Good Friday Procession

Sorry that this post is a bit late! Last Saturday, we said goodbye to our last guest. We have had friends and family in our apartment for the last 3 weeks! We enjoyed their company, but now we're trying to clean the apartment and plan for lessons. After we have people in our apartment, we always give ourselves one full day of being absolutely lazy. We did nothing, yet the time seemed to fly by (how is it 5pm already?!)

I really need to post these pictures from the Good Friday Procession during Easter week (or Semana Santa as they call it here). This is the day they really celebrate; when it's Easter Sunday, you don't see anyone outside. I guess they are eating with their families or sleeping because everything is closed. But Good Friday, the day Jesus was crucified, is a large solemn event. There are parades all over the cities that range in scariness. I say this because in all of the parades, there are people wearing large hoods over their faces. As an American, I have a negative image of this garb, since it is similar to the KKK hats. The truth is that the KKK took the idea of these hats for their organization; the actual meaning behind the hats is very different in a Good Friday procession. They are worn by believers who are repenting for their sins and wish to remain anonymous. There are also several other groups who follow in the parade. One is a large group of women in black with beautiful mantillas (the veils on their heads) to show they are in mourning. The weirdest part was the ordinary people who were barefoot and had chains on their ankles. You could hear them dragging their chains on the street, which had a pretty ominous feeling to it.

The procession began with a team of soldiers on horses.



Then came the first few of the hooded people. Here's one carrying a large silver cross.



Here is a hooded person with a few of the ladies in black. Every group that passed by had a flag of a saint. I think they were parts of different groups in the church.



Here's a photo of the large marching band. I'm not sure if that's appropriate, since they weren't really marching as much as solemnly walking in a procession. At times, they would play something, but it was always in a somber mood. In many processions, they don't have music at all--just methodical drums. Pretty ominous if you ask me.



Here are some of the citizens who participated in the procession by walking barefoot and wearing chains on their ankles. I'm sure it wasn't painful, but the sound of the chains was quite creepy.



Here's a group of the ladies in black. I love those mantillas!



Here's the grand finale that is unique in every procession-the float. Every parish procession has a different image; it's either the Virgin Mary or Christ. This one shows the Resurrected Christ. You also can see that the hooded people flank the float.



It was quite an interesting event. Not something you would see on the other side of the Atlantic.

We are going to Rome this weekend. Keep your fingers crossed that the volcanic ash from Iceland won't delay our plane!

Escorial...we meet again....

It's time for me to catch up on my blog posts and update all the wonderful things we've been up to.

When our California friends came to town, we showed them around Madrid. It's always fun to see your city through an outsider's eyes. I take for granted how beautiful Puerta del Sol can be.



Here's one of the Royal Palace and a statue of Felipe IV.



I felt those were worth noticing. In other news, we were able to convince our out-of-town friends to travel up to Escorial-this time, to enter the monastery! Remember that the last time we endeavored to make this trip, we were held hostage in a poorly-runned restaurant where it took us hours to receive our meal, only to exit the establishment once the monastery was closed for the day. This time, we planned ahead, took bagged lunches and went straight through the entrance! It was a nicer day, so I have added some photos.



We weren't allowed to take photos inside, but I was able to sneak a few out the windows, which looked upon cultivated gardens and beautiful mountains.



Escorial is a small town centered around the palace/monastery known as San Lorenzo de Escorial. In the lower floors of the palace is the Royal Parthenon-an interior chamber made of marble where 400 years of Spanish kings and queens line the walls in their tombs. As you tour through the stone-walled palace, you enter a black-marble corridor that takes you downstairs to the mausoleum. There are dimly-lit chandeliers down the steps, which makes the whole journey even more ominous. The tombs of the kings lie on the left of the altar and the queens are on the right. Of course, I was not allowed to take pictures in this area, but I found one online. It's not the best quality photo, but you can see how the tombs are staked up along the sides of the room.



It was a humbling experience being inside this room among the remains of the most powerful Spanish rulers of the last several centuries. When we left this chamber, we encountered even more tombs, but they were for the princes and princesses. One room contained a large white marble polygonal tomb known as La Tarta. This is where all the royal children and infants are buried. Once again, I was not able to take a photo, but here's a picture I found online.



After seeing these tombs, I was certain that the tour was completed; apparently, there's much more to the palace. Near the end of the walk, there is a huge library with frescoed ceilings depicting the liberal arts. At the end of the library is a Ptolemaic sphere, which shows the assumed orbits of the planets around the earth. Here's a photo from online.



