTH UPDATE
Back in Sevilla, the city is on crack. Theyŕe setting up long, cordoned-off rows of seating for those lucky folks who reserved spots on the street. Buildings are renting out balconies - just street-view balconies, not even the rooms attached - for outrageous prices. Hostel and hotel prices alike are shooting upward minute by minute. Space is extremely limited - in fact, Stacy and I had to stay one night at one hostel (the Sevilla Inn Backpackers) and then shlep across town to get a couple of spare beds in a dorm at the Oasis Backpackers just to have three nights here. So whatś the time? Semana Santa time, people. The last full day of our stay here weĺl be packed in among crowds of tens, at times hundreds, of thousands of spectators spread all over the old part of the city. All down the Calle Sierpes (in a little casa somewhere on this street in the early 1500s, Cervantes began work on "Don Quixote"), a kilometers-long red carpet is spread through plazas and between narrow alleys, culminating in the huge square dominated by a truly immense and schizophrenic-looking Spanish Gothic cathedral.
Returning to Seville, a buzzing and bustling, fairly spread out city, after our stay in relatively small and laid-back Granada is quite a wrenching change (plus, as I mentioned, we didnt want to leave Granada). Luckily our first night was at the Sevilla Inn Backpackers, a quite strange and friendly little place located in the shadow of the Cathedral. When we arrived, a group of people were taking a Sevillan dance class on the roof near our room. A shaggy-looking English guy was parked, permanently by all evidence, on his Apple laptop in the kitchen, engaging all passers-by (including Stacy and I) in long, in depth conversations at any opportunity.
Stacy still being sick, we couldnt do anything too crazy, but we caught some more free flamenco at the Carboneira and ate a fair amount of tapas. For those not in the know, tapas are a long-standing and cool tradition in Spain whereby hordes of savvy local diners (trailed by several confused-looking tourists who dont know what the hell is happening) jump quickly from bar to bar, ordering a beer and one small sampler plate of specialty appetizers for each location. By dawn, everyone in the party has tried each and every dish currently prepared in the city (only a slight exaggeration!) Honestly, Stacy and I never really caught on to this tradition, for the simple reason that if we had, our entire trip budget would have been gone within three nights and we would have had to fly sadly home.
Since Stacy is probably going to write about the whole parade/KKK uniform thing (the KKK actually copied this uniform design from the Semana Santa worshippers under the delusion that they, the KKK, were following time-honored Christian traditions) I'll just leave you with the following advice - if you come for Semana Santa, seriously, all you need is probably one or two days of processions and crowds. If you can (and you don't yet have heat stroke from the day processions) DEFINITELY come out for the night processions, because they bring out thick candles that they use as walking sticks and light them all in rows. Furthermore, they festoon roses and candles all over huge golden floats illustrating scenes from the Passion in the Bible, that they then hoist on their shoulders above the crowd and move through the narrow streets. If this doesn't sound all that impressive, remember that some of these floats are hundreds of years old and actually weigh several tons.
I love Seville, and I would like to come back sometime when it's not on crack. It's an extremely proud city, but in a good way. Every once in a while during the following days of our trip we´ll catch a snippet of live coverage of various processions on Spanish T.V. (during the midnight Good Friday parade, a MILLION people were lined up along Calle Sierpes) and miss the city, but also sort of be glad we're not there right at that moment. If you can understand that. More later from Tarragona, Ripoll, and the Costa Brava! Stay tuned peoples.
Returning to Seville, a buzzing and bustling, fairly spread out city, after our stay in relatively small and laid-back Granada is quite a wrenching change (plus, as I mentioned, we didnt want to leave Granada). Luckily our first night was at the Sevilla Inn Backpackers, a quite strange and friendly little place located in the shadow of the Cathedral. When we arrived, a group of people were taking a Sevillan dance class on the roof near our room. A shaggy-looking English guy was parked, permanently by all evidence, on his Apple laptop in the kitchen, engaging all passers-by (including Stacy and I) in long, in depth conversations at any opportunity.
Stacy still being sick, we couldnt do anything too crazy, but we caught some more free flamenco at the Carboneira and ate a fair amount of tapas. For those not in the know, tapas are a long-standing and cool tradition in Spain whereby hordes of savvy local diners (trailed by several confused-looking tourists who dont know what the hell is happening) jump quickly from bar to bar, ordering a beer and one small sampler plate of specialty appetizers for each location. By dawn, everyone in the party has tried each and every dish currently prepared in the city (only a slight exaggeration!) Honestly, Stacy and I never really caught on to this tradition, for the simple reason that if we had, our entire trip budget would have been gone within three nights and we would have had to fly sadly home.
