Spanish Stream of Consciousness

Bonus Blogs as we have an extra couple hours in Padua hiding from the cold dampness before our train to Milan to meet up with the parents.

Random thoughts on our Spain travels (minus Barcelona which received already has its own entry) from both of our brains (in no particular order)

• The area around Madrid is dry and desolate. Reminds me a lot of the US Southwest
• Toledo is nice though pretty much built around people visiting the cathedral. Not a bad thing but the cathedral itself didn't hold up for me as well as some of the others we've visited. (Becca has a different reaction....lots of neat small medieval streets to wander and a lot of history in the cathedrals, old synagogues, and other buildings. Unfortunately, like other picturesque walled cities, it can be overwhelmed with tourists (though many were Spanish in Toledo) and it was really hot, even in late September.)
• The Santa Cruz neighborhood of Seville is just a magical place to wander at twilight. It's a maze of tiny streets, hidden courtyards with lime trees, moorish gardens, and fragrant vines spilling over walled gardens surrounded by Moorish architecture giving you the feel of being a character in a tale of Arabian Nights.
• The medieval area of Granada is less nice, being filled with grubby hippies with big dogs. If you got to visit the Alhambra, you can make it a quick in and out.
• The Alhambra is beautiful and impressive, but we didn't find it to be as amazingly life changingly beautiful as you might be led to believe by the hype. Definitely very worth seeing if you are anywhere near there, but not necessarily worth planning a trip especially to go there.
• Becca really likes the old doors in Toledo. Don't believe me? Check these and tell me what you think.
• Roast suckling pig is a Spanish specialty and can be quite good. However eating the tail isn't.
• The Prado is just the right size. Big enough to feel properly cultured upon leaving but not big enough to need a GPS system or multiple trips.
• Don't buy an old translation of Don Quixote. Just don't. Great book but I think I might have had better luck reading it in Spanish than in Old English.
• It's probably just me but I find it highly humorous that Madrid's city seal is a bear trying to do something to a strawberry tree. They also have a statue of it right next to the hotel we stayed at.
• We definitely noticed an increase in the amount of smoking we had to endure around us, especially as Spain has no limitations on smoking indoors in cafes, restaurants, businesses, etc like many other countries are starting to do. That got a little old...
• We inadvertently stumbled upon a total solar eclipse during our stay in Madrid. Not sure how we missed it as many had traveled there especially for the event. All three of us successfully survived with eyesight intact.
• Brian decided that calamari sandwiches are a pretty good lunch. Becca and Molly were less sold on their cold greasiness, but everyone agreed that the tortilla (egg and potato omelet) sandwiches were pretty tasty
• Tapas come in all shapes and sizes, from frou frou to down home, little portions to big, cheap to expensive, and we enjoyed sampling our way through them. (Though we never made it to one of the places where you serve yourself from the bar and get charged by the number of toothpicks left on your plate)
• We couldn't get over the sight of legs of ham hanging in every restaurant, cafe, bar, and meat shop (best seen in the Museum of Ham), but after tasting it, we have to admit that Iberican ham lives up to its hype.

We were really glad that we made the trip down to Spain and that we were able to spend almost 4 weeks across 7 cities and 3 regions to get more of a flavor of the place. It's definitely a different world traveling there compared to the rest of Europe. We struggled a little to get used to the different rhythms (I'm not sure I ever got used to dinner at 10, though Brian seemed to do okay with it), but we really appreciated the richness of the culture (or rather, various cultures) that we experienced.

B&B

Welcome to the surreal zone, part 2

So we've become kinda connosieurs of street music over the course of this trip and have noticed a couple of trends as we travel.

1) Music minus one.....karaoke for street musicians.

