Spanish Bullfight and Farewell Dinner

Posted on 5 May 2014 by Casey Brown

We didn’t really have much time to rest after we got back the Northern Spain trip on Wednesday night, because Thursday was another busy day. We had the farewell dinner that night and a bullfight to go to right before it, plus we had some last minute flower purchases and photo printing to get done for Paco, Elena, and Azahara, some of the people who have had the most influence on our program so far. Combine all of that with wearing nice clothes during a hot day and the fact that it was Día de los Trabajadores in Spain (basically Labor Day), where every store including Corte Inglés is closed, and it was certainly an eventful end to the main part of our program.

Sarah and I before the corrida de toros

Sarah and I before the corrida de toros

After eventually getting all of the party preparations done through a group effort made up of some quick decisions, creative arts and crafts, and placeholder printing, it was time to head to the corrida de toros. This was really the last major aspect of Spanish culture that we were missing. While many people in the country do not like the sport and it’s become controversial, it remains popular in some circles where it’s viewed as more a fine art than a blood sport. None of us really wanted to go alone, so luckily Elena helped coordinate a time that would work for us all and helped us get tickets to that day’s spectacle in Las Ventas, Madrid’s bullring that’s only two metro stops away from me. Prices are set based on the location of the seats, with the key distinction being whether you are in the sun or the shade. Being college students, naturally we were in the sun which was my already sunburned skin didn’t love, but couldn’t be helped. It was definitely an interesting experience to say the least. We were supposed to be sitting near the professor of the English seminar, so he could explain what was happening to us, but unfortunately our seats were far from them so we had to figure things out by ourselves.

A Spanish-style bullfight involves six bulls and three teams of bullfighters, or toreros, which each fight two bulls during the corrida. The teams are made up of the lead matador de toros and six assistant toreros which are either picadores (lancers on horseback), banderilleros (flagmen), and a mozo de espada (sword servant). Each bull is fought in three stages, or tercios (thirds), throughout which throughout which the traditional rituals are performed to bait and weaken the bull. Spectators need to remain in their seats whenever there is a bull in the arena, because although bulls have poor eyesight and are colorblind, they respond to movement so any leaving or entering the stadium during a fight can distract the bull and the performance.

During the first stage, the matador de toros observes the movement of that particular bull, as well as the toro‘s weaknesses, preferences, and reactions to the cape movements of his assistants. Eventually the picadores come in on heavily-padded horses that are blindfolded. The lancers use this height to gain leverage when they stab the bull’s neck with the lance. This wound, as well the bull’s attacking of the horse, prompts more blood loss and further weakens it for the next stages. The idea is to get the bull to keep its head and horns low during the rest of the fight, both making the process safer for the toreros and allowing them to stab the sensitive areas of the bull’s head and neck. It was really crazy to see how well-trained the horses were when they barely moved despite the toros almost knocking them over a few times. Many horses used to die in the past from those attacks, but now there’s tons of protection stopping the horns from hurting the horses, though we often worried the toro would break through the padding.

The second stage features the banderilleros, who place two barbed sticks each into the bull’s shoulders. These sticks are supposed to stay there for the rest of the fight and weaken the neck and shoulder muscles, dropping the head further down and causing the bull to charge. The bull grows exhausted after the loss of blood and movements encouraged by the toreros‘ use of the capes.

In the third and final stage, the matador brings out a special small cape, this time red instead of the magenta and cold cape used so far in the fight. After a number of specific passes that looks like a dance with the bull, the matador tries to lure the bull into the perfect position to thrust his sword between the toro‘s shoulder blades and through the heart. The object is to get a swift and clean death that causes the least amount of pain to the bull, and if the sword thrust isn’t successful or does not kill the bull fast enough, another sword or small dagger must be used to sever the spinal cord. After the bull has died it is dragged out of the stadium by mules.

After a long fight, the toro finally falls

After a long fight, the toro finally falls

The corrida de toros is definitely a very interesting aspect of Spanish tradition that I’m very glad we got the chance to experience. It was a very strange feeling to actually see an animal killed in such a way, but many of us felt we could really understand the meaning behind the ritual and that the toreros were actually risking their lives. There were many close calls that worried us and definitely made it seem like the bull almost injured or killed one of the bullfighters. Although I’m not sure I could ever make it a habit of following the sport and part of me feels bad admitting it, I understand the people who enjoy watching bullfights and can empathize a little with the sport; it can be a very captivating spectacle that you do not want to take your eyes off.

There are still many things we’re not sure we completely understand about what we saw, such as how points and awards work. One of the bulls also had to be taken out of the stadium after it was weakened by a very tough flip and fall on its neck. Its legs were too small for its weight and charging, so the fight was not fair and the animal was put down outside of the arena; we’re not really sure how that decision was made or what it meant for that matador’s performance. We left at around the middle of the corrida because we had to get to the farewell dinner and felt that we had seen enough, plus a few of the people in our group were noticeably disturbed by what we saw. We didn’t have the chance to see how each of the matadors did in the end, but we definitely noticed a difference between each of the fights and the experience levels of the matadors. The ones with the most experience definitely had quicker fights that seemed to cause much less pain to the bulls and allowed us get a glimpse of what the sport is actually supposed to be.

Farewell dinner group shot

Farewell dinner group shot

The farewell dinner later that night was actually very fun and not sad at all. Though it’s obviously always sad to have things end, we really had a great time during our study abroad program and did a ton, plus we’d see each other next semester back in DC. We ended up handing out superlatives to all of the students traveling on our program, so that and the gifts given for our program coordinators helped set a good, light-hearted tone to the night. As for the gifts themselves, Paco, Elena, and Azahara, each got a framed group picture from us, and we all signed a card. We also gave Elena a bouquet of flowers and gave Paco a cala plant that he had mentioned was his favorite. We gave extra money that wasn’t spent on the gifts and also some more donated separately for everyone to a scholarship fund setup in the name of MariCarmen, the former director of the program. It was really fun to see all the students, coordinators, and teachers together one last time for a long dinner of good laughs, great company, and delicious food. Though we’re obviously sad to see the program ending, it was definitely good to go out on such a good note. 🙂

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Posted in Study Abroad in Madrid | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Santiago de Compostela, Porto, and Salamanca

Posted on 4 May 2014 by Casey Brown

While the first half of our Northern Spain trip was full of relaxing and beach time, in the next three days we visited three different cities and made it back to Madrid. The driving trips were all very long, so we had to fit a lot into those days.

Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela

Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela

We started off Monday morning in Santiago de Compostela, the capital of the autonomous community of Galicia and the destination of the pilgrimage route el Camino de Santiago. The Catholic pilgrimage originated in 9th century and still continues to this day, so we saw a lot of pilgrims and signs pointing out the way along the drive to the city and even throughout our time in Asturias before then. Naturally, the main monument in the city and the main thing we saw was the cathedral, which acts as the endpoint of the pilgrimage and was built on the reputed burial site of one of Jesus’s apostles, Saint James. Though we’ve visited many churches by now, it was actually very cool because almost our entire visit was spent climbing on the roof of the cathedral and walk around it. The church has a long history of pilgrims, and this also adds a little more to the visit. For example, we got a chance to see the Botafumeiro, the biggest censer in the world that, according to our tour guide, is 54 kg and swings at speeds of 60 km/hour! The alleged origin of such a huge swinging incense dispenser is that it was needed to mask the stench of the pilgrims during the Middle Ages who used to sleep in the upper level of the church.