Mission accomplished! We were finally able to tour through the palace and it was well worth the wait! I highly recommend visiting San Lorenzo if you ever travel to Madrid; it's an awesome historical edifice a quick hour away. Also, if you get too depressed after visiting all the tombs, just head back into the capital for some churros.

Getting to Know Madrid

It's Easter tomorrow (or Semana Santa as they call it here) and we have been very busy entertaining guests from home. It's really nice to have friends and family come to stay with us and show them Spain! First, some friends from California came for a week; we had a great time showing them important points of interest and staying up until 2am laughing and catching up. A day after they left, A's mom arrived and now we are attempting to show her around despite the fact that many places are closed for the holidays.

I've been reflecting on the American view of Spain and I find myself thinking about a similar situation I have experienced in my trips to India. I have traveled to India on several occasions with my family in order to visit my father's relatives. I always brace myself for the trip because it can be strenuous: we can't drink water from the tap, we bathe in buckets (my grandmother's house had old plumbing) and they didn't usually use toilet paper. I vividly remember my aunt discovering the toilet paper in our suitcase and speaking to my father in fast Punjabi, interrogating him as to whether he's too good for his home country that he must bring this from home. The situation was amusing (since it was over a trite thing), but I'm beginning to empathize with my aunt's perspective. Now, I'm the one from the foreign country and I must host guests so they enjoy their stay even though I can't offer everything.

Our guests have all been wonderful, but they were all surprised when they hear that many things close between 2pm to 5pm on a regular workday. It's an old custom many stores and markets still follow, though many big shops stay open. The other surprise is food; if you are looking for a place for dinner at 7pm, you're out of luck. You're not going to be able to eat anything but tapas until around 9pm. Most people don't eat dinner until 10pm normally. The same can be said for getting lunch food-most places don't serve lunch until 1 or 2pm. I remember some friends wanted to order a pizza at 11am. In the US, this wouldn't be a problem because the normal pizza chains open at that hour. When I called Telepizza, they informed me that they won't open until 1.

Buying food at the market can sometimes be a hassle as well. Back in the US, I could always run to my supermarket to buy some items. Here in Madrid, I must think ahead of time when I can do my shopping. You can't wait until Sunday to shop because most supermarkets are closed. In addition, holiday times make it even more important to know when your markets plan to be closed.

In many of these situations, I felt ashamed that I couldn't offer my guests exactly what they wanted when they wanted it. I want to agree with them and say "yes, Madrid is inconvenient" but I don't truly believe that. It's not a terrible adjustment, but it is something you have to get used to. When you are aware of the daily life and how you function in it, the flow seems logical. You begin to love the eccentricities that make your country unique.

My other example comes from the other way around: a Spaniard adjusting to the English customs (which aren't too different from American). She was a former student of mine. Over a few months, we became good friends and we would share and discuss the different customs and cultures between Americans and Spaniards. I remember how shocked she was that we actually have school dances as teenagers-she was certain that was just a myth we made for teen movies. Anyway, she decided to quit her job and move to England to be a nanny and practice her English. Our final classes were discussions about life and culture in England in order to prepare her for a completely different place! She came to class one day exasperated and explained that she had booked her flight to England. I congratulated her and asked why she seemed bothered. Apparently, her flight was scheduled to land in England at 8pm, which was early, in her opinion. She informed the family and they expressed some disdain that she chose such a late flight, but they would still pick her up. " I don't understand how 8 or 9pm can be considered late!" she exclaimed to me. "For me, 8pm is the afternoon! How am I going to live in a place where they go to sleep in the afternoon?!" It's true, most Spaniards eat dinner so late that they go to bed around midnight. I told her it would be hard, but she would adjust and fortunately, she was able to change her sleeping and eating patterns without much anxiety!

I guess my conclusion is that it's very important to be aware of certain cultures and customs before you come to visit. Though Europe is far from a third-world country, there are many differences in the daily life you must be prepared for if you wish to really enjoy the environment. If you come and consistently mumble to yourself how things are much more convenient in your country than here, well, you should probably just stay in your home then. It's different, but it works for the people, so why criticize it?

Anyway, these are some of the thoughts I have collected over the last few months. My next few posts will be more about Escorial and the Good Friday parade in Madrid. Ciao!

Toro!