I don't know if you are familiar with these CDs; they're basically like a karoake CD but instead of the voice track being left out, they leave out one of the instrumental tracks. Thus a violinist practicing for a performance with an orchestra could practice her solo and hear what it would sound like with the rest of the music. Well, street musicians have moved with the times, and we lost count of the number of them playing their part accompanied by a the rest of the instruments blaring out through a boom box or an ipod connected to an amp with a battery pack. In some cases this makes for very pleasant and very impressive performances. There a lot of pretty darn good classical musicans playing out on the streets (often conservatory students or music performance majors who figure they might as well make a little money from their practice time), and you appreciate the solo work even more against the backdrop of the orchestral play.

However, we have also seen this being used for evil. In Madrid, one of our nice tapas dinners was assaulted by somebody coaxing excrutiating tones from an accordian while flipping through his music minus one cd, trying to find a song he could manage to play along with (while his wife half-heartedly shook her tambourine). They had their cute little girl with, which bought them some sympathy and money when they walked around the diners to collect, though the Germans next to use used the line we wished we'd had the guts to say. After tossing some coins in her tambourine, the diner asked if that could pay for him to "Please god stop playing".

2) 'Yesterday'.....official theme song of the European street musician.

When Paul McCartney wrote "Yesterday", I don't think his plan was for it to become the plague of metro travellers worldwide. Despite the fact that according to the Guinness Book of Records, "Yesterday" has the most cover versions of any song ever written (over 3000 recorded), I don't think I had fully grasped its popularity until this trip. In a one month plus period travelling in France and Spain, I think we heard it performed (usually badly) in 8 cities/towns in a row on all manner of instruments, from guitar to sitar, accordian to pan pipes, voice alone to saxophone. The most impressively excrutiating was a gentleman with his Casio keyboard in the Madrid metro. He was haltingly playing the tune, stopping occasionally to try and fix a chord as we walked past on the way to taking Mom to the airport. More than 2.5 hours later we came back through the station and he was STILL playing Yesterday. Badly.

3) What the bleep?.....Chief Plays-His-Pan-Pipes says 'How.'

Now for the surreal part of today's show. World travelers over the years are probably familiar with the South American pan pipe groups that used to pop up on every street corner. You know the ones: they were dressed in colorful ponchos, they played various pan pipe type instruments, they always played the same sort of tunes and sounded the same and sounded good, and they never played without mikes and amps, leading me to come to the conclusion a few years ago that they weren't actually playing. Personally I believed that a CD was pumping out the music through the amps and the colorful native types were just playing "air pipes" and looking good.

We've discovered a new twist on this that is more disturbing. In Krakow, we saw a band with much the same set up as the south american groups, except that they were dressed as Native Americans (of the North American variety) complete with long headresses and the amped music was of the hey-hey-naw-naw type with chanting and drums. Perhaps a bit disturbing and stereotypical, but still understandable. But what we saw in Seville really upped the ridiculous scale.

The band was dressed as Native Americans, complete with leather clothing with fringes and long feathered headresses. However, ethnically they looked Spanish and the instruments they were playing were the classical guitar (complete with long fingernails, etc) and the pan pipes. The topper though--the song they were playing was the classic Native American anthem "My Heart Will Go On" as performed by Celine Dion in Titanic. I'm all for cross-cultural pollination (and lord knows I love fusion food), but this was ridiculous.

Becca

Seeing red...

I don´t know what kind of reaction you have when you think about bullfighting in Spain, but I had all sorts of thoughts swirling around my head on the subject.

Brian really wanted to go see a bullfight since it was such a part of Spanish tradition and the kind of cultural taste we try to get. (And as one of his friends who had lived in Madrid for awhile put it to him, the bulls are going to turned into hamburger whether you go or not). We especially wanted to see this cultural event since our luck and timing have been so bad trying to catch football (soccer) matches. We keep being either a day late or a day early etc. in the cities we visit so that so far the only live football we've seen is the C-Level game Brian wrote about in Cesky Krumlov. I was pretty reluctant to go to a bullfight at first, having little desire to see the blood, but while we were in Toledo I decided that I ought to be willing to see one at least before I made up my mind about them.