Since Stacy is probably going to write about the whole parade/KKK uniform thing (the KKK actually copied this uniform design from the Semana Santa worshippers under the delusion that they, the KKK, were following time-honored Christian traditions) I'll just leave you with the following advice - if you come for Semana Santa, seriously, all you need is probably one or two days of processions and crowds. If you can (and you don't yet have heat stroke from the day processions) DEFINITELY come out for the night processions, because they bring out thick candles that they use as walking sticks and light them all in rows. Furthermore, they festoon roses and candles all over huge golden floats illustrating scenes from the Passion in the Bible, that they then hoist on their shoulders above the crowd and move through the narrow streets. If this doesn't sound all that impressive, remember that some of these floats are hundreds of years old and actually weigh several tons.
I love Seville, and I would like to come back sometime when it's not on crack. It's an extremely proud city, but in a good way. Every once in a while during the following days of our trip we´ll catch a snippet of live coverage of various processions on Spanish T.V. (during the midnight Good Friday parade, a MILLION people were lined up along Calle Sierpes) and miss the city, but also sort of be glad we're not there right at that moment. If you can understand that. More later from Tarragona, Ripoll, and the Costa Brava! Stay tuned peoples.
Seven Sevillan Bites
I like Granada. If I decide to do a Spanish language program, this is where I want to live. Maybe it is the small town feel. Unfortunately we had to leave and head back to Sevilla, not that Sevilla was a bad place; it just didn't have the comfortable feel that Granada had. Of course this might all be because hundreds of thousands of people were packed like sardines into the tiniest of tiny streets for Semana Santa aka the holiest of holy weeks for all Spaniards of the Catholic persuasion. Since Ben is writing a more extended blog entry, I will write what I liked about Sevilla in as short of sentences as I can. This list is in no particular order:
1. This restaurant that seemed like a diner and was free of tourists (pre-Semana Santa. We got there a day before the week started). Sometimes you just go to a place and you cannot help but like the feel of it.
2. The tapas tradition. Buy a drink, any drink, and they give you free food.
3. The Moroccan food served at my hostel.
4. My hostel room. Though we were in a dorm room with 6 other beds, our room was in an apartment completely separate from the rest of the hostel allowing for way more privacy. Plus we had our very own kitchen (in our room), our own bathroom, and our own washer. The front desk they said we had to pay six euros ($7.8 US) for one wash, (outrageous the first time we heard that at the beginning of our trip, but pretty standard every where we went) but the guy who worked there and showed us the room said that he was new and we should be able to use the washer. When you are as poor as we are on this trip, saving 6 euros would seem like a bonus to you too. That's also why I am going to say that having our own washer is number 5 on great things about Sevilla.
6. A theater that was converted into a bookstore with a selection of non-fiction in the balcony section.
7. Seeing Semana Santa up close and personal. I have to admit that despite reading about the parade wear, seeing the KKK-esque outfits that the people in the parade wore was a little jarring to see at first. No matter how open minded you try to be, sometimes you just cannot get away from your own cultural history and all the symbols that come along with it. I think my favorite part was seeing the little kids dressed up. So precious, yet so unsettling.
OK. That's it for me right now.
1. This restaurant that seemed like a diner and was free of tourists (pre-Semana Santa. We got there a day before the week started). Sometimes you just go to a place and you cannot help but like the feel of it.
2. The tapas tradition. Buy a drink, any drink, and they give you free food.
3. The Moroccan food served at my hostel.
4. My hostel room. Though we were in a dorm room with 6 other beds, our room was in an apartment completely separate from the rest of the hostel allowing for way more privacy. Plus we had our very own kitchen (in our room), our own bathroom, and our own washer. The front desk they said we had to pay six euros ($7.8 US) for one wash, (outrageous the first time we heard that at the beginning of our trip, but pretty standard every where we went) but the guy who worked there and showed us the room said that he was new and we should be able to use the washer. When you are as poor as we are on this trip, saving 6 euros would seem like a bonus to you too. That's also why I am going to say that having our own washer is number 5 on great things about Sevilla.
6. A theater that was converted into a bookstore with a selection of non-fiction in the balcony section.
7. Seeing Semana Santa up close and personal. I have to admit that despite reading about the parade wear, seeing the KKK-esque outfits that the people in the parade wore was a little jarring to see at first. No matter how open minded you try to be, sometimes you just cannot get away from your own cultural history and all the symbols that come along with it. I think my favorite part was seeing the little kids dressed up. So precious, yet so unsettling.
OK. That's it for me right now.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Granada and beyonda
Okay, since Stacy has transferred to me the weighty responsibility of writing about one of the coolest places we visited on our entire trip, I´m now feeling the pressure.