Other than seeing the church, we also spent a lot of time walking around the city. Santiago has a similar climate to Oregon and Washington in the United States, so there is usually some amount of precipitation. This gives it some of Spain’s highest rainfall and gives the city buildings a green and worn look that’s very distinct. Galicia is another one of the places where they use another language in daily life, gallego, so it was interesting to get some glimpses of that on the signs and hear it when we visited the other areas like the market and shops. Because it used to be the same language as Portuguese before the two languages split, it helped us gain some practice for our next stop: Porto, Portugal. Before we got to Porto, though, we stopped at the Mar de Frades Bodega, a winery and vineyard, where we learned about wine production and got to taste a few of them.

It turned out that our hotel in Porto wasn’t too far from the place we tried the francesinhas at on our last visit to the city, so we went exploring a little that night and got drinks at the café frequented by the students. We were a little surprised by how well we remembered the way, and it was fun to show people the things we saw. The next day we had a laid-back walking tour of the city and luckily did a few things that we didn’t get to do last time, like climbing to the top of the Clérigos Tower and a boat ride on the Douro River, but also showed them the main sights we had already seen like Sirius Black’s house and the famous bookstore, Livraria Lello. Funnily enough, we also randomly ran into our old tour guide from the two walking tours we took when we were there last time — we were very surprised he actually recognized us! The hazing by the Harry Potter-robed older students still continued, which we were also surprised by, but someone told us that it ends in a week, meaning that that week was probably their hell week.

Boat ride of the Douro River

Boat ride on the Douro River

We all got very sunburned that day, which kind of made me look like a lobster when we went out that night, but at least the sunburn is testament to the great weather we had that was much different than the constant rain from last trip. That night we celebrated our friend Max’s 21st birthday, but because it was a Tuesday night not much was going on, so we actually ended up at a very cheap place frequented by students that was right next to our hostel from last time. Nightlife doesn’t start until late, so we weren’t sure if things would pick up on the main streets, but we had to get up at 6:45 the next day so we gave up after a while at the cheap bar. We definitely didn’t regret that decision the next morning.

Plaza Mayor of Salamanca

Plaza Mayor of Salamanca

On Wednesday, we had a lot of driving, but stopped for lunch in Salamanca, one of the biggest college towns in Spain. The University of Salamanca is the oldest university in the country and the third or fourth oldest in Europe and its 30,000 students make up a very large percentage of the town’s population, giving it an interesting dynamic. Other than free time for lunch, we also saw the outside of the city’s two cathedrals (Old Cathedral and New Cathedral), the main façade of the university rector building, and the Plaza Mayor, which looks a lot like the one in Madrid but even prettier and whose use as a main meeting point of the city makes it almost like the main quad of the university. After lunch, we got back on the bus for the last time before wrapping up our last trip on study abroad.

Overall, the trip to Northern Spain was definitely the trip of the beauty, but it was also a relaxing and reflective trip too where I feel like we bonded a bit more. It was our last hurrah, so there were definitely lots of feelings on the bus ride home. It was pretty sad to think that was the last time we’d be traveling and having an experience like that, and we wouldn’t really all be together in the same way again. While obviously we don’t all love each other all the time and not everyone is best friends with everyone because it’s a large group, we’ve still been living and traveling with each other and experiencing a new culture for 5 months at this point. We all go out together, share drinks and food to let people try things, get into crazy arguments and discussions, etc., and in the future we’ll mostly just be traveling in small groups with close friends and family. Despite the large group, there’s definitely a feeling of intimacy because of how we’ve gotten to know each other. It’ll be weird as everyone starts to trickle out over these next few weeks, but I’m sure we’ll all look back fondly on our study abroad experience and this last trip.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Posted in Study Abroad in Madrid | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Asturias: the land of cider and beaches

Posted on 3 May 2014 by Casey Brown

After our 10 day spring break trip, we were greeted with 4 days of exams. It was a busy week, but it’s good to know that now I’m done with four out of my five classes that I’ve been taking while abroad. There wasn’t really much time to rest after they ended though, because Friday morning we headed left at 09:00 for our trip to Northern Spain.

Group beach picture of the men

Group beach picture of the guys with Paco

We were told during our orientation by the Director of the Program, MariCarmen Cabellero, that was the “trip of the beauty”. Our trip was a little sadder because of her recent death a few days before we left for the trip after a hard battle with cancer, but even though we missed her funeral that morning, we knew that the best memorial we could have given her was going on her favorite trip and continuing on the program that she founded 18 years ago. Coming from it, we certainly have to say that she was right and it was one of our favorite trips we’ve taken during our time in Spain. Despite the forecasted rain, the weather was great except for one day and our trip was the perfect way to bond together one last time before half of the kids go back home to the United States.

La Franca Beach outside our hotel

La Franca Beach outside our hotel

During our trip we went to a few different places, but the first few days were spent in the autonomous community of Asturias. On our way there though, we did stop for lunch in San Vicente de la Barquera, a town in Cantabria right by the water, wanting to take advantage of the beautiful sun that MariCarmen likely arranged for us. After finishing up there, we piled back into the bus to continue our long bus ride to our hotel that night. (Madrid is very centrally located in the middle of the country, but it still takes a while to get to places because Spain is like the US with most of the other big cities concentrated on the coasts.) We finally arrived that night in Ribadedeva where we would be spending the next two nights. Our hotel, Mirador de la Franca, was amazing. It was a quaint little hotel right on the beach that we really loved. Paco, the head of our program, even shared that that beach was where his daughter learned to walk. Even though the weather wasn’t conducive to swimming, it was great that we had a chance to relax and chill on the beach, giving us a chance to rest after finals and a long abroad program.

That next day was the only one where the rainy weather held us up a little. We headed to the nearby town of Covadonga, home to Our Lady of Covadonga and a church/shrine built into the mountains. We were going to head further up to see the Lakes of Covadonga, but the bad weather meant that the drive up into the Picos de Europa mountains would be very tough with the bus. The weather got better though, so we stopped for coffee at yet another beach before heading to llagar de sidra. We ended up going to a lot of beaches because most of the sights we visited were along the coast of the Mar Cantábrico (Bay of Biscay), so basically every town wasn’t too far from a beautiful view of the water.

...with the cup almost completely horizontal.

They pour the sidra from above with the cup almost completely horizontal.