So, after arriving in Madrid and finding our hotel, we grabbed a snack and then headed out to the Plaza del Toros for the evening's event. Brian and I had bought the tickets online, and had fun trying to decipher the multi-variable calculus based seating and pricing system. You had seats in the sun and seats in the shade and seats in the sun and shade. You had box seats and reserved seats and all kinds of other seats. The prices ranged from 7 euros to over 100 euros, depending on the sun/shade and how close to the action you were. Not really knowing much about the seats, we found some in the shade (pretty much a requirement for Mom and me) for a price we were willing to pay and crossed our fingers.

The Plaza de Toros is a striking red brick arena with a Moorish architectural feel and a nice plaza around it, where you could bet on the bulls and buy souvenirs and snacks. It´s also very easy to get to, as it is the last stop on the number two subway line. When we arrived Sunday night, we had to push our way through crowds of people to find the automated machines that very efficiently printed out our internet-purchased tics (I recommend this to anyone wanting to check out the bullfights. It saved us standing in a long line and was really easy.).

The crowd in attendance immediately banished one of the concerns about the bullfight that I had had. I hate "cultural" displays that are put on for tourists in all forms (native dances, etc.), and can't imagine anything more distasteful than one that involved the bulls' deaths as well. However it was immediately apparent that at least for now, these are still first and foremost events for the Spaniards themselves. Tourists were in a very small minority in the crowd. Most of the people clutching tickets were locals, between 40 and 60, and dressed to the nines. (Being the first of many many times in Madrid when we would feel woefully under-dressed). It was a fantastic look at a cross section of Madrid society.

We pushed our way in with the crowds and were very unsuccessfully looking for any seating sign that matched what was on our ticket. Finally I gave up and walked over to a group of local gentlemen in their 60's who looked like this was a regular outing for them. After a good deal of gesturing we figured out which corridors and stairs we needed to take. On the way we passed a gentlemen renting seat cushions, and Mom and I stopped to pick some up. We eventually found our way to the correct hallway and saw all these closed doors to sections with ushers/security folks outside them.

Once we convinced them to let us in we found ourselves in a steep, small box area with great views in between what looked like a corporate outing (complete with open bar and food) and the Presidential and Officials box. Not too shabby. Not only that, but unlike the plain cement benches down below, ours were padded/upholstered and had backs. We felt pretty silly carrying our seat cushions into this area (silly tourists), but were at least confident that our rears would not get sore. :-)

It was fascinating to watch the pomp and circumstance of the event, and to appreciate all the contradictions inherent in it. It is a sport just dripping with masochism, yet where the heroes wear twinkly sequins and bright pink socks. It is a sport that wants a 'fair fight' and a clean death for the bull but cheers for the wounds the the banderillos and picadors inflict and don't flinch when the bull is stumbling as its muscles fail it.

Since we were sitting right next to the officials, we were able to watch the interplay between them and the torerors and the way that they controlled the flow of the event with their white handkerchiefs. By the second half of the evening, we were starting to get things figured out, though since the section of our guidebook that explained the ins and outs of a bullfight had unfortunately been left over in the States, we were (and still are, to some degree) a little in the dark to the subtleties. if you're interested, you can see the set of pictures from each stage of the evening.

My reaction to the bullfight itself was complex. I appreciated the pageantry, I appreciated the very strict choreography and tradition of each phase, I appreciated that one of the bulls that showed great courage and fight was granted a reprieve and sent off with the hero cows (to fight another day?), I appreciated that the crowd was very knowledgeable and was looking for skill and precision from the matador, energy and passion from the bull, and a 'fair fight' for them both. I also was able to see how with very skilled bullfighters the 'cruelty' argument could be minimized as the strikes would be clean, quick, and efficient.

