London photos
posted by Sam at
3:55 PM
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Saturday, April 29, 2006
I have a ton of recent pictures and lots to blog. I've fallen a little behind. Here's the blog for London. More to come.
posted by Sam at
1:05 PM
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London
On my first of two spring breaks, I went to a TV station and radio station in Sevilla on Friday for a tour with my communications group. The next day I took a bus to Málaga, which was a big, hot city swarming with sun burnt British package tourists. It’s not the most charming place. While waiting in the airport, I felt like I was already in London. There were British people everywhere. The airport was huge and all of the flights were going to the UK and northern Europe. I was going to stay for a few days with Alan Walker in Weybridge, a suburb of London. When I landed in London, I started to realize that I don’t know what Alan looks like so I wasn’t sure if it would be easy to find him. When I entered the arrivals lounge, no one recognized me, so I went to a currency exchange desk to get some British pounds. When I turned around, I saw a guy holding a handwritten sign that said “S.B.” It was Alan.
We walked out to his car, a sporty Audi TT convertible, and he asked me where I wanted to go first. I had no idea what I wanted to see, so he decided to take me on a whirlwind tour of London at night (it was about 10:30 pm). It was my first time in a car with the steering wheel on the right-hand side. I had been to two British territories before, the British Virgin Islands and Gibraltar, but in both places cars are driven on the left-hand side of the road and neither place uses British pounds. So this was my first time in the real UK. We cruised around on some highways and it was a really weird experience to be in the front left seat of a car and not be driving. We drove through Knightsbridge, past the Harrod’s department store, crossed Piccadilly circus, drove by Buckingham palace, crossed a bridge by Big Ben and stopped in the middle of the Waterloo bridge, where there is an incredible view of the Houses of Parliament along the river to the west, the London Eye to the south, and the skyscrapers down the river in East London. We drove to his house where I settled in and went to bed thinking “did that just happen?”
The next morning I had cereal! It was the first time in months (other than two mornings in Madrid) that I had cereal. I met Ben that morning - he was home from college on his Easter break. Alan wanted to take me to a town on the coast south of London, Portsmouth, where he lived for many years. We drove through the countryside for about an hour and stopped to pick up some food. We walked along the beach, ate lunch, saw some naval bases and a memorial to the British sailors killed in World War II. One of Alan’s great uncles was killed during the war and we found his name on there. There were little round manmade pieces of land scattered throughout the port. They were part of the naval defense that the British installed to defend against a French invasion in the 19th century. There were lots of giant ferries going to and from France. We stopped at two different pubs and I had a pint of ale at each one.
It rained on the drive back to London. That night Alan prepared a “Sunday roast.” Americans have the Sunday brunch whereas the British have a slightly different tradition - the Sunday roast. The whole family was there, Natalie, Suzy and Ben and we had a delicious baked chicken, roasted potatoes and parsnip, steamed vegetables and wine. They had something called HP sauce (Houses of Parliament sauce) that they consider very British but it tasted exactly like barbeque sauce. After dinner I did a video chat with Mom and Dad in Whitefish Bay with Alan, Ben and Natalie.
The next day I went to the city with Alan. We took a train to Waterloo station on the south bank of downtown London. We walked by the huge ferris wheel (its way bigger and cooler than the one recently built in Sevilla). We saw the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben from across the river Thames and then crossed the river and walked right by that building and Westminster Abbey. We saw the changing of the Royal Calvary (the uniforms that the guys wear was interesting). We walked through St. James Park to the Buckingham palace to catch the changing of the guards. We saw a marching band of guys in red suits and the tall black funny hats. We didn’t get there early enough to see the changing of the guards up close in front of the palace. There was a huge crowd there. The Queen was turning 80 less than two weeks later (on April 21), so there were was a lot of buzz about her upcoming birthday celebration.
We picked up some sandwiches and had lunch in Trafalgar Square, outside the National Gallery. The National Gallery, like several other art museums in London, is free. We spent a few hours inside and saw all kinds of European art from Gothic to Impressionist. We followed a big group tour (also free) and learned a lot of interesting things from a young art historian and also listened in on a workshop for a big group of little kids. The museum puts on lots of family activities like that one. The coolest paintings that I saw where some of the impressionist paintings, and a few Spanish paintings that I had seen in my art class earlier.