Well, it´s a smaller town than Seville, definitely, and when you step off the bus you immediately notice the mountain air circulating through your lungs. You also notice the tons and tons of foreign students everywhere, as well as a fair number of expats from across the globe manning counters and running coffee shops. Down one long avenue lay the Plaza Isabel la Catolica, a small square in the center of the city with a statue and fountain commemorating Christopher Columbus´(Cristoforo Colon, to Granadans) pact with Queen Isabel of Spain to find a route to India. A huge Gothic cathedral stands nearby, in whose chapel are buried the remains of Queen Isabel and her husband Ferdinand. Towering over the city on a flat overhang sprawls the ancient towers and sculpted gardens of the Alhambra, an incomprehensibly immense fortress and retreat for the last Moorish rulers of the city, before they were chased away by the Christian Requonquistadors. And far up on the highest hills before the landscape stretches away to the misty valleys and snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada, the small gypsy village of Sacromonte exists in a world totally removed from Granada. Some people still live in cave-homes their ancestors dug out of the sheer rugged hillsides to hide from the Inquisition in the 16th century, though most live in ramshackle two-story whitewashed cottages along the path up to a crumbling 13th century chapel.
On our second day we hoofed it up to Sacromonte, where we wandered on goat paths, goggled at the nearby mountains, and watched 85 year old men with canes cruise up steep hillsides like they were Olympic athletes. We visited the Alhambra on our last full day in town, and even with several hours of climbing towers, getting lost in endless gardens, and choking on the dust of thousand-year-old Arab baths, we couldn't possibly see it all. On the plus side, we did get lots and lots of pictures (some of which I may even get around to posting). Let me tell you folks, three or four days in Granada is not really enough. Get yourself into a five month language program (there´s one advertised around every corner) and come learn Spanish here - you just might run into Stacy and I on a goat trail.
Good Times
You haven´t really lived until you´ve been sick while traipsing in some foreign land. I don´t mean to brag, but I´ve been sick in the Marshall Islands, Costa Rica, India, the UK, Portugal and now Spain. There is nothing better than spending your nights hallucinating due to a fever and then greeting each bright, beautiful, sunny day with a hacking cough. The last few days in Lagos, the stopover night in Sevilla, and the first night in Granada are all mostlly a blur to me and that´s where Ben will have to fill you in. All I mostly remember is constant thirst, brightness, the incessant need for my eyes and nose to rid itself of water, the sounds of Portuguese, Spanish and French lulling me to sleep and a stupid cough that kept waking me back up.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Second update from Benhameen
Hey my peeps. So this update thing has been harder than anticipated, mainly because we´ve been nonstop traveling or not in the right kind of place to use the internet. Not that I´m excusing myself, but...
Also, recent, shall we say, problems, have distracted me and I haven´t been able to pry myself away from resolving them. You see, originally we were set to take a ferry to Rome yesterday and then go home tomorrow....but now it´s looking like we´re flying out on a different day, from a different city! Plus I got sick (so much for my ¨supergenes¨). But that is another story for later....
Back to the grand narrative. Stacy is writing about Lagos, of course, and Sagres, where I had my little drunken scooter accident...just kidding, I wasn´t drunk, it was just really windy, I swear! I still don´t know how Stacy managed to hop off so fast, seeing as we were only going about 5 km per hour (around 3.1 miles an hour) and we were in a parking lot. One second she was behind me, and in a fraction of a second, she was off and standing calmly beside me as I helplessly crashed into the pole. I can´t be sure about this - lord knows that I don´t go for all that ESP nonsense - but
I think somehow she must have had the second sight - you know, the SHINE - like, somehow, she KNEW that in the parking lot, a freak gust of wind would make pointless all of my efforts to control the front end of the scooter and have its way with me and my vehicle.
Enough said about that. The 80 euros I had to shell out for the front end damage still cuts too deep.
We were in Lagos for alnost five days, though, so Stacy has her work cut out for her. I hope she mentions Sarah and Phil, two of the nicest Canadians anyone could share an impossibly huge burger in a Portuguese reggae bar with (and also we beat them handily at foos-ball!) I kinda wish we could have gone along to Chefchouan, Morocco with them. But ah well, such is life!
On to Seville and Granada (and back to Seville). Of all our interminable bus rides on this trip, the one we took from Lagos, Portugal along the Algarve Coast to Seville, Spain had to be the interminable-est. The trip was, to put it politely, butt-numbing. Also it was very long. Luckily for us, Seville rocked. We were only there overnight on our way to Granada (although we went back to Sevilla later to take in some Semana Santa madness) but in that short 12 hours, we ate great Middle Eastern food , enjoyed a free performance of flamenco and Spanish guitar at a cavernous bar with two fireplaces, and slept like babies in the dorms at the nicest hostel I´
ve yet stayed in. We slept so well, in fact, that we didn´t wake up until 20 minutes before our bus left for Granada and had to run 20 blocks to the station. The driver was a bit peeved at our lateness and scolded us. Luckily we couldn´t understand him (they speak very, very rapid Spanish here).What can I say about Granada? Well, I can say that I´ll have to leave that for the next update, as my time is currently up. But I´ll fill you in on the majesty of Granada in the next update, which will be tomorrow (the time we were supposed to be back). Later!
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