Unfortunately, we did not appear to be in the presence of very skilled bullfighters. This was ironic, as one of the reasons we had not gone to the earlier fight that day (which was much less expensive) is that it was the Novice Championships and we thought that these matadors would be better and more experienced. I had already looked away in tears when they killed the first bull (I was ok, though not necessarily loving it up to that point in the fight, but the increasingly weak and bloody bull got to me), but it just got a little ridiculous as the evening went on. Banderillos were missing with both of their banderillas, matadors were missing repeatedly on their kill strikes, and then the couple of times that a toreror was sent in to finish off the bull (because the matador had lost his chance for that honor due to repeated misses), they were taking a bunch of times to get it right too. The crowd was jeering and whistling and was most displeased about it and the matadors walked away with their heads slumped in shame. All in all, everyone involved would have been happier with a better display of skill.

In the end, I'm really glad I went and appreciate Brian pushing us to go, though I don't know that I would go to one again. It was a great cultural experience, just from watching the crowd, let alone the bullfight, and I felt like I learned a lot. Plus, having actually attended a bullfight I feel like I can make a more educated decision about what I think about the controversy surrounding the events instead of just making assumptions.

However for my next cultural event I´ll stick with butterflies and puppy dogs, please. :-)

Becca

(Brian´s two cents: I enjoyed the cultural aspect of the bullfights the most. Unfortunately as Becca said the actual skill of the bullfighters was poor at best. It's like taking your friend from a foreign country to a baseball game only it's an Independent League game. Cool environment but the actual talent level is bad. My original plan was to write this up much like the CK football match but it got so bad by the end I decided it wasn't worth it. Some lasting images though: the first time you see the blood flowing down the bull's front, a particularly good member of the matador's team getting some ole´'s from the crowd, the anger on the faces from some of the crowd towards the officials for not giving the bull a fair chance, etc. Certainly a memorable experience. I'd go again but only if I had some sort of guarantee as to a higher level of talent amongst the fighters. Really did take a lot of the entertainment value out of the evening in the end. Still worth going though and I highly recommend it to anyone who makes the trip to España.)

Update with real new blogging!

We're fresh from a night of rest in Seville, Becca's Mom is safely back in Oregon after 2 1/2 weeks of traveling with us young'uns and we're cranking away at the internet cafe so you the reader FINALLY have something new to read other than giant squid articles.

As a result a bunch more pictures are up (check it out via our revamped link to the right), there are blog entries up for Paris, Northern France, Southern France and Barcelona and more in the hopper (including both of our thoughts on the sport of bullfighting). Hoping to use the next few days to recharge the batteries and get caught up with the blog. Thanks for hanging with us; it's a little tough to justify computer time when people come across the pond to visit :-)

Brian

PS Hope the Minnesota contingent is all ok, safe and above water after reading this.

PPS. For those who haven´t already worked through this: when you´re trying to check out the pics on Flickr (and you´re not hi-tech enough to be using an RSS feed), you have two basic options. You can view a tag (or if you´re masochistic, the whole thing) in a slide show, which gives you a smoother, easier flip through the shots, but it doesn´t show the slide titles or any of the explanatory comments that Becca slaves over. Or you can click on them one by one (using the Previous or Next links in the upper right) to see all the commentary, but that can be slow and kind of a pain. The best compromise might be to use the slide show and then click on any picture that particularly interests or confuses you. When you click on it, it momentarily stops the slide show and shows the info associated with the pic, then allows you to restart the slide show. Happy viewing!

Barcelona: Your Cool Kid Sibling...

... if they had an unfortunate predisposition towards bad mullet-like hairdos. And yes, this includes the ladies.

Our initial impression of Barcelona was so-so; a ton of noise and basic chaos was our first impression as we tried to get around town and get settled in after the trip in. However once we settled in we found a vibrant city with a distinctly bohemian feel. The night booms with restaurants, bars and clubs packed with Spaniards who embrace the nightlife culture. The streets are filled with music shops, too-hip-for-us clothing stores and the like. And on the Ramblas and in the squares, we encountered some of the best street performers and human statues we have seen on the trip. Like the title of the post suggests, Barcelona for me is like the cool hipster sibling that makes you feel like you're about 10 years older than you are.