I'm surprised that I've lived in Madrid for seven months now and have yet to write a post about bull-fighting. I am personally against the sport because of how they slaughter the animal. Before the matador fights the bull, they usually put long rods into the bull's spine in order to weaken him. The bull exhausts himself while chasing the matador and is finally finished with a sword through the skull. I have heard many of my students defend bull-fighting, saying that the bull is later cut up for food, but I cannot reconcile the demonstration of violence and prolonged suffering they inflict upon the bull.







I definitely cannot recommend attending this brutal sport, but I can recommend walking around outside the stadium. It's located in Ventas, a metro stop on the eastern side of the city. THe stadium was built in the 1929. Here are some pictures of this beautiful stadium.

There are also several outdoor statues to commemorate past matadors, which are pretty interesting.







I must say that the outside of the stadium is more interesting than the inside. Personally, I wish that they would do away with bull-fighting and just keep the building for sports or less-deadly activities.

Sorry to give such an opinionated view of the sport. It was a lovely building! We will have more pictures and stories soon!

Ill-fated trips

Do you ever start a day with a list of errands and the drive to complete them all, only to have silly little snags stymie your chances of even crossing one item off your list? This happened to us a lot when we first moved to Madrid; I would wake up, energized and ready to accomplish the menial tasks that would help improve our daily life, only to return home with a sunken heart and a long list of pending tasks. It got better and we slowly learned when shops open and close, or the word for "measuring cup" in Spanish, but those first failed attempts are always the worst. Now that we have lived here for several months, we can successfully stroll home with our duties completed. But even now, we can have a botched day...



Spring has arrived in Spain! The flowers are blooming, the sun is shining, and you can almost walk outdoors with a jacket (but not really). In honor of the changing seasons, we decided to embark on some more exploration of Madrid. We all traveled together on the renfe to Escorial, a town an hour north of Madrid where a famous palace is nestled between the mountains-San Lorenzo de Escorial. It was built in the 1550s by Felipe II as a mausoleum to rest his father, King Carlos I of Spain. When Felipe was king, he ruled not only Spain, but also several parts of Italy, the Netherlands and the New World. The building is quite majestic in the mountainous landscape. Here are some shots. The last one is from one of the cute city streets.









We arrived in Escorial around 2pm and decided to have lunch before touring the famous edifice. After perusing around a few local places, we decided to settle into a small restaurant that had a menu special. Little did we know that we were going to remain in this restaurant for another 2 and a half hours! It was the worst service I had ever received in a restaurant: we first waited a half and hour before they took our order, then we had to wait another hour between our courses. I was sure that we were in the middle of a "Seinfeld" episode. We were all annoyed, but it was nice to speak in English, so we could carry on with our language and morbid sense of humor without disturbing anyone. We casually began to discuss burning the place down in order to vent our anger and have a laugh at our terrible misfortune. Even though we were all trying to improve our Spanish, we weren't completely confident enough to fully complain about the service, or lack thereof. Some other customers were nice enough to complain on our behalf as well. We finally received our bill and departed the restaurant close to 5pm.

We went to the palace entrance, only to discover that it closes at 5. Here's a picture of one in our group cursing our luck.



We returned to Madrid in a despondent mood. We had traveled an hour north of Madrid only to eat mediocre food and experience a terrible wait staff. It was such a disappointment; we had planned to travel to Escorial for weeks, and now we missed our opportunity to see the palace/monastery because we were at a short-staffed restaurant. Normally, I hate days like these, but the company and our jokes made it worthwhile.

The following day, we went to Quevedo in Madrid to meet up with our friends for some afternoon coffee. Here's a picture of the statue at the Quevedo metro stop.



Quevedo was a prominent Spanish poet in the 1600s. Most Americans have no idea who this man is, but he is regarded as one of the great writers of Spain alongside Cervantes and de Vega.



It was appropriate that we went to Cafe Literario, a small Spanish bookstore that serves lovely rich desserts. We indulged ourselves with chocolate-orange cheesecake and the purchase of some Spanish books. I am now the proud owner of the Lope de Vega play Fuenteovejuna and Cervantes's Don Quixote. Yes, I am probably not going to read these in Spanish, but at least I have them for my collection!

So, all in all, not a bad weekend!

More culinary fun...

We had another quiet weekend here in Madrid. The weather is slowly becoming warm and beckoning us outside.

While the weather oscillated between bitter cold and mildly warm, we decided to try to make sushi at home. In Madrid, there are some sushi restaurants, but the sushi is usually a bit expensive. We are hesitant to try out a restaurant for sushi when we are used to paying much less in the states.