Asturias is known for its sidra, or hard cider, and the long history of regional production has influenced the culture there. Many of the words related to cider-making actually have origins the historical Asturian language that’s slowly dying out, which makes sense considering 80% of the cider produced in Spain comes from Asturias. We went to a town called Poo in Llanes, which made us laugh because of the funny word but actually now has the shortest name in Spain after it was renamed to Po. The llagar, an Asturian word for the placed where sidra is made, was a small family-run business that’s trying to grow. We got a tour of their farm, learned a little more about their business, and then had the chance to try some as part of an espicha. An espicha is a traditional Asturian gathering where people come together to drink cider and often eat traditional foods like chorizo cooked in cider, boiled eggs, tortilla, empanadas, and lots of amazing fresh cheeses. These normally take place outside because the correct way to drink cider is a little messy: you have to hold the bottle up very high above your head and pour a small amount in a cup (echar un culín). This gives the cider a bubbly taste that only lasts for a little bit, so you have to quickly drunk it without chugging it, leaving a little bit to clean out the glass for the next one, because the glass you use is passed around for everyone to drink from. Between the good food, good drinks, and good cultural experience, as well as the farm’s two local dogs, we were all in heaven and didn’t really want to leave.

Bonfire!

Bonfire!

Since we would be leaving the hotel the next morning, a few friends and I decided to gather some wood before dinner so we could have all have a bonfire on the beach together that night. I’m really glad we did because even though the tide kicked us out at around midnight, it was an awesome bonding experience and a great way for us to have some fun before leaving the beach. We sang some songs, told some stories, and just laughed and hung out before heading to bad. The only that was missing was the s’mores!

After checking out the next morning we headed to Ribadesella where, after some pictures on the beach and free time for lunch in the town, we visited the Cave of Tito Bustillo, which was totally awesome. Spain’s Northern Spain region is home to many examples of Paleolithic cave art, and this cave is one of the ones you can actually go into to see them. We couldn’t take pictures, but we saw a huge wall with tons of individual paintings. They’re from 22,000 B.C. and 10,000 B.C., meaning they were done over a period spanning 12,000 years with the most recent one being produced over 12,000 years ago, which is a totally crazy thought to imagine. The pictures on the website really don’t do it justice, but they help get an idea of how cool it was. For me, one of the coolest parts was that they were not all simply drawn onto any old cave wall; many of the locations were intentionally chosen so the existing contours and shapes of the cave wall were incorporated in the artwork.

We really enjoyed our time in Asturias, but our trip was barely half over, so we headed back into the bus to continue our long drive to Santiago de Compestela in Galicia.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Posted in Study Abroad in Madrid | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Spring Break Part 3: Istanbul, Turkey

Posted on 2 May 2014 by Casey Brown

Our third destination for spring break was probably my favorite: Istanbul, Turkey. Istanbul is a vibrant, beautiful city with a blend of east and west that makes it different from pretty much anywhere else in the world and that we found really relaxing. It was just Christy and I and fell at the end of the trip, and even though we had food poisoning, we had four days to spend in the city so took it easy and explored at our own pace.

Though Istanbul isn’t the capital of Turkey, it’s one of its largest cities, which I guess should be surprising considering it’s one of the largest cities and urban agglomerations in the entire world. Formerly the seats of the Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman empires as Constantinople, Istanbul has a really long and important history that has put it at the crossroads of the world. That continues to this day with it being one of the only cities to straddle two continents, Europe and Asia, its key location along the regionally-important Bosphorus Strait, and its ability to act as a link between the West and the Middle East. Obviously you can never see everything, but we really got to experience a lot of this historical culture and can truly understand how Turkey is unlike any other place in the world with its unique blend of cultures.

Our trip started off, of course, with some interesting transportation adventures. We had another early morning to catch our flight, leaving Prague for the airport on the 06:30 shuttle. Everything seemed to go pretty smoothly until Air Serbia delayed our departure — normally that would be fine, but our layover in Belgrade was only 15 minutes and we had an airport transfer that would be waiting for us in Istanbul. To make a long story short, we just made our connection in Belgrade by running to the gate, and they closed the door right after the people from our flight got on.

Outside the Blue Mosque

Outside the Blue Mosque

Because Istanbul is such a huge city, we decided to dedicated one day to each of the main areas and just wander around them. On our first day, we stayed in the old city area near our hostel, Sultanahmet, which is basically historic Constantinople and is a peninsula formed by the Golden Horn. Looking back, that was a really busy day filled with lots of sightseeing. We started off by going to the Hagia Sophia, a former Greek Orthodox basilica that was later an imperial mosque but is now a museum. Afterwards, we randomly stubbled upon the burial sites of some of the sultans of the Ottoman Empire and then went to see the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, or Blue Mosque, that we could see from the rooftop of our hostel. Due to Turkey’s large Muslim population (around 99%) and long history of Islamic influence, Istanbul’s skyline is dominated by many mosques like the Blue Mosque that are beautiful structures that are not only tourist attractions but also working religious sites used by the population of Istanbul five times per day for prayers. After spending some time enjoying the atmosphere and architecture of the mosque, we headed to the Basilica Cistern that my friend Elyssa had mentioned was pretty cool. It’s below ground and they used to store water there for the city. The pillars and whole thing was definitely very cool, even if the dark and dam atmosphere made it a little creepy.

After taking a break for lunch, we continued our walking tour with the Grand Bazaar. Though neither of us are big shoppers, it was cool to see one of the largest and oldest covered markets in the world that remains one of Istanbul’s most popular tourist attractions. They kept asking me if I wanted to buy new jeans though… I’m not sure if they say that to everyone or they were trying to tell me something about the ones I was wearing. We continued exploring after there, not entirely sure where we were going because of the scarcity of street scenes, but definitely enjoying the journey and city experience. Eventually we found our next stop, the New Mosque, located right by the Galata Bridge that spans the Golden Horn and connects the two European sides. We really liked the mosque for some reason, maybe because we were able to just sit down in the inside, taking in the whole thing and watching people pray. From there, we continued walking and made it to our last two spots: the Archaeological Museums and Topkapı Palace, the former home of the Ottoman sultans for almost 400 years. After a long day of walking in the sun and lots of tourist stops, we ate dinner at the hostel and went to bed pretty early that night.

Panoramic view of Istanbul from Galata Tower

Panoramic view of Istanbul from Galata Tower

Day 2 was, as luck would have it, rainy. Luckily it didn’t stay bad for long, so we decided to brave the weather and cross the Golden Horn to the Beyoğlu and Galata districts that were still part of the European side, but across the bridge from us. We took the tram to Kabataş and transferred to the very convenient funicular line that only takes 110 seconds to get to Taksim Square, the heart of modern Istanbul. We were there in the rain, but we could see why the wide open area is a major meeting and leisure place, full of nightclubs and the location of the city’s protests, just like Madrid’s Puerta del Sol. It’s a key shopping area, so after seeing the Republic Monument we walked down İstiklal Avenue, a long pedestrian street full of shops, restaurants, candy stores, and more. We saw the nostalgic tram, and it turns out that the local Tünel Metro Station holds the second-oldest underground metro line in the world, after the London Underground. If you’ve been reading my blog faithfully, you’ll hopefully be confused by that since we thought we had just seen that in Budapest. Budapest actually has the oldest full subway line with multiple stations, while this one is just a funicular line with two stations. Still very cool, especially to think that we went to two of the oldest on the same trip!