Despite the age difference, we had a great time in Barcelona. We spent our first day touring the various works of Antoni Gaudi. My favorite however had to be the Sagrada Familia. Started by Gaudi´as his last major project in 1883, it continues to be worked on to this day. Since work on the project is funded only by private donations and entry fees, experts predict that it will be another 50 years before the church is complete. You can love or hate the architecture involved (I personally really liked the spires (the eight completed representing 2/3 of the apostles) and the Nativity Facade, the only part to be competed during Gaudi´'s lifetime.

The most amazing part to me about the Sagrada Familia is the fact that it's history happening right in front of our eyes. After going into a HUGE number of churches so far (and yes, we haven't hit Italy yet) that took 100-150 years to build, there is something strangely satisfying about seeing one just like it in progress. Hopefully in 50 years people will be admiring the finished product and in 150 people will be enjoying the site much like we've enjoyed others on our trip.

The next morning we spent touring the Picasso museum. As someone who only knew Picasso from his "wacked out blocky" paintings (aka Cubism) that museum was a real eye-opener. We were able to follow Picasso's rise from child prodigy (he started painting serious works at 12) to his eventual progression to Cubism. The chronological procession allows you to see how truly talented the artist was and how despite the distinct difference between some of his paintings his development as an artist was a progressive one over time.

From one creative outpouring to another: Becca and I spent the afternoon touring Camp Nou, home of Barcelona's major football team, FC Barcelona. We decided that since we keep missing the matches themselves, touring a stadium here or there is a trip approved activity. The tour itself was self guided and nothing out of the ordinary for a club of this size (though the team shop did it's best to overwhelm our senses with their away pistachio day-glo jerseys...). Well maybe the leather seats for the teams on the bench... The most memorable part of the field trip was the kind older gentleman who after we got off the metro looked at us and asked "futbol?" We nodded and next thing we knew he'd gotten us through the tough part of the directions to the stadium (with his handy hand drawn map), given me a slap on the back and headed off into the afternoon. A random act of kindness to say the least but much appreciate by the wife and myself.

Evenings were spent enjoying the nightlife, filling ourselves up mightily at the various tapas bars (both fru-fru and down-home) and just enjoying the vibrant culture that pulsates through Barcelona. We highly recommend it to folks making the trip to España and plan on going back ourselves next week on our way back north through Spain to check out the Olympic sites, the marina area, and other things we didn't have any time to hit on the first time through.

Brian

A couple more Barcelona views: the market, the harbor skyline, and MEAT

Road Trip!

After our amazing visit with Ron and Darrell (blog on the visit coming as soon as Becca finishes her other job uploading pictures), the three of us headed to Bordeaux, picked up our rental car (complete with space age starter system) and headed off towards our eventual destination of Barcelona. In the five days that followed we visited caves with prehistoric paintings and amazing geologic formations, a perfectly preserved 13th century walled fortress city, the former home of Salvador Dali, and all the gourmet truck stops in between.

Here's a (somewhat) brief rundown of our car based findings.

Day 1: Drove from Bordeaux to Montpezat de Quezay, France (try finding that one on your maps) where we stayed at a wonderful pension hosted by an artist couple and their three dogs. During the day we took a pit stop to visit the Pech Merle caves where our tour guide took us underground to visit prehistoric drawings and admire the impressive geological structures that abounded. Here's a english version of the tour we took. The hall of discs were our favorite though as far as I'm concerned, they still don't beat Marvel Cave...

Day 2: Drove from Montpezat de Quezay to Gincla, France. Our midday stop was to the aforementioned fortress city of Carcassonne. A beautiful piece of history but it reminded me a bit too much like Disneyland as the entire thing was tourists. Having been to other medieval towns that still functioned as actual towns, to see nothing but hotels and chotchzkies was a bit much for me. The highlight of the day though came from our pension where we ended up having a four course gourmet meal (check out the pics under the Gincla tag) that included a cheese course that had something like 12 different cheeses. Needless to say our waitress wanted us to learn plenty about cheese and our gastronomical systems were out of whack for at least a few days (That that could have been due to these).