We visited the Tate Britain museum next, taking a double decker red bus to get there. We saw part of the temporary exhibit on William Blake and some other British art and then went to the train station to go back to Weybridge. With Ben we went to a local Indian restaurant. There are tons of Middle Eastern and Indian restaurants in London. Curry has become so ubiquitous in the UK that it has practically replaced fish and chips as the national dish. We had huge bottles of Cobra beer from India and big round crunchy flat bread with different sauces as an appetizer and then rice pilaf with three different curry sauces. It was a ton of food and all really good. We then went to a pub down the street where I had a pint of ale.
The next day I went into the city with Ben. We first went to the Tate Modern, which is a modern art museum in a plain looking brick building that used to be a power plant. The bottom floor had a room with a really high ceiling and tons of white boxes stacked in different shaped piles, some reaching as high as three or four stories. We saw lots of crazy modern art, a lot of Dalí and some puzzling abstract expressionism. Nearby was the Shakespeare Globe Theatre. It is a reconstruction of the original Globe Theatre that burned down a long time ago. It’s open air and really small and the stage was elaborately decorated with marble columns and a brightly colored balcony. On the tour we learned about the history of the place and how performances were put on back then. They put on plays all summer long and the tickets are as little as five pounds for the standing room right in front of the stage.
From the Globe Theatre, we walked across the Tower Bridge, walked by the Tower of London and walked through the downtown area where there were lots of banks and nice cafés. We walked through a food market that was closed and then to Covent Garden and ate at a restaurant that serves really good English food. I had a salad and the Shepherd’s Pie – minced lamb and vegetables. We took “the tube” to SoHo and walked around. It was a really interesting neighborhood, very busy and vibrant and was full of cool coffee shops and restaurants, a lot of theatres. There were also lots of sex shops that didn’t really fit in. And then, all of the sudden, there were Chinese-style arches and a long street full of Chinese restaurants - about 20 of them on one street. We were in Chinatown. We went into some small bookstores and I bought a couple books – it was the first time I was in an English speaking country so it was easy to find books in English. The eclectic mix of neighborhoods and people was cool to see.
We walked through some more famous parts of London - Leicester Square were there were lots of big movie theatres and Oxford Street which a big shopping street where we ran into the Apple Store so I went in and checked it out (its huge), Piccadilly Circus, and the Harrod’s Department Store. Harrod’s, and the neighborhood around it, was insanely rich. I have never seen so many nice cars and apartments in my life. We took the train back to Weybridge and stopped at a fish and chips takeout place. It was called “Mr. Chang’s Fish and Chips.” I got a steak and kidney pie and some battered cod – the typical British fast food. The next day Alan and I went to a grocery store where I bought some food for my Spanish family – British tea, Scottish shortbread biscuits, orange marmalade (made with Sevilla oranges!), jam, and honey. Alan, Ben and I traded music – I gave them some British music that they had never heard of and they gave me a few albums of their favorite British bands. I watched TV, read, and ate a cornish pasty. I think I had a well-rounded gastronomical experience in Great Britain – meat pies, fish and chips, curry, tea, a Sunday roast, etc. A lot of it was different variations of meat and vegetables baked in a pie.
The way British people speak is interesting. The language is really different in both vocabulary and pronunciation. Dialects in Spanish differ only in the pronunciation of a few consonants (hard or soft ‘j,’ hard or soft ‘ll,’ pronouncing c, z, and s with a lisp or not, etc.). But English dialects vary much more - the British pronounce most of the vowels very differently from the way we do, making their English sound totally different from the American accent. For example, the British say “tomahto” whereas we say “tomayto.” This leads to certain words, such as “Renaissance” and “aluminum,” to sound completely different when pronounced by a British person. It was often times really hard to understand them. They add the world “yeah” to everything the way some Americans say “like” all the time. I was asked a few questions that puzzled me at first, such as “Are you all loved up?” (Do you have a girlfriend?) or “How do you find that?” (Do you like it?). The store H&M is known as “Hennies,” one stone is 14 pounds (as in weight, so I weigh 11 stone 6), one pound (the money) is referred to as a “quid,” one cent is a “pence,” “topping up” is how they say “to recharge a cell phone’s SIM card,” if you want to order two fish and chips, its “a fish and chips, twice.” It goes on and on, I heard so many expressions that were new to me.