We were pleasantly surprised to find out that İstiklal Caddesi ends at Galata Tower, which was the other thing we had planned for this side of the Golden Horn. A medieval stone tower, today Galata Tower is one of the city’s main landmarks and a cool tourist attraction because of the panoramic view it gives of the city, letting us see the rest of Galata, the Asian side, and even the historic peninsula where we had been the day before, with tons of mosques dotting the skyline. From above it almost made it seem like we were on a bunch of small islands because of how the natural barriers affect how the city is formed. Not wanting to buy more Metro tokens and realizing we ended up so close to Galata Bridge, we decided to walk back home across the bridge. We stopped a few times to people watch and take in the city, and ended up spending a lot of time chilling in Gülhane Park, which is part of the same complex as the Archaeological Museum and Topkapı Palace from yesterday. There were tons of kids around playing on statues and just having fun, so between that and the sun that came out we were very content.

After stopping back at our hostel for a quick rest, we decided to be daring and ignore our stomach problems to try some good food. We went to a cheap area that was apparently known for its good quality and value. The meal turned out to only be 20 TRY for both Christy and I, which is only $9. We got pide, which is there version of pizza on pita bread, and it was really good. 🙂 It was definitely interesting that I got water in what looked like a jello cup and that the restaurant hasn’t had a bathroom in over 330 years — the waiter took me down the street and paid for a public WC when I asked where the bathroom was — but it was definitely interesting and a very good meal.

This guy is playing with all the ice cream he has on Büyükada Island.

This guy is playing with all the ice cream he has on Büyükada Island.

We weren’t really sure what to do for our last day in Istanbul. We were originally thinking about going over the Asian side (Anatolia), just to say we did it, but after finding out that we had actually flown into the Asian side (we flew into the cheaper, but further airport) we decided to try something else interesting: visit the nearby Prince Islands. These islands, known as the Adalar district, are very popular destinations for the residents of Istanbul to escape the busy city life during the summer. All motorized vehicles, other than service vehicles, are forbidden from the island, so people need to explore by foot, bicycle, or horse-drawn taxi carriages, making it more peaceful. It took about an hour and a half for us to get to the biggest of the nine islands, Büyükada, but the tokens were very cheap and we met some cool Dutch university students along the way. We walked all around the island, going to the top of one of the hills to see a monastery and a viewpoint, and just hanging around. It was definitely a fun, relaxing way to end our trip.

We tried to go to bed pretty early that night because we had our earliest departure yet to look forward to: we needed to get up at 02:30 to make sure we were on the 03:15 shuttle. Sabiha Gökçen Airport was definitely cheaper and we can now see why, given how long it took us to get there from where we were staying. Fortunately though, our early departure would give us time to study for finals and work on essays for our last week of classes at Mosaic. We even ended up being on the same flight as people we knew from Madrid, so they helped us stay awake at the gate despite the early hour. We also reasoned that we couldn’t be delayed by a late plane if we were the first flight out! Given our troubles with Wizz Air and Air Serbia, I guess we shouldn’t have been surprised that we had to sit 20 minutes at a broken jetway and leave from the back when we got back to Madrid and bus to the terminal. At that point we were champs at transportation problems though, so we handled it with style. 😉

Overall, Istanbul was definitely a very cool city and a good end to a fun spring break trip. It had a very cool blend of European and Middle Eastern characteristics, and though there was a definite Muslim influence, it was distinctly not Arab, even though people often conflate the two. We actually grew to enjoy the call to prayer five times a day; it was very beautiful and made us stop to reflect every time we heard it. The Islamic gender roles still take some getting used to, with the separation in the mosques and the fact that it’s more common to see men holding hands walking around than a man and a woman or groups of women. Beyond the city itself, we had a lot of fun random stories from our visit to Istanbul, like Rosie the Cat, one of the city’s main wild cats and dogs that roam the streets, who has come to our hostel for breakfast for 8 years and used to get pregnant twice a year until one of the local owners got her spayed. On our day in Beyoğlu we also ran into the same three Spanish travelers four different times, leading us to playfully ask them in Spanish if they were following us when we ran into them the last time at Galata Tower. Our talks with the Dutch students were also fun, with them commenting on how it sucks we don’t have a “secret language” because everyone knows English and just laughing about stupid things.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Posted in Study Abroad in Madrid | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Spring Break Part 2: Prague, Czech Republic

Posted on 27 April 2014 by Casey Brown
Necessary train selfie.

Necessary train selfie.

After a long 7-hour train ride from Budapest that may have given us food poisoning, we finally arrived in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. Though it took a while, traveling by train was definitely worth it because we got to see the countryside and even passed through a new country, Slovakia. I kinda wish we’d fit some time into our train so we could’ve gotten off, but oh well. The Czech Republic would be my only new country that we were visiting, and my friend had just been and said it was awesome, so I was excited to get off the train and see what the city had to offer. We didn’t get in until around 8:30, so by the time we got to the hostel we just had time for dinner there before heading to bed.

Unfortunately, as seems to be a trend on my trips, the weather on our first day in Prague was pretty bad. We took a walking tour of the city through our hostel, but it soon began to downpour so we bought some cheap umbrellas from a nearby store before continuing on. Despite wanting to give up a few times, we didn’t let the weather stop us and walked through New Town to the Powder Tower, one of the original entrances to the city, near the Czech National Bank and apparently the film location for scenes from Vin Diesel’s XXX. Passing under Powder Tower brought us into Old Town, where we saw the Church of St. James, which apparently has a mummified arm of a would-be thief hanging from the ceiling, before heading into the main square of the district.

Prague astronomical clock

Prague astronomical clock

Other than for being the historical capital of Bohemia and the former Czechoslovakia, Prague is very famous for its very extensive historic center which escaped World War II without any major bombings, leaving the architecture and most of the buildings intact. When we got to Old Town Square, we were greeted by a huge Easter market that full of food and souvenirs that I know my mom would be jealous of granted how much she loved the Christmas markets we had visited before they dropped me off in Madrid. We also saw the Prague astronomical clock, a big tourist attraction shown by the huge crowd when we were there that is actually the oldest working astronomical clock in the world and features a moving “walk of the apostles” every hour. In the square we learned from our tour guide that Prague and the Czech Republic played very important roles in the Protestant Reformation and the Thirty Year’s War. It is because of this and their subjugation throughout history by many groups like the church, the Nazis and the Soviet Union that many people are atheist and the Czech Republic is one of the most liberal countries around. While they might not all agree with what you are or do, they’ll defend your right to do it as long as you’re not harming anyone else. Even still, he told us Czechs do have a long history of finding creative ways to harm adversaries in a disagreement, coining many words in their language like defenestration, which is the act of throwing someone out a window.