Day 3: Drove from Gincla, France to Cadaques, Spain. We took a few hours out of the day to explore the Haute Corbieres region and the Gorges de Galamus. We stopped at one point to hike up some seriously steep hills (and be impressed at how strong Mom´s leg has become) to visit the ruins of Peyrepertuse, one of the chateaux of the Haute Corbieres (a series of mountain-capping castle ruins at the foothills of the Pyrenees built by the Cathars). The drive from Gincla down to Spain was a perfect example of what can happen when one goes too fast on small roads and miss the town signs one is looking for. Some adventurous driving was also had getting our way through the Pyrenees and into Cadaques itself. That's all the info I can give. If you want more, you'll have to buy the book :-)

Cadaques itself is a beautiful town right along the Spanish coast and for me reminded me a lot of what the Italian coastline would look like with tiny towns and lots of beautiful mother nature in between. Our hotel was right on the water with a lovely terrace, though on the day we arrived it was thunderstorming so instead we walked around the bay into town through the rivers of water on the streets and got wet.

Day 4: No Driving! We spent the day exploring Cadaques and relaxing. Took a walk over to the next cover to gaze at Dali's house (it was closed) and toured a fascinating local museum exhibit that was profiling pictures done of Dali by a lifelong friend. (Basic take-away? The man was WEIRD.) The rest of the day was spent hanging out on our hotel porch reading and just generally recharging our batteries.

Becca and I also watched the thrilling conclusion of the 38th annual cricket match between one of the local hotels and "The Rest of the World". The match was held in the center of town on the local boule courts with fielders standing in the streets, in front of local cafes, etc. Despite the fact that half of the guys playing wouldn't know a cricket bat or ball (due to the city surroundings they used a tennis ball) from a hole in the ground everyone was dressed in their whites and with the assistance of an Aussie tourist they pulled in as a referee, it almost felt like the real thing. The game featured at least five languages (and even more countries represented), players spanning 5 decades, and an exciting conclusion with the local hotel winning 37-35. A really cool local tradition that you could only stumble up upon on a trip like this...

Day 5: Cadaques to Barcelona. Pit stop in Girona to visit the Call, the city's Jewish quarter and wander the medieval streets. Interesting to look into a section of town that we've now seen in a number of countries and to contemplate all the things the Jews and Moors and others (like the Cathars) brought to Spanish (and Western European) culture before they were expelled and/or persecuted. Other than that, pretty smooth sailing into Barcelona!

It was nice to get out and explore some areas via car that we wouldn't have seen with the train, bus and foot strategy we've employed so far. It was interesting to see the terrain change over time from the fertile vineyards of France through the Pyrenees to the waterfront of Spain and into the big city of Barcelona. Thanks again to Mom Bloomfield for helping make this part of the trip happen...

Brian

Hold please.......

Hola!

Sorry for the delay in posts.

My mom has been visiting and we have been enjoying her company instead of spending our spare time amongst shower-deprived teenagers playing shoot-em up games in scary basement internet/gaming centers.

However we are currently taking a couple of hours to hide from the hot mid-day sun in Toledo (1 hr south of Madrid, not in Ohio) while every one else takes a siesta to try and work on blog entries from France and Spain and start posting pictures. We´re way behind, so things should show up in fits and starts.

Until then, you can stretch your imagination with this story:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/09/27/japan.squid.ap/index.html

Becca

ps. Brian says, ¨Go Sox!¨"

España...

The advantages of a keyboard that types in español...

 

Just a brief update from Cadaques, a sunny oceanside paradise where Salvador Dali once lived.  We've spent that last five days visiting our friends Ron and Darrell and traveling throughout the southeast of France drink the wine and sampling all sorts of culinary adventures.  Adventures a plenty have been had, especially exploring the area via auto.

 

One minute left on the internet so it´s time to wrap up.  Just wanted to send a shout out and let people know we´re still alive and updates from our French adventures will be up soon...

 

Brian