We walked out to his car, a sporty Audi TT convertible, and he asked me where I wanted to go first. I had no idea what I wanted to see, so he decided to take me on a whirlwind tour of London at night (it was about 10:30 pm). It was my first time in a car with the steering wheel on the right-hand side. I had been to two British territories before, the British Virgin Islands and Gibraltar, but in both places cars are driven on the left-hand side of the road and neither place uses British pounds. So this was my first time in the real UK. We cruised around on some highways and it was a really weird experience to be in the front left seat of a car and not be driving. We drove through Knightsbridge, past the Harrod’s department store, crossed Piccadilly circus, drove by Buckingham palace, crossed a bridge by Big Ben and stopped in the middle of the Waterloo bridge, where there is an incredible view of the Houses of Parliament along the river to the west, the London Eye to the south, and the skyscrapers down the river in East London. We drove to his house where I settled in and went to bed thinking “did that just happen?”
The next morning I had cereal! It was the first time in months (other than two mornings in Madrid) that I had cereal. I met Ben that morning - he was home from college on his Easter break. Alan wanted to take me to a town on the coast south of London, Portsmouth, where he lived for many years. We drove through the countryside for about an hour and stopped to pick up some food. We walked along the beach, ate lunch, saw some naval bases and a memorial to the British sailors killed in World War II. One of Alan’s great uncles was killed during the war and we found his name on there. There were little round manmade pieces of land scattered throughout the port. They were part of the naval defense that the British installed to defend against a French invasion in the 19th century. There were lots of giant ferries going to and from France. We stopped at two different pubs and I had a pint of ale at each one.
It rained on the drive back to London. That night Alan prepared a “Sunday roast.” Americans have the Sunday brunch whereas the British have a slightly different tradition - the Sunday roast. The whole family was there, Natalie, Suzy and Ben and we had a delicious baked chicken, roasted potatoes and parsnip, steamed vegetables and wine. They had something called HP sauce (Houses of Parliament sauce) that they consider very British but it tasted exactly like barbeque sauce. After dinner I did a video chat with Mom and Dad in Whitefish Bay with Alan, Ben and Natalie.
The next day I went to the city with Alan. We took a train to Waterloo station on the south bank of downtown London. We walked by the huge ferris wheel (its way bigger and cooler than the one recently built in Sevilla). We saw the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben from across the river Thames and then crossed the river and walked right by that building and Westminster Abbey. We saw the changing of the Royal Calvary (the uniforms that the guys wear was interesting). We walked through St. James Park to the Buckingham palace to catch the changing of the guards. We saw a marching band of guys in red suits and the tall black funny hats. We didn’t get there early enough to see the changing of the guards up close in front of the palace. There was a huge crowd there. The Queen was turning 80 less than two weeks later (on April 21), so there were was a lot of buzz about her upcoming birthday celebration.
We picked up some sandwiches and had lunch in Trafalgar Square, outside the National Gallery. The National Gallery, like several other art museums in London, is free. We spent a few hours inside and saw all kinds of European art from Gothic to Impressionist. We followed a big group tour (also free) and learned a lot of interesting things from a young art historian and also listened in on a workshop for a big group of little kids. The museum puts on lots of family activities like that one. The coolest paintings that I saw where some of the impressionist paintings, and a few Spanish paintings that I had seen in my art class earlier.
We visited the Tate Britain museum next, taking a double decker red bus to get there. We saw part of the temporary exhibit on William Blake and some other British art and then went to the train station to go back to Weybridge. With Ben we went to a local Indian restaurant. There are tons of Middle Eastern and Indian restaurants in London. Curry has become so ubiquitous in the UK that it has practically replaced fish and chips as the national dish. We had huge bottles of Cobra beer from India and big round crunchy flat bread with different sauces as an appetizer and then rice pilaf with three different curry sauces. It was a ton of food and all really good. We then went to a pub down the street where I had a pint of ale.
The next day I went into the city with Ben. We first went to the Tate Modern, which is a modern art museum in a plain looking brick building that used to be a power plant. The bottom floor had a room with a really high ceiling and tons of white boxes stacked in different shaped piles, some reaching as high as three or four stories. We saw lots of crazy modern art, a lot of Dalí and some puzzling abstract expressionism. Nearby was the Shakespeare Globe Theatre. It is a reconstruction of the original Globe Theatre that burned down a long time ago. It’s open air and really small and the stage was elaborately decorated with marble columns and a brightly colored balcony. On the tour we learned about the history of the place and how performances were put on back then. They put on plays all summer long and the tickets are as little as five pounds for the standing room right in front of the stage.