On the bright side, you can generally cook a lot of international cuisine at home-all of the ingredients are available in the major supermarkets. We headed over to Alcampo, to fetch the proper tools and ingredients for the Japanese delicacy. Alcampo is mostly a large supermarket, but it also sells shoes, books, bedding, laundry machines...it reminds me of Target or Walmart. I became a little nostalgic for home as I entered through the sliding doors.

In any case, this store had a small section for world food items. We were able to buy everything we needed here, including the little rolling mat to roll the sushi.

After a few hours of cooking and cutting up raw fish, we accomplished making sushi! Here are some pictures of our achievement!





Not to shabby for sushi-novices! We paired the raw fish with a Spanish white wine from our local wine shop, which was perfection!

To top it off, we were able to watch "Invictus" (one of our bosses had the movie). We also have "The Hurt Locker," but I have to prepare myself for the suspense.

We will be traveling in our upcoming weekend, so check back soon!

100 Things to do on a Rainy Weekend

I realize that my posts have been few and far between. I think our cold adventure to Salamanca has caused us to hibernate in our cozy apartment until Spring arrives.

When every weekend approaches, we begin to speculate how we will make it both relaxing and eventful. It becomes difficult to do the latter when you open your curtains and see persistent drizzling ruining the day and your mood. On those days, we have no motivation to venture out into the world; why go out and have wet clothes when you can stay in and enjoy the comforts of home? On Friday, I decided to try my hand at Indian cuisine and I successfully made some aloo matar with roti!



I know what you're thinking: why is Annie cooking Indian food when she's in Spain? I'm amazed at how easy it is to find and buy Indian spices here in Madrid. At Lavapies, a metro stop just south of Sol, there is a large population of Indian immigrants with stores for all your cooking needs. While there, you can find tumeric, garam masala and mustard oil for pennies! This all makes Indian cooking much easier!

On Friday evening, we headed out in the rain to JJ's bookstore for quiz night, a weekly event they hold for the drunken English teachers. We hoped that the bad weather would dampen people's spirits for attending, but they came in droves. One of the reasons we came to quiz night was that two of our good friends had created the quiz for the night. Over the weeks, we had commented on the difficulty level of the quiz and that there needed to be other categories where the participants could make an educated guess with the chance of being correct. The girls took the initiative and constructed such an exam. We tried our best to win the coveted prize, but landed in fifth place. It was a good quiz!

The following day was once again dreary outside and we spent most of the time playing games or speaking to family on Skype. Chats on Skype have become a regular part of our schedule here...we have to make sure we devote some time to seeing/talking to our family and ensuring them that we are doing fine. In the interim of my conversation with my mother, I realized that I would be missing the Oscars this year. Back at home, it was a tradition: I would watch the show with my friends and then we would comment and criticize (mostly criticize) people. I became nostalgic for those times. Also, I hadn't seen many of the movies nominated! Since it was a rainy, terrible day, I told A we needed to see a movie. Fortunately, Cine Ideal, our theater with movies shown in the original version, was playing all of the Oscar nominated films. We perused through the trailers and realized that we didn't want to see anything too heavy, so we skipped the Oscar noms for Men Who Stare at Goats.

We don't do it much, but I love going to the movies here in Madrid. I think they have a better system than the U.S. First, we ordered our tickets online from the theater. Next, we were able to choose our seats online! On busy movie nights, the theaters give you specific seats. After we booked our tickets, we went to our atm to print them out! It was that easy! We merely strolled into our theater right when the movie was starting. Our movie was quite funny, which was exactly what we needed!

On Sunday, I had the opportunity to meet up with a friend for an intercambio. You may remember that back in January, I tried to get a Spanish teacher for weekly lessons, only to meet an older lady who I couldn't really understand and left me floundering for the appropriate words. Well, I decided to post an announcement on a website that I would be interested in a language intercambio (or exchange). This is when you meet up with someone and speak English for half of the time and Spanish for the other half. It's relaxed and basically free-plus, you meet new friends. I had to filter through a lot of emails from 30 year old men who seemed to want a different kind of exchange than what I was looking for (I had specifically asked for a woman around my age, too). Finally, I found a nice girl who is a Spanish teacher in Madrid-the perfect intercambio for me! We meet weekly and chat about life over coffee or beer (mostly beer). It's a nice addition to my life here.

Well, we hope to do more in the upcoming weeks. We just bought our plane tickets to Rome in April! We will be visiting A's family and eating lots of Italian food. Before then, we have a few visitors coming to town!