Semana Santa y Más

Sorry for the lack of updates in recent weeks, things got a little more normal here, meaning less travel and excitement and a sudden onslaught of school, etc. We went to Portugal with the program the weekend before last, stayed in Lisbon for three nights and explored the city and some of the surrounding areas. It was cool, but I decided to skip the blog on that one, so as not to overload anyone that's reading this with less-than-super information. We visited a castle, a palace, the westernmost point of Europe (once thought of as the end of world), but beyond that, I've had better. However, the Portugese people are for the most part extremely friendly and their language is beautiful even though none of us could understand it. Luckily for us, tons of people spoke English too (although Spanish speakers were more or less non-existent).

Anyway, on to more recent events. Today is the end of perhaps the most important week in Sevilla, Semana Santa (Holy Week). It is a week of religious processions, highlighting beautiful pasos, which are floats with flowers and candles and most importantly, carved and painted wooden statues of the Virgin Mary or Jesus or scenes from Jesus' life. (The oldest of these statues dates to the 12th century.) The catch is that these floats are not placed on trailers or trucks and pulled around the city. They are hoisted on the shoulders of up to 54 men and carried for hours on end. The float-carriers wear headdresses with padding on the back of the neck, but I'm pretty sure it's a tough job.

The floats are accompanied by scores of nazarenos, which are marchers dressed in robes with pointed hoods and narrow eyeholes. This costume looks exactly like that of the Ku Klux Klan (although the colors vary), but let's suffice it to say Spain had them first. The main point of the costume is anonymity, since the nazarenos are doing penance for their sins. To highlight this, they often carry large crosses and march for hours barefoot. The pasos are also often accompanied by large marching bands, although some of them march in silence and silence is expected of the observers as well.

These processions start on Palm Sunday and end today (the day before Easter). The first one every day is in the afternoon and new ones keep coming until early in the morning. On Thursday, the processions began at 3 or 4 in the afternoon and went on until around 7 or 8 in the morning on Friday. I just so happen to live in the tallest building in the one of the most important plazas for these processions. Our plaza was turned into a sort of stadium with risers and seats for people to watch the processions and a walkway for the processions to pass through. These seats have been rented out to the same families for decades and it is supposedly impossible just to decide you want to get a spot in the plaza for any given year. There are also seats for the mayor and other city officials. Our place overlooks all of this and we were able to simply hang out on our terrace and watch everything go down.

The city of Sevilla has been packed all week, and simple tasks like walking to the store (a block away) have taken us a half hour is there happens to be a procession close by. Plus, because of our lucky housing location, we have been listening to bands playing for hours a day for a week. So, as interesting as Semana Santa has been, I'm ready to have my city back. I'll post some pictures later, stay tuned.

Las Fallas

This past weekend was Las Fallas in Valencia, billed by some as one of the craziest festivals in a country known for its crazy festivals. Can't miss that, right? Las Fallas is alternatively known as the Festival of Fire, since the event revolves around setting on fire dozens of gigantic papier-mache statues all around town to the tune of lights and fireworks and music. (Even though fallas sounds like how we say fire, it actually refers to the statues themselves.)

So we rented a car and took off...the car didn't run well from the start, and the sound system was broken, so we were bumping a pair of iPod speakers and it was getting really old about two hours into the trip. Luckily, that's about when the oil light came on and the car started smoking. So we pull off and discover that the car is gushing antifreeze and smoking. We did what we could to save her, but it was too late. The rental car company did little to help (just promised us our money back and money for a taxi), but eventually we got a taxi to the airport in Granada and rented another car, this time with good sound and a good engine. (We're still working on getting the first company to pay for the difference in price.)

So we finally get to Valencia around midnight on Saturday, and go explore the town. There are fireworks going off everywhere, and the statues are awesome. Every single one looks like it was done by professionals, and most of them are as tall as the buildings themselves. They are like huge caricartures, with everything over-exaggerated and most of them with a political or social message of some sort. Unfortunately, the signs explaining them were in Valenciano (not Spanish) and it was impossible for us to recognize any of the Spanish people they were poking fun at. Still cool.

The best part of this is that even though the townsfolk spends the entire year building these statues, they torch them all (except the best one) at the end of the festival! Sunday night is the burning. Each statue has a team that sets off fireworks, soaks the thing in gasoline and then torches it via a fuse with firecrackers tied onto it. The culmination was a burning of the second-place statue in the town's main plaza, after a symphony-accompanied fireworks show that rivaled any I've ever seen.

The drive home was better than the way there. We stopped and explored some old caves we saw from the side of the road, although we then proceeded to run out of gas soon after. (Not our fault, the needle wasn't even all the way down!) Luckily we were close to a gas station and only killed about an hour.