From the Globe Theatre, we walked across the Tower Bridge, walked by the Tower of London and walked through the downtown area where there were lots of banks and nice cafés. We walked through a food market that was closed and then to Covent Garden and ate at a restaurant that serves really good English food. I had a salad and the Shepherd’s Pie – minced lamb and vegetables. We took “the tube” to SoHo and walked around. It was a really interesting neighborhood, very busy and vibrant and was full of cool coffee shops and restaurants, a lot of theatres. There were also lots of sex shops that didn’t really fit in. And then, all of the sudden, there were Chinese-style arches and a long street full of Chinese restaurants - about 20 of them on one street. We were in Chinatown. We went into some small bookstores and I bought a couple books – it was the first time I was in an English speaking country so it was easy to find books in English. The eclectic mix of neighborhoods and people was cool to see.
We walked through some more famous parts of London - Leicester Square were there were lots of big movie theatres and Oxford Street which a big shopping street where we ran into the Apple Store so I went in and checked it out (its huge), Piccadilly Circus, and the Harrod’s Department Store. Harrod’s, and the neighborhood around it, was insanely rich. I have never seen so many nice cars and apartments in my life. We took the train back to Weybridge and stopped at a fish and chips takeout place. It was called “Mr. Chang’s Fish and Chips.” I got a steak and kidney pie and some battered cod – the typical British fast food. The next day Alan and I went to a grocery store where I bought some food for my Spanish family – British tea, Scottish shortbread biscuits, orange marmalade (made with Sevilla oranges!), jam, and honey. Alan, Ben and I traded music – I gave them some British music that they had never heard of and they gave me a few albums of their favorite British bands. I watched TV, read, and ate a cornish pasty. I think I had a well-rounded gastronomical experience in Great Britain – meat pies, fish and chips, curry, tea, a Sunday roast, etc. A lot of it was different variations of meat and vegetables baked in a pie.
The way British people speak is interesting. The language is really different in both vocabulary and pronunciation. Dialects in Spanish differ only in the pronunciation of a few consonants (hard or soft ‘j,’ hard or soft ‘ll,’ pronouncing c, z, and s with a lisp or not, etc.). But English dialects vary much more - the British pronounce most of the vowels very differently from the way we do, making their English sound totally different from the American accent. For example, the British say “tomahto” whereas we say “tomayto.” This leads to certain words, such as “Renaissance” and “aluminum,” to sound completely different when pronounced by a British person. It was often times really hard to understand them. They add the world “yeah” to everything the way some Americans say “like” all the time. I was asked a few questions that puzzled me at first, such as “Are you all loved up?” (Do you have a girlfriend?) or “How do you find that?” (Do you like it?). The store H&M is known as “Hennies,” one stone is 14 pounds (as in weight, so I weigh 11 stone 6), one pound (the money) is referred to as a “quid,” one cent is a “pence,” “topping up” is how they say “to recharge a cell phone’s SIM card,” if you want to order two fish and chips, its “a fish and chips, twice.” It goes on and on, I heard so many expressions that were new to me.
posted by Sam at
1:04 PM
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Sunday, April 16, 2006
another quick one
In the past four days we have seen a lot of Semana Santa in Sevilla, we drove to a small town, and went to Córdoba where we shopped and saw some two processions. We made two trips to Utrera to visit with María Garoffolo – on Thursday night we went to the town’s church to watch a procession leave and today we went there for lunch with her family. Dinner with my family last night was a huge success. We ate a lot and danced and sang at home afterwards. I was really busy last week with traveling and showing the aunts and uncles around. This week I’m really busy with school so I’ve fallen behind on blogging and going through pictures. They will be up eventually.
posted by Sam at
12:58 PM
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1 comments
Sunday, April 09, 2006
quick one
I'M IN LONDON AND THE UW BADGERS WON THE HOCKEY NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP!!!!!!
more on the UK soon...
more on the UK soon...
posted by Sam at
4:13 AM
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1 comments
Saturday, April 08, 2006
Thursday, April 06, 2006
the first week of April
So I had all of my midterms last week (three of them) and was observed for my teaching class. So those are all my grades until final exams and papers in May. Last Friday I met with a tutor for my University class. She’s a grad student in history who took my class a couple years ago. We’ll meet about once a week and she’ll help me prepare for the final exam in that class.