2014-04-14 16.57.01

Easter markets of Old Town Square

We walked from Old Town Square to the Jewish Quarter, the former Jewish ghetto that our friend Haley really wanted to visit. Prague’s Jewish area is one of the best preserved in all of Europe because Hitler wanted to preserve it as an “exotic museum of an extinct race” and sent many Jewish artifacts from across the continent there for storage. Definitely a little disturbing, but at least it helped maintain the area including some historical buildings like the Old New Synagogue and the Jewish Town Hall, which actually has two clocks, one in Roman numerals going “clockwise” and the other in Hebrew going “counterclockwise,” because the language is written from left-to-right. The quarter is also home to the Old Jewish Cemetery, which has graves 12 layers deep because they ran out of space.

I had to leave the tour right after we go to the Jewish quarter because I had an interview, but I went back to Old Town a little later with Haley and Ashley, where we had a chance to explore the Easter market a little more, taste some cool foods like trdelník, and go to the top of the church for a panoramic view of the city. On our way back to Old Town Square though, we had a strange freak hail storm where hail was falling from the sky while it was sunny out… it being passover at the time led Haley and I to deduce that this could mean nothing other than that the plagues were upon us all over again. Luckily, the sun came out pretty quickly again, though rain came and went for the rest of the day.

Water dissolving the sugar cube into the absinthe.

Water dissolving the sugar cube into the absinthe.

That night we pressed our luck even further by trying absinthe at a local bar that specializes in it. I think we might have already had some in Spain, since the drink was never banned in either Spain or in the Czech Republic, but it was an interesting experience nevertheless. We learned a bit about it and the differing levels of intensity and learned how to drink it. The proper way is to dissolve a sugar cube in the glass with some drops of water and then stir it, and they had a very interesting contraption designed just for this purpose. If you take it as a shot there’s a different way to prepare it that throws fire into the mix as well. I’m not sure if I’ll be having absinthe again any time soon, but it was definitely an interesting experience, even if we (luckily) didn’t end up hallucinating.

The next day we headed across the Charles Bridge to the other side of the river, by Prague Castle. This historic bridge is pretty famous for its 30 statues, some of which you’re supposed to rub for good fortune, and for its importance in connecting the castle with Old Town. On this side of the Vltava River we also saw the Lennon Wall, a continuously-changing wall filled with graffiti and Beatles lyrics that was used as a form of youth protest during the communist regime in Prague. After walking to the top of Petřín Hill, home to a bunch of parks and a lookout tower that looks a lot like the Eiffel tower, we reached an old monastery where the monks also brewed beer. We didn’t up trying any, but I guess we shouldn’t have been surprised that even the monks brew beer in the country with the highest beer consumption per capita in the world.

Besides packing and preparing to go our separate ways, the rest of that day was spent around the Prague Castle area, which is today not only the official residence of the Czech Republic’s President but also a huge complex of historical buildings, including the former royal castle itself and a bunch of churches. We were a little disappointed because we thought it would be a cool medieval castle to just wander around, but it was interesting nevertheless. Overall, we had a good trip to the Czech Republic where things were definitely cheaper, though the currency definitely gave us some problems like it did in Hungary and the language was similarly tough (luckily thank you was similar to the Polish word that I already knew, dziękuję!), and we were interestingly enough asked “smoking or non-smoking” when entering a restaurant. Next time though, I definitely want to visit the Eiffel Tower-wannabe in the park on Petřín Hill. 🙂

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Posted in Study Abroad in Madrid | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Spring Break Part 1: Budapest, Hungary

Posted on 24 April 2014 by Casey Brown

Since Spain is a very Catholic country, our spring break this year fell a little later than what we’re accustomed to in the United States. Here spring break is called Semana Santa, or Holy Week, and always take place the week leading up to Easter. In Spain, this week is usually filled with many procesiones where different religious brotherhoods take turns performing parades throughout the streets. We’ve heard it’s quite a sight, and some of the country’s processions are very famous, but I took advantage of the 10 day break to travel with three of my friends to some further places in Eastern Europe: Budapest, Hungary; Prague, Czech Republic; and Istanbul, Turkey.

Trying to keep our spirits up while fanning ourselves on the plane!

Trying to keep our spirits up while fanning ourselves on the plane!

Our first stop was Budapest, the capital of Hungary. It was certainly an adventure from the very start, when our Wizz Air flight sat on the tarmac for an hour and a half before we were able to take off. There was a problem with the starter, so the pilot couldn’t get the flight going… that was scary enough, but then some people were so freaked out by it that they wanted to get off the plane, prompting a cabin-wide claiming of carry-on baggage to make sure they didn’t leave anything on the plane. To top it all off, because the plane wasn’t turning on, we had no air conditioning, so there was just a sea of people fanning themselves with the safety information card. (We figured this would be as good a time as any actually read it.) This would only be the first of many fun transportation experiences, but it certainly got our trip off to an interesting and eventful start!

Despite the late arrival in Budapest because of the flight delay, we were still able to get a taxi to our home for the next three nights. It’s sad to say but our lodging was probably one of the best parts of our visit to Budapest — one of our friends found this awesome apartment on Airbnb. It was a real apartment with a kitchen, shower, bathroom, TV, and three beds, meaning I got so sleep on my own bed! (Okay, it was really the couch with a sheet and blanket on it, but still awesome.) Because we had a kitchen and a grocery store down the street, we were actually able to save money and cook dinner for ourselves one night — the pasta and chicken fingers with ketchup already inside were awesome. 😉 The location was also great, right near a Metro station with a great view of Parliament across the river. Budapest actually used to be three separate cities, Buda, Óbuda, and Pest, but the distinction between the flat Pest side and hilly Buda side still exists to this day. We were on the Buda side, which has most of the old attractions while the majority of the modern touristy things are on the other side. It didn’t turn out to be a problem though because we were so close to the metro and the river.

Budapest Parliament Building

Budapest Parliament Building

We started off the first day with a tour of Parliament right across the river. The beautiful Hungarian Parliament Building has become one of the main symbols of the city, sharing the title of tallest building in Budapest with Saint Stephen’s Basilica. They both stand at 96 meters tall, which apparently has a lot of significance in Hungarian because the Principality of Hungary was established in 896 and the country celebrated its millennium in 1896. It was very cool that we actually got to go inside the working legislative building, though it was pretty quiet when we went because the recent elections meant that they were in the middle of a recess. It turned out though that those elections were pretty significant because they had just lowered the number of members by half. After we saw the crown jewels of Hungary, we reached the end of our tour and headed off to grab something to eat.

From lunch we visited the other tallest building in Budapest, St. Stephen’s Basilica. The church was very beautiful and I think we might have seen the mummified hand of the Hungary’s first king, Stephen, but the coolest part was definitely going to the top to get a panoramic view of the city. We were also told our English was very good by this nice woman who took a picture of us at the top — apparently she thought we were from Germany or Switzerland and was taken aback by how well we were speaking English. After getting some ice cream and randomly being filmed for a video, we headed back to the Danube River to see the Shoes Memorial, dedicated to the Jews killed during World War II who were shot into the river after taking their shoes off. Definitely a very sad subject, but it was a good place to see nevertheless.