I don't have any pictures yet of the nightlife, since I didn't want to take my nice (and bulky) camera out at night. These should give you some idea of what went down, though...just envision these things on fire with fireworks going off around them.

One part of a particularly evil-looking falla.

The second-place falla in the main plaza (the centerpiece of the burnings). This was definitely the tallest I saw, but not by much.

My boy Miguel in front of her.
What?

Very Spanish. This is a big pot of paella, a typical southern Spain dish with rice, seafood and years of perfection in it.

¡Carnaval!

I had some more adventures this weekend, and although I haven't taken a proper shower (read: with soap) for three days, this stuff can´t wait.

I rented a car with three other dudes for the weekend, A) because we were getting travel-hungry, B) because we're in the midst of a five-day weekend, and C) because it was Carnaval in Cadiz! Carnaval is like the Spanish Mardi Gras--it's a big multi-day fiesta that culminates in one crazy night of costumed street-crowding. Cadiz spends all year preparing for it, or so I was told. Some groups of Spaniards wear coordinated costumes and write and rehearse funny songs and dances to perform at Carnaval, and other people just break out singing because they are drunk.

We arrived in Cadiz (on the coast of Southern Spain, about an hour or so from Sevilla) Friday afternoon, and spent the day walking around looking for a place to stay. Every hostel we called beforehand was booked, but we decided to go anyway, and sleep in the car if need be. Long story short, we found a hostel with room, in a great location, where three of our good friends were staying as well. We spent the night meeting Spaniards and dancing around a MASSIVE drum circle in the middle of Cadiz. The people from Cadiz were the nicest I´ve met in Spain, apparently free, at least for Carnaval, of the American-hate that plagues many Europeans.

Saturday night was the big culmination night, with everyone in costume and going crazy. We threw together some disguises despite the looming rain, hoping for the best. We didn't get it. It POURED. At one point, it was raining completely sideways due to the massive coastal winds that Cadiz gets. We braved it for as long as we could and had a pretty good time, although a few of us (myself included) are now sick.

Sunday we got up and drove a little further down the coast to Tarifa, the kite-surfing mecca. It is supposedly one of the best, if not the best, places to kite-surf and wind-surf in the world. It was super windy (duh) but beautiful and awesome nonetheless. We then went on to Gibraltar, that strange pocket of Britain in the midst of Spain and the Mediterranean Sea. It was cool, and odd, and we saw as much as we could although we were all beat from the last two days. We searched for the monkeys (Gibraltar has tons of monkeys) but only saw one. All in all, pretty amazing the variety of places we went, all within two hours of Sevilla and all unique and impressive in their own right. Photos below!

One of the streets decked out pre-Carnaval.

Getting ready to go out...that's me, so hot I'm on fire.

Tarifa. Windy.

They figure that if it has to be windy all the time, they might as well make some money off of it. I have never seen so many windmills in such a short distance anywhere else. The road to and from Tarifa is full of them.

Gibraltar, and the sea beyond.

Fotos de Mi Ciudad: La Catedral

Also reposted, but now you can enlarge them...they're much better that way. (I just deleted the old post with these pictures and the river pictures on it, in case you were looking for it.)

La Catedral and La Giralda (the tower on the right hand side) at night. This is an amazing sight to see, and is only a few blocks from my place. I walk past it every other night or so, but I always have to stop and look.

Same thing, different angle.

Fotos de Mi Ciudad: El Rio

I´m reposting these pictures using Mozilla Firefox instead of Internet Explorer so y'all can open them in a larger window this time around. Yes, Firefox is way better than Internet Explorer, download it, it's free.

Sunset at the River Guadalquivir. The river is a great place to study or make out, the latter illustrated by the two lovebirds below.

About the same time, looking in the opposite direction.

Looking through some palms at a floating restaurant on the river.

¡Ladrones!

So we´re just playing soccer at a park, my backpack is under a nearby tree, I get distracted with the game and BAM! The backpack is gone. The theives got my new backpack, my wallet (also new and very European), my keys and of the most consequence, my cell phone. (So if you have tried to call me, that's why I didn´t pick up!) So that´s a little depressing, especially because I have been especially careful about all my stuff, except for a few minutes this one time. Oh well, a lesson learned the hard way, I suppose.

If anyone is reading this or looking at my pictures, it would be nice if you´d leave a comment here or there to let me know that you saw it! This one-way communication is not very satisfying!

I don´t know if anyone is ever going to send me anything, but if you are, I think my address was wrong the first time I posted it...we live on the fifth floor, not the fourth, so it should be:

Aaron Butzen
Residencia Pilar Torres
Plaza de San Fransisco, No. 9, Piso 5
41004 Sevilla, Spain

Fotos de Mi Residencia

Okay, y'all finally get to see my place (or some of it)...I didn´t want to waste too much space showing you everything, but these should give you an idea of what I'm working with.