At noon last Friday I took the AVE train to Madrid. I was on the same train that Martha had taken exactly one week earlier. My program gave me the train tickets and a hotel in place of the trip to Morocco that everyone in the magazine group gets. Two other students were sent to Madrid along with me to interview a Cuban writer who fled Cuba because he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for criticizing the lack of free speech under Castro. I had the nothing to do, though, just a free weekend in Madrid. A friend of mine from Madison, Chris, is studying in Milan this semester and came to Spain on his spring break. He flew to Madrid first so we met there. I met up with him on Friday afternoon and we walked around the city. It was my third time there this year so I know the place well by now.
There was great weather there, in the 80s, and with the daylight savings now the sun sets around 8 pm. The first thing I noticed was that Madrid was busier than I have ever seen it before. There were tons of people out and every sidewalk and café was packed. We found a cheap tapas bar and I ordered tortilla española, croquetas, patatas bravas and a cheese plate so that Chris could sample some of the typical tapas. A free tapa came with our drinks too. We were both really tired so we headed home early that night. The continental breakfast at my hotel was amazing. Breakfasts in Spain (and France, Portugal and Italy) are small, nothing more than a coffee and a piece of pastry or toast. For the first time in a long time I had a big breakfast – croissants, little apple pastries, montaditos, toast, ham, cheeses, jams, donuts, eggs, bacon, chorizo, yogurt, flan, fruit, cereal, and cheesecake. I couldn’t sample everything from the giant spread of food, but I did eat a lot.
On Saturday we went to the bus station so that Chris could buy a ticket to Sevilla for the following day, and then we went to the Parque Retiro (a giant city park). We saw a couple buildings in the park - I had never seen them before and one had an art exhibit. We also saw the big lake and the giant Alfonso XII monument. We have a mutual friend from Madison who is studying in Madrid this year and she met us in the park. We walked around, went inside a big church, saw the place were Miguel Cervantes is buried, and saw the oldest cinema in Madrid (it was closed so we couldn’t see the museum inside). We bought baguettes, cheese and fruit at a big market and then had a picnic outside the Prado museum.
Chris and I went inside the Prado and we spent a few hours there. I had been there once last fall and once a few years ago but I still haven’t seen everything in there. I was excited to revisit some of the Spanish paintings after taking half a semester of my Spanish Art History class. We started in the Baroque section, and then saw the Renaissance and Gothic art, and I finally saw the top floor of the museum were there is a bunch of Goya paintings. There are a lot of Italian, Flemish and Dutch paintings too. There were dozens of paintings that I recognized from class and it made a huge difference to know a little about most of the Spanish painters and their major works. The museum was packed with tour groups and there was someone I knew from Sevilla there with his parents.
After the Prado we went to my hotel and watched TV for a while. The hotel had two English channels, a German channel and one Japanese Channel in addition to the Spanish channels. That night we walked around the shops in the Chueca neighborhood. There were so many people out that it was hard to move on some streets. We found a cheap bar and had a calamari bocadillo and grilled ham and cheese sandwich (more typical Spanish food) and the looked for a sports bar. A highly anticipated futbol game was on that night - Real Madrid versus Barcelona in Barcelona. The two teams play each other twice each season and they are the two biggest games of the year. One of the coolest things is to be in Europe during a big European futbol match, people get really into it. We walked around looking for O’Neill’s, an Irish pub we saw earlier that is supposedly the biggest and best sports bar in Madrid. We found three other Irish pubs, O’Connell’s, Flaherty’s and Dubliner’s (but not the one we were looking for) and checked out a few other bars that had the game but each was either was too crowded or had just a tiny TV. We settled on the third Irish pub we found, Dubliner’s, and watched the game with a loud crowd of Spanish, British and Irish people. It was tied 1-1 at half time and we left to walk to the other side of the city to catch the second half somewhere else. In the Malasañas neighborhood we ended up in another Irish pub, this one was full of Spaniards, and we were able to see the end of the game, which ended in a tie.