Saint Stephen's Basilica

Saint Stephen’s Basilica

Later that night we went out to Szimpla, one of Budapest’s famous ruin bars. These are bars built in formerly abandoned buildings and homes in the old Jewish quarter that were given new life as cool, half-built bars. Szimpla felt like it was half inside and half outside and was definitely a very interesting experience. My EU professor had actually recommended that we check out the place, and all the guidebooks pointed to it as well!

The next day we woke up early to explore our side of the river, Buda, and the major attractions on Castle Hill like the castle itself, Matthias Church, and Fisherman’s Bastion. Because I had just been to the city with my family before coming to Madrid, I had already seen most of these things, but it was good to get another visit in.

The rest of the day was spent experiencing another part of the main Budapest attractions that I didn’t see last time: the old Roman and Turkish thermal baths that the “City of Spas” has become known for. We first went to the Széchenyi Thermal Bath, which is actually still used as a medicinal bath today. To get there we had to take Metro Line 1, a different line than we had been taking, which is actually the second oldest underground railway in the world. Because London’s Underground is the oldest, Budapest’s is the oldest in Continental Europe. Unfortunately I couldn’t take pictures because I kept my phone at home so it would stay dry, but you could really tell that you were riding the old line with the much smaller tunnels and older trains. After riding the metro back, we rested up for the rest of that night because in preparation for our second spa visit: a “sparty” (spa party) at the Lukács Baths. It was basically a spring break pool party, but it was a good experience to checked off the Budapest tourist list either way. Haley and I are also proud to say that we took advantage of the crazy atmosphere to chant for Atleti, one of our home teams that’s doing quite well in the Champion’s League in addition to leading La Liga.

View from the top of Saint Stephen's Basilica

View from the top of Saint Stephen’s Basilica

We took it easy the next day and straightened up the apartment before heading off to the train station to head to Prague. We definitely had a lot of fun in Budapest, especially with the great weather, city, and apartment. We didn’t get to do everything that I would’ve wanted, like some of the city’s famed “escape games” or walk down Budapest’s version of Paris’s Champs-Élysées, the Andrássy út, but that’s what happens when you travel with other people. It was definitely an adventure trying to deal with the challenging Hungarian language where it takes forever just to get thank you down (but where we were really excited when we figured out tér meant square), the currency whose many zeroes made prices very difficult to understand, and the strange preference for handing out a group ticket instead of four separate ones. Regardless, we hope to make it back to Budapest soon!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Posted in Study Abroad in Madrid | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Paseo to Lavapiés

Posted on 16 April 2014 by Casey Brown

On Wednesday, April 10, we had our last paseo. 🙁 With the week of Easter being our spring break, this week was the end of all of our classes at the AU Study Center. When we come back from spring break, we’ll have exams and then head on a trip to Northern Spain before all the Iberian Experience kids start leaving us to go back home. Though I only have one more exam after they all leave, I still officially have a month left of my program and it’ll be really weird to be in Madrid missing half of the people who came here with us!

For our last paseo, Kike took us to the Lavapiés neighborhood, which is south of Sol, close to La Latina, and not too far from Legazpi, where we met for our paseo to the Matadero. The area used to be the Jewish neighborhood of city, before the Sephardi were expelled from Spain by the Catholic Monarchs, which might explain the origin of the name, lava + pies, a possible reference to washing one’s feet before entering the synagogue. Today, the barrio is home to many immigrants, especially Senegalese and Bengali. Kike actually works for an organization in the neighborhood, ASLIM, which helps new immigrants assimilate to the culture and teaches them Spanish.

The neighborhood has a long history of being the home to the common people. Many of the early residents were laborers and construction workers. Beyond the immigrants today, there is also a strong Bohemian feeling in the area, with lots of people with tattoos and piercing, and a tradition of squatting and liberal political activism. The anarchist movement in Madrid actually has its root in the neighborhood, with the anarchism union, Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) still having some signs up in the area. We also saw a very cool community center that was actually formerly a tobacco factory, the Tabacalera, whose cheap community-sponsored activities for the community is actually very indicative of the atmosphere within the area.

There’s a nice plaza and playground in the middle of Lavapiés Square and on the day of our paseo, the weather was so nice that there were lots of people just hanging out in the square and lots of children playing. Even though many of them were immigrants, they definitely seem to share the Spaniards’ love of enjoying the city’s open spaces and public areas, really helping show the idea of “you’re from where you live”. Kike really stressed that this all showed how Lavapiés is one of the castizo, true or authentic, neighborhoods in the city that is very different from many of the other areas in Madrid today. Although it was sad that it was our last paseo, it was definitely cool to end on a different perspective and walk around some of Madrid’s more unique neighborhoods.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Posted in Study Abroad in Madrid | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Rainy Trip to Porto with the best sandwich ever

Posted on 14 April 2014 by Casey Brown

We booked our trip to Porto, Portugal, expecting sun and beaches. When we checked the weather in the week up to our departure, we learned the reality would be far from it. Thanks to some open minds, we ends up having fun after all on a different kind of trip that left us eager to return to the city to see what more it has to offer.

We loved it though, despite the rain.

We loved it though, despite the rain.

Porto, also known as Oporto, is located in the north of Portugal by mouth of the Douro River — hence it being called “the Port” — and is the second largest city in the country. After we landed, we struggled to make our way to the hotel without Google Maps since our phones didn’t work in Portugal. Somehow we found the cute square where our hostel sat after a while of searching in the rain and quickly scurried inside to dry off. We couldn’t check in until 3:00pm and were hungry for some lunch, so we headed out in search of one of the must-dos for any visitor to Portugal: the Francesinha.

Francesinha, my favorite sandwich ever

Francesinha, my favorite sandwich ever

We weren’t really sure what to expect, but we had read that we had to try to eat a francesinha when we came to the city and were willing to give it a try. It’s a sandwich, one of the top 10 best in the world apparently, with thick Texas-toast style bread, many different layers of meat like steak, sausage, and ham, covered with cheese and a spicy sauce (in Iberian terms though, so not really) — all served over a bed of french fries. One of Haley’s friends from Madrid is actually originally from the city of Porto, so he gave us a place to go that apparently has really good francesinhas, Capa Negra II. It was a little bit of a walk, but we utilized our navigational skills with our map and definitely weren’t disappointed. Apparently you’re supposed to share them if it’s your first time, but no one told us that so we all ordered one… I was the only one who finished mine, but no shame at all. Some of the meats were a little strange, but it was amazing. 🙂

After lunch, we headed back to the hostel to catch the 3:30pm tour. It started down-pouring while we were out there and we almost considered heading back, but I’m glad we didn’t. My pants might not have dried until halfway through the next day and I’m pretty sure my shoes will never recover from being that wet, but I’m glad we took advantage of the city and stayed on the tour. We met at the Liberdade Square close to where we had taken the metro from the airport (Aliados), right in front of the statue to Pedro IV. Along the tour, we saw a few of the sites we had passed on our way to the hostel like the Clérigos Church with its high tower and the main building of the University of Porto, but we also saw a lot of new things and learned more about them.