The living room (salón). This is where we congregate and socialize, if we´re not outside. We have a nice big TV facing the couch too.

The kitchen (cocina) with our meal for the day on the table. It´s old (the kitchen, not the meal)but we have everything we need.
The terrace (terraza). This makes the apartment. The sun shines brighter up here, for real. The view is amazing - directly below us is the Plaza San Francisco, where horse-drawn carriages compete for tourists' money, where the Spanish Inquisition took place, and where much of the Semana Santa festivities take place. To the left is the Cathedral and La Giralda, it´s big tower. Unbelievable.
I'll try to get some pictures up of the view from here, but it´s hard to capture. The ones I took just weren´t good enough.

Clase...¡Que Lástima!

Well, it turns out that this trip is not just a sightseeing tour, and we actually have to take classes. Who´d have thunk? Anyway, my classes started on Monday but we didn´t really get going until Wednesday because they over-enroll every class, assign rooms to more than one class at the same time, and basically just throw everything together and figure it out when the time comes. Crazy Spaniards.

However, everything worked out in the end (they know what they´re doing, they just take their time doing it) and I now have a schedule of 4 classes, two hours long each, four days a week. We don´t have class on Fridays and my earliest class is at 3 in the afternoon! It makes for some late nights (5 to 9 Monday/Wednesday, 3 to 7 Tuesday/Thursday) but my days of sleeping too late to get to class are over! I hope.

I´m taking Semantics, Syntax, Flamenco: the Cultural Expression of Andalucía, and Cultural Anthropology of Andalucía. All in Spanish of course, and all pretty interesting so far, with the exception of anthropology. I really hope that one picks up a bit because my Attention Deficit Disorder that I´ve developed in college has gotten much worse since my arrival in Spain. However, this semester should be a veritable buffet of learning, and I´m ready to eat.

I´m going to try to take some pictures of my house and Sevilla in general this weekend so you guys can see what I´m up against. If there´s anything particular you´d like to see, let me know and I´ll go photograph it. I´ve already got some good ones in mind though. ¡Hasta luego!

Vale

The most important word I have learned since I have been here is vale. It loosely translates to OK, but you can say it as an answer to almost anything anyone says to you. When I don´t know what someone just told or asked me and I don´t care, I just say vale and everything is cool.

Anyway, we went to Granada this weekend, which was nice. Another beautiful but dangerous drive (The bus drivers have a wee bit too much confidence in their ability to navigate high altitude turns at high speeds) through the mountains to get there, and we stopped to hike at a national park with wild rock formations in every direction. The downside was that the trail was extremely muddy and since we had no warning of the hike, everyone had their nice shoes on and the only pair of pants they´d brought for the weekend. My Nike Shox were almost annihilated, but I washed them off pretty well in the hotel bathtub.

Here´s a picture of where we hiked, beautiful but for the mud.

Pants rolled up to keep mud off, didn´t do anything for the shoes though! Notice my new Universidad de Sevilla sweatshirt. That´s right, it´s my new school.

We saw a flamenco show in Granada, absolutely captivating. The only instrument is a classical guitar and a myriad of percussion - mostly hand claps from the dancers not dancing at the moment and from the singer, but also a box with a hole in it that one guy sat on and beat on. The rest of the beat comes from the dancers´feet, as they wear shoes with heels and hard soles and stomp like crazy on the hard floor when they get going. They actually help create the music with their feet, and I did not know that people could move their feet so fast, save Michael Flatley. It is a percussive utopia, with complicated and layered rhythms accompanied by singing and shouting. Cool.

The only other thing in Granada is the Alhambra, an ancient Arab palace. It´s massive and you can see it from almost anywhere in the city, since it´s built on a mountain. It was very impressive but after so many tours of breathtaking places, it´s hard to focus on the tour guide or drop your jaw any lower than the last time. You can also ski in Granada, but it wasn´t included in our package and we would have missed the Alhambra, so nobody went.

Here is one small portion of the gigantic palace.


A famous pation with a fountain with twelve lions supporting it. The lions look more like dogs because although the residents (Arabs) were from Africa, they had been in Spain so long they´d never actually seen a lion, and just made them to look like the descriptions they´d heard.

Hasta luego!

Información Incorecto

I guess I was misinformed about how to call Spain...I think what you need to do is dial 011 for international access, then the country code for Spain, which is 34, then my number, 695.457.848. Do not dial 034 as previously reported. Or do. Whatever makes you happy.