Soon after, our Madison friend and a few of her friends met up with us and we went to a cool bar. The Madrid students seem to have a very different study abroad experience than mine in Sevilla. Their program is all Wisconsin, Indiana and Purdue students and other Universities, states or regions have their own programs in Madrid. Some American Universities even have their own campus in Madrid. They have classes similar to mine, with a mix of Americans, Spaniards and Europeans, but they all live in apartments. Even though Madrid and Sevilla are only a few hundred kilometers apart, the culture and language varies a lot between Castilla and Andalucia. And Madrid is just a huge city too. Anyways, I caught the last metro back to the other side of the city. When I got off the metro I walked towards the exit with two Italian guys, only to find that the gate to the sidewalk was locked. So we turned around and headed towards another exit. A group of Spaniards were walking by us and I told them that the exit we just tried was locked. They stopped in their tracks and told us that the exit they just had tried was locked too. We got a little worried and kept looking for another exit. It was 2 in the morning and the metro reopens at 6 so we figured that if we really were locked in we’d only have to wait four hours until we could get out. We tried another exit. Another locked gate. After hoping some turnstiles we found the fourth and final exit, and thankfully, it was open.
On Sunday I ate another huge breakfast. They had a different kind of cheesecake this time. And then I took the AVE back to Sevilla. I met Chris outside the Cathedral later in the afternoon and we went to the top of the Giralda. That night, Sevilla’s two soccer teams, Sevilla FC and Real Betis, played each other in a league match. The city is evenly split between the two teams and there is a lot of bad blood between the opposing fans. We went to a Mexican restaurant before the game for some food and saw the first part of the game in a packed little bar and then we went to a tapas bar and had some papas ali oli and grilled shrimp. We made a quick stop at my house during halftime, Chris met a few family members, and then we went out for the rest of the game. Betis won 2-1 so my family was really excited that night.
On Monday Chris and I walked around Plaza de España and the big park, got montaditos and then went to my English class. We had a really good time teaching English together. My Italian student is going back to Italy this Sunday though because her four-month internship is up. I remember it being really hot that day, in the mid 80s. That night we went to a lecture by the Cuban writer who was interviewed in Madrid by my classmates two days earlier. A couple professors spoke and introduced him but before he could speak an organized group of pro-Castro communist students started shouting and holding up signs and banners and called him a “yankee” and a “terrorist” and they wouldn’t let him speak and there was lots of arguing and the whole thing was canceled. So ironically, the guy fled his country because of the lack of free speech and comes to Spain and they won’t let him speak here either. It made the front page of two newspapers the next day. That night we ate at a cheap Italian restaurant and we split a pizza – my first in a long time. It was so nice to eat out with someone and have something other than salty meat and potatoes.
On Tuesday I went to two classes and met up with Chris afterwards. I went to show him where the bus stop is for the shuttle that goes to the airport because he was flying home the following day. The bus stop was gone and the sidewalk was all torn up where it once stood. It was weird, it was there one day and gone the next. It turns out that several bus stops were moved, some permanently and other just temporarily because certain streets are now closed for Semana Santa. Chris came over for lunch that day to eat with the family and was fascinated by everything. We had a very Spanish meal - gazpacho, paella, pork chops and oranges. Chris had never tried gazpacho or paella before. We watched some of the Simpson’s and Spanish talk shows on TV and then went out again. I went to class and then walked around with my host sister Alicia looking at restaurants. We asked around trying to find a place to make reservations for 19 people next Saturday night for my host family and the five Delahunts.
Chris and I cooked couscous at his hostel, which was a really nice place. It opened recently and we ate on the roof, in the open air, with a view of the illuminated Giralda towering over thousands of rooftops. The buildings in Sevilla are so tightly packed that you couldn’t see a single street from the roof. We went out again, one last time. We saw the end of a Champions League game at a sports bar. Two Spanish clubs have advanced to the semifinals of the Champions League, which is sort of like a Europe-wide soccer version of March Madness that happens over several months while teams play their regular season games. The Cinderella team this year is Villarreal, which is a little town of 50,000 people somewhere in eastern Spain, I’m not even sure where exactly. They are in the semifinals along with Barcelona, Arsenal (a London team) and AC Milan. The European soccer leagues are all really top heavy. In every country the same few rich teams stack their rosters, dominate the smaller teams and win every league title. What Villarreal has done is unbelievable and if they win it all the world is going to come to an end. What’s even better is that the final game could be two Spanish teams.
So Chris left Wednesday morning and now the heart of April gets underway. Without a doubt, this is going to be the craziest month of my life. The month started in Madrid, followed by four days of class, four days in London, four days of Semana Santa, four days of class, five days traveling with my parents and four days of Sevilla’s Feria. And then I turn 21 years old. It’s one big party.
At noon last Friday I took the AVE train to Madrid. I was on the same train that Martha had taken exactly one week earlier. My program gave me the train tickets and a hotel in place of the trip to Morocco that everyone in the magazine group gets. Two other students were sent to Madrid along with me to interview a Cuban writer who fled Cuba because he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for criticizing the lack of free speech under Castro. I had the nothing to do, though, just a free weekend in Madrid. A friend of mine from Madison, Chris, is studying in Milan this semester and came to Spain on his spring break. He flew to Madrid first so we met there. I met up with him on Friday afternoon and we walked around the city. It was my third time there this year so I know the place well by now.
There was great weather there, in the 80s, and with the daylight savings now the sun sets around 8 pm. The first thing I noticed was that Madrid was busier than I have ever seen it before. There were tons of people out and every sidewalk and café was packed. We found a cheap tapas bar and I ordered tortilla española, croquetas, patatas bravas and a cheese plate so that Chris could sample some of the typical tapas. A free tapa came with our drinks too. We were both really tired so we headed home early that night. The continental breakfast at my hotel was amazing. Breakfasts in Spain (and France, Portugal and Italy) are small, nothing more than a coffee and a piece of pastry or toast. For the first time in a long time I had a big breakfast – croissants, little apple pastries, montaditos, toast, ham, cheeses, jams, donuts, eggs, bacon, chorizo, yogurt, flan, fruit, cereal, and cheesecake. I couldn’t sample everything from the giant spread of food, but I did eat a lot.
On Saturday we went to the bus station so that Chris could buy a ticket to Sevilla for the following day, and then we went to the Parque Retiro (a giant city park). We saw a couple buildings in the park - I had never seen them before and one had an art exhibit. We also saw the big lake and the giant Alfonso XII monument. We have a mutual friend from Madison who is studying in Madrid this year and she met us in the park. We walked around, went inside a big church, saw the place were Miguel Cervantes is buried, and saw the oldest cinema in Madrid (it was closed so we couldn’t see the museum inside). We bought baguettes, cheese and fruit at a big market and then had a picnic outside the Prado museum.
Chris and I went inside the Prado and we spent a few hours there. I had been there once last fall and once a few years ago but I still haven’t seen everything in there. I was excited to revisit some of the Spanish paintings after taking half a semester of my Spanish Art History class. We started in the Baroque section, and then saw the Renaissance and Gothic art, and I finally saw the top floor of the museum were there is a bunch of Goya paintings. There are a lot of Italian, Flemish and Dutch paintings too. There were dozens of paintings that I recognized from class and it made a huge difference to know a little about most of the Spanish painters and their major works. The museum was packed with tour groups and there was someone I knew from Sevilla there with his parents.
After the Prado we went to my hotel and watched TV for a while. The hotel had two English channels, a German channel and one Japanese Channel in addition to the Spanish channels. That night we walked around the shops in the Chueca neighborhood. There were so many people out that it was hard to move on some streets. We found a cheap bar and had a calamari bocadillo and grilled ham and cheese sandwich (more typical Spanish food) and the looked for a sports bar. A highly anticipated futbol game was on that night - Real Madrid versus Barcelona in Barcelona. The two teams play each other twice each season and they are the two biggest games of the year. One of the coolest things is to be in Europe during a big European futbol match, people get really into it. We walked around looking for O’Neill’s, an Irish pub we saw earlier that is supposedly the biggest and best sports bar in Madrid. We found three other Irish pubs, O’Connell’s, Flaherty’s and Dubliner’s (but not the one we were looking for) and checked out a few other bars that had the game but each was either was too crowded or had just a tiny TV. We settled on the third Irish pub we found, Dubliner’s, and watched the game with a loud crowd of Spanish, British and Irish people. It was tied 1-1 at half time and we left to walk to the other side of the city to catch the second half somewhere else. In the Malasañas neighborhood we ended up in another Irish pub, this one was full of Spaniards, and we were able to see the end of the game, which ended in a tie.
Soon after, our Madison friend and a few of her friends met up with us and we went to a cool bar. The Madrid students seem to have a very different study abroad experience than mine in Sevilla. Their program is all Wisconsin, Indiana and Purdue students and other Universities, states or regions have their own programs in Madrid. Some American Universities even have their own campus in Madrid. They have classes similar to mine, with a mix of Americans, Spaniards and Europeans, but they all live in apartments. Even though Madrid and Sevilla are only a few hundred kilometers apart, the culture and language varies a lot between Castilla and Andalucia. And Madrid is just a huge city too. Anyways, I caught the last metro back to the other side of the city. When I got off the metro I walked towards the exit with two Italian guys, only to find that the gate to the sidewalk was locked. So we turned around and headed towards another exit. A group of Spaniards were walking by us and I told them that the exit we just tried was locked. They stopped in their tracks and told us that the exit they just had tried was locked too. We got a little worried and kept looking for another exit. It was 2 in the morning and the metro reopens at 6 so we figured that if we really were locked in we’d only have to wait four hours until we could get out. We tried another exit. Another locked gate. After hoping some turnstiles we found the fourth and final exit, and thankfully, it was open.
On Sunday I ate another huge breakfast. They had a different kind of cheesecake this time. And then I took the AVE back to Sevilla. I met Chris outside the Cathedral later in the afternoon and we went to the top of the Giralda. That night, Sevilla’s two soccer teams, Sevilla FC and Real Betis, played each other in a league match. The city is evenly split between the two teams and there is a lot of bad blood between the opposing fans. We went to a Mexican restaurant before the game for some food and saw the first part of the game in a packed little bar and then we went to a tapas bar and had some papas ali oli and grilled shrimp. We made a quick stop at my house during halftime, Chris met a few family members, and then we went out for the rest of the game. Betis won 2-1 so my family was really excited that night.
On Monday Chris and I walked around Plaza de España and the big park, got montaditos and then went to my English class. We had a really good time teaching English together. My Italian student is going back to Italy this Sunday though because her four-month internship is up. I remember it being really hot that day, in the mid 80s. That night we went to a lecture by the Cuban writer who was interviewed in Madrid by my classmates two days earlier. A couple professors spoke and introduced him but before he could speak an organized group of pro-Castro communist students started shouting and holding up signs and banners and called him a “yankee” and a “terrorist” and they wouldn’t let him speak and there was lots of arguing and the whole thing was canceled. So ironically, the guy fled his country because of the lack of free speech and comes to Spain and they won’t let him speak here either. It made the front page of two newspapers the next day. That night we ate at a cheap Italian restaurant and we split a pizza – my first in a long time. It was so nice to eat out with someone and have something other than salty meat and potatoes.
On Tuesday I went to two classes and met up with Chris afterwards. I went to show him where the bus stop is for the shuttle that goes to the airport because he was flying home the following day. The bus stop was gone and the sidewalk was all torn up where it once stood. It was weird, it was there one day and gone the next. It turns out that several bus stops were moved, some permanently and other just temporarily because certain streets are now closed for Semana Santa. Chris came over for lunch that day to eat with the family and was fascinated by everything. We had a very Spanish meal - gazpacho, paella, pork chops and oranges. Chris had never tried gazpacho or paella before. We watched some of the Simpson’s and Spanish talk shows on TV and then went out again. I went to class and then walked around with my host sister Alicia looking at restaurants. We asked around trying to find a place to make reservations for 19 people next Saturday night for my host family and the five Delahunts.
Chris and I cooked couscous at his hostel, which was a really nice place. It opened recently and we ate on the roof, in the open air, with a view of the illuminated Giralda towering over thousands of rooftops. The buildings in Sevilla are so tightly packed that you couldn’t see a single street from the roof. We went out again, one last time. We saw the end of a Champions League game at a sports bar. Two Spanish clubs have advanced to the semifinals of the Champions League, which is sort of like a Europe-wide soccer version of March Madness that happens over several months while teams play their regular season games. The Cinderella team this year is Villarreal, which is a little town of 50,000 people somewhere in eastern Spain, I’m not even sure where exactly. They are in the semifinals along with Barcelona, Arsenal (a London team) and AC Milan. The European soccer leagues are all really top heavy. In every country the same few rich teams stack their rosters, dominate the smaller teams and win every league title. What Villarreal has done is unbelievable and if they win it all the world is going to come to an end. What’s even better is that the final game could be two Spanish teams.
So Chris left Wednesday morning and now the heart of April gets underway. Without a doubt, this is going to be the craziest month of my life. The month started in Madrid, followed by four days of class, four days in London, four days of Semana Santa, four days of class, five days traveling with my parents and four days of Sevilla’s Feria. And then I turn 21 years old. It’s one big party.
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Sunday, April 02, 2006
pics
I finally was able to post pictures from Salamanca and Martha's visit. I got back from Madrid today. A friend from Madison who is studying in Italy met me there and we came to Sevilla today. I will post more later this week.
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