Inspiration for Sirius Black's house

Inspiration for Sirius Black’s house. See the door and windows in the middle?

Two of the coolest things we saw that we probably wouldn’t have learned about without the tour were two sites that are thought to have inspired Harry Potter. J. K. Rowling actually taught English in Porto for a while and started writing the novels while living in the city, so many aspects of the city probably made it into her book. The first was the famous Livraria Lello, one of the oldest bookstores in Portugal, whose beautiful décor probably inspired many of the beautiful bookshops. We also saw the supposed inspiration for Sirius Black’s house, which might seem like a stretch but definitely has a good argument. Apparently there’s a rule in Portugal that no two churches can share a wall, so when they wanted to build the Igreja do Carmo right next to the Igreja dos Carmelitas, they needed to add a very skinny house right in between. Like Sirius Black’s hidden house, you almost wouldn’t notice it’s there even if you walked by the street everyday. Beyond those two sites, we also saw a bunch of students from the university wearing robes. Nowadays they apparently just use them when hazing the new students, but in the past they wore them as part of a uniform to not make poorer students feel left out. Who’d have thought that we’d see so much Harry Potter-related things in Portugal?

Throughout the rest of that tour and the one we took the next day, we saw quite a bit more of what Porto had to offer. Because the city is located so close to the river, it has many important bridges that our guide pointed out to us and has had to deal with lots of flooding over the years. We also saw the historical São Bento railway station, a very beautiful building that was apparently built by an architect fresh out of school who was so excited to impress everyone with his first project that he forgot to add bathrooms and ticket offices! Paco would also be proud of us because we saw quite a few churches, including the Porto Cathedral, but we didn’t go inside any except for one attached to a convent. Our guide explained to us that many of the older Portuguese nuns came from wealthy families but were sent to convents when they refused to participate in their arranged marriages. I’m not sure how much I believe all of the anecdotes he told us, but they’re all interesting nevertheless. 🙂

Port wine tasting

Port wine tasting

After our tour on the second day, we decided to head across the river through one of the bridges that our guide, Pedro, had shown us. Porto is actually like San Francisco in that the area across the river is actually a different city: Gaia. This is the area home to the various wine producers and cellars that produce the port wine that Porto is known for. Because it has protected designation of origin status, only wine coming from this area can actually be labeled port wine, similar to the protections given to the Champagne region of France. The protected region along the Douro River was actually established in 1756, making it the oldest demarcated region in the world — something we actually learned from the wall in our hostel, because it was named the Porto Wine Hostel. 😉 We were also pretty excited when we realized that the “Douro River” is actually the same as the “Duero River” we have in Spain, meaning that the popular Ribera red wine also comes from grapes grown along that river as well. Visiting some of the adegas for a tour and tasting is another one of the must-see Porto tourist attractions, so naturally we had to check that out.

We didn’t really do that much the rest of that night because we had to get up really early the next day — our flight left at 8:25am, so we needed to be up by 3:45am for everyone to get ready and for us to catch the 5:00am bus. Between the rain and that early wake up call, we didn’t really get to enjoy the nightlife that our hostel was so close to (though we did see people still partying when we left in the morning…), but we definitely had a worthwhile trip regardless. The bad weather on Friday also made us truly appreciate that it was only foggy on Saturday with the occasional drizzle. We can only imagine how beautiful the city is with the nice weather and sun though. Fortunately, Paco and Elena surprised us by adding Porto to our Northern Spain trip after finals finish, so hopefully we’ll get see some nicer weather then. We’ll be the experts on the trip and will be able to show everyone some of the many cheap food places (5€ per person!) and get them to fall in love with francesinhas. Maybe we’ll even try some of the tripe that the city is apparently famous for, given the affectionate nickname of people from Porto, tripe eaters or tripeiros. 🙂

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Posted in Study Abroad in Madrid | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Archaeological Museum, Botanical Gardens, and Reina Sofía

Posted on 12 April 2014 by Casey Brown

The week following our trip to Valencia was another one filled with field trips and a paseo to sites around Madrid, including the Archaeological Museum and Reina Sofía with Paco and the Botanical Gardens with Kike.

Archaeological Museum

Archaeological Museum

On Tuesday, Paco took us to the National Archaeological Museum of Spain, located on Calle Serrano, the famous shopping street, right behind the Plaza de Colón. Both the Colón and Serrano Metro stops are only two or three stops away from me on my Metro line which follows Calle Goya. Unfortunately the Metro was down because a passenger needed medical attention for some reason, but it was a beautiful day and only a 10-15 minute walk from my house. Paco really planned our visit to the museum well, because it had actually just officially opened the day we went, April 1, after being closed for 4 years due to renovations. The facility is now remodeled to be prettier, include more natural light, and include more technology, plus admission was completely free because it was opening day.

I don’t really love archaeological museums, but this one was pretty interesting, especially with the juxtaposition of the new displays and building with the very old artifacts. The two coolest things that we saw were the Lady of Elche and Lady of Baza, that date back to the 4th century BC, making them pre-Roman, created by the Iberians who used to inhabit the peninsula during that time period. We had learned about both of them during class, so it was nice to be able to see them in real life as well. It was also especially interesting to be seeing them just after we got back from our trip to Valencia and the Museu Faller, because the headdress and coils on the side of Lady of Elche’s head looks a lot like the traditional dress of the falleras — something that archaeologists don’t quite understand but think can’t be a simple coincidence.

The next day was quite rainy, but Kike decided to hold his paseo anyway, because we’re running out of weekends and he couldn’t afford for us to wait until a sunny day. We met at the Plaza de Murillo at the southern entrance to the Prado Museum, as well as the entrance to the Royal Botanical Gardens, our destination for that day’s paseo. It began to downpour just as we got to the meeting point, and even though I had my umbrella it didn’t really help much. After Kike arrived and the rain let up a little bit he decided we should still go through with the trip, but luckily the tour guide had us visit the greenhouses (invernaderos) first so we’d be out of the rain. We learned the difference between a public park like Retiro and a botanical garden is that the latter exist for research and thus intentionally include many different varieties of plants from different climates to study them. It was cool to see how many different types of plants they had saved in the garden, but we were definitely happy when we were able to go home and dry off.

Our busy week continued on Thursday with a visit to the Reina Sofía, the 20th century art museum, with Paco. I had already been there with some friends, but it definitely helps to go there again with a tour guide like Paco so we can learn more. Again, the highlight was Guernica by Pablo Picasso, so we learned more about the different aspects of the painting, possible meanings, and more historical background about its production and inspiration. We also saw some more paintings by Salvador Dalí and were again impressed by how many details he includes in his paintings that can be interpreted in different ways and how the paintings themselves even look different and reveal hidden elements when you look at them from a different angle or perspective.

On Thursday I also was able to try torrija, a traditional Spanish dessert during Lent and Semana Santa (Holy Week). It’s basically their version of French toast, and it was really good. The lady at our local panadería, or bakery, convinced us to get it when we went in to get napolitanas, which are basically the Spanish version of pain au chocolat. They’re incredibly cheap here and we usually get 3 for €1,50 there. We love them though, so naturally we get the torrija and our usual 3 napolitanas too.

Though it had been a long week with me finishing up my Spanish book for literature and preparing for two presentations, plus all of those visits, I didn’t have time to rest yet. I’d be getting up early the next morning to catch a 9:20 flight to Porto, Portugal, with some friends the next day, Friday.

Posted in Study Abroad in Madrid | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Valencia and the hanging houses of Cuenca

Posted on 10 April 2014 by Casey Brown

Our day started early on Thursday, March 26, with a meetup time of 8:45am in Príncipe Pío for our second to last weekend trip, this time to Cuenca and Valencia towards the east.

Casas Colgadas

Casas Colgadas

The central city of Cuenca in Castilla-La Mancha was our first stop around two hours outside of the city of Madrid. Other than a pit stop on the way to Valencia, our main reason for visiting Cuenca was to see the famous Casas Colgadas, or “hanging houses.” These houses were built along the river hundreds of years ago, but due to erosion now sit very high up above the river and appear to be “hanging” over it. We were able to see them from the St. Paul Bridge and it was definitely a little scary of a sight! One of them houses an abstract art museum that we visited, so in addition to discovering our own interpretations of the pieces of art we were able to see what it’s like to actually be in one of the hanging houses as well. We tried not to go too near the windows though. 🙂

Like most of our trips here in Spain, we visited the Cathedral of Cuenca before we had free time for lunch and headed back on the road towards Valencia. This cathedral was actually one of the first examples of Gothic architecture in Spain. Though we’ve obviously seen many cathedrals by now, this one was very interesting because of its mix of styles. Beyond the Gothic exterior and a few other styles, there was actually abstract art in the stained glass windows. You definitely don’t see that everyday in a Catholic church!

We arrived in Valencia at around 5:00pm, but had to rush quickly after checking in to the hotel to our first stop, the Museu Faller, because it closes at 6:00pm. The city of Valencia is the capital of the autonomous community of the same name and is actually the third largest city in Spain. Located along the eastern border of the country along the Mediterranean, Valencia is known for its beautiful beaches and its busy ports. Like its northern neighbor Catalonia, the community speaks Catalan, though their dialect is officially known as Valencian within the comunitat.

Though it was overcast for most of our visit, Valencia’s beaches are a common tourist destination during the summer. We also heard from a few of our teachers that when they were kids the area attracted a lot of young kids from Madrid and other areas for the Ruta del Bakalao. The teenagers would go away for the weekend in their cars to Valencia and go from club to club, staying away through drugs and uppers from Friday night until Monday morning when they went straight to work or school from the trip. Because they just took drugs instead of drinking alcohol, the clubs needed to recoup money buy selling water at high prices and actually turned off the faucets and didn’t put water in the toilet bowls because people started drinking that water too! Though the Ruta del Bakalao doesn’t happen anymore, we’re starting to learn that Spanish people really have earned their reputation as very intense partiers.

Ben, the hermanito, trying to pose with a ninot!

Ben, the hermanito, trying to pose with a winning ninot!

The Museu Faller that we visited is dedicated to Valencia’s most well-known tradition, Falles, a celebration known for the fires that gives the event its name. During the festival dedicated to Saint Joseph, people would showcase throughout the streets the ninots that they made over the past few months, which are basically huge colorful arts made out of cardboard and papier-mâché and filled with firecrackers. Par of the best ninot from the festival is selected for saving in the Museu Faller and all of the others get burned in huge bonfires. There is also a pageant where Valencian girls dress up in traditional outfits and hairstyles and they pick the best one. A few of my friends went to the city for the celebration, but I’ve heard many Spaniards stay away because of how intense the celebration is — one big, loud party full of of drunk people and lots of firecrackers. In the museum it was cool to see the best ninots saved and the portraits of the winning falleras.

After a pretty low-key night going to a local bar, we woke up the next day to go to L’Oceanogràfic, an open-air marine animal park and aquarium right across from our hotel in the City of Arts and Sciences district of Valencia. This complex is the one of the most important tourist destinations in the city and also includes a planetarium with an IMAX cinema, a science museum, opera house, nightclub, and more with very cool buildings. The whole area was actually built on the old site of the local Turia River, which was rerouted after a big flood and converted into the City of Arts and Sciences complex and a cool park throughout the length of the former river until the sea. Although I’ve been to SeaWorld many times and have seen my fair share of sea life, we had a lot of fun walking around and enjoying what the park had to offer and Sarah actually got picked to participate in the dolphin show that we saw, which was pretty exciting. 🙂

We might be a little old to play on this, but no shame at all

We might be a little old to play on this, but no shame at all

We went from the oceanarium to the beach for some more downtime and lunch. Our lunch of some fried shrimp and patatas bravas was pretty good, though we did get a little ripped off by a €22 pitcher of the famous local drink, Agua de Valencia. We had fun hanging out along the beach and climbing on a very cool children’s playground — one of the guys in our group, Colin, actually made friends with a 9-year-old who was very surprised when we told him we were 21… we have no regrets at all though, it was fun.

Our next stop was, of course, the cathedral. But this cathedral was very cool, not just because it had a great mixture of styles like the one in Cuenca, but also because it holds what is likely to be the real Holy Grail that Jesus drank from in the Last Supper! The chalice is in one of the cathedral’s chapels, and it was definitely cool to see this. Whether it’s the real one or not, or if the true holy grail is actually Jesus’s descendants, it’s still incredible to have seen that in a church in Valencia. After seeing the chalice, we went up to the top of the Michelet tower and after hundreds of steps through a narrow staircase, we were greeted with some very cool views of the city. Another interesting aspect of the cathedral is that it is home to the oldest continuing council in Europe, the Water Tribunal which meets right outside the door to the cathedral in the main plaza.

Picture from Annie on top of the Michelet!

Picture from Annie on top of the Michelet!

The rest of that day was spent walk around Valencia until we headed back to the hotel. That night we checked out the traditional nightlife area of El Carmen, visiting a bar with live music and a local nightclub. The next day we would be heading back to Madrid, but not before visiting the last place and attraction on our itinerary: la Albufera in El Palmar, which was only a short drive away from the main city of Valencia.

One of the other most well-known aspects of the Comunitat Valenciana is the famous Spanish dish paella, which actually originated in this community very near to where we had been staying in the Albufera. The Albufera is a lagoon and estuary with lots of biodiversity that is mostly used for growing rice, specifically the rice used in paella. The area is actually home to one of the oldest functioning unions and there’s a drawing every year to see who gets to fish where. We had a tour of the area, complete with a boat ride throughout the lagoon and a walking tour through the local forest where we saw many different types of landscapes. It was nice to end our trip outside enjoying the natural areas that reminded us a lot of the forests we have back home. We saw some rice fields, the building they use to collect eels before they ship them out, and the traditional barraca houses that used to be used. Although we did not eat the eels, we did get to taste some awesome authentic paella that made a great end to our trip to Valencia.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Posted in Study Abroad in Madrid | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment