Calamares y Caña: El ser madrileño

Okay, so I’ll never be madrileña (a Madrid native), even if I were to move in tomorrow and spend the rest of my life working on it, it would take more than the luck of the Irish, dynamism of California, and a blessing from every other label I have ever fallen under: Mount Hermonites, Christians, Baptists, cyclists, bookworms, Calvinists, etc. It is a different world. Fascinating. Frightening. Wow. And trust me, I saw nothing.

Madrid is llenísimo of people: brimming, dripping, weaving. And with each person comes sound—sonido y ruido—even if it is nothing more than the shuffling of feet or nothing less than setting off a noisemaker that could be likened to an invisible firework. And Madrid is big. Chicago is big. So what? Climbing out of the subway in Chicago, one looks around to orient the station entrance with x, y, and z buildings, and then, looking at the base of the building, begins to follow it up . . . and up and up and up . . . and up. Scared of heights anyone? Madrid is not exactly skyscraper row, but the buildings are not only tall (anything over four stories is tall in my book, and these were at least twice that height), but wide—grandísimo in all respects. Stately, elegant history, everywhere . . .

and everywhere, culture. Culture in every sense. The Palacio Real with baroque madness popping off the walls, street life all day and all night, Indian food, museums: El Prado, La Reina Sofía, Thyssen-Bornemisza; discotecas, “El esplendor del románico” exhibit by Mapfre, calamares y cañas . . .

Who doesn’t want to eat a bocadillo de calamares with a caña? How can’t one be madrileño? Well, I don’t know. I can’t even begin to describe the ambience of Madrid—it was awesome. As in awe. As in overwhelming. Honestly, it scared the living daylights out of me and left me exhausted. But in contemplating the vivacity that keeps the life pumping through the veins of the people and the people pulsing through the city, I started to like it, to be tempted by it . . . tempted to swim through the wakes and ride the waves as if it were the Nor Cal coast. I didn’t have time to put that to the test, but the taste lingers . . . calamares y caña.

Before the adventure in Madrid:

Thursday morning we headed out from Denia to Toledo—I love it, I love it, I love it. Toledo is roped in by the Tajo river (pronounced the same as Tahoe), brimming with history, and surrounded by rolling, rugged hills.

 We visited:

The Cathedral of Toledo—which is awe striking . . . I only saw half before we had to hope onto our next visit, but I was amazed.

La Iglesia de El Salvador (an ancient mosque converted into church, the original pillars are still intact, pretty darn sweet—to be eloquent about it).

La Iglesia de Santo Tomé—where we goggled over El Greco’s masterpiece El entierro del Conde Orgaz.

El Museo Sefardí—a Sephardic Museum (the Sefardí are the Spanish Jews who were expelled various times from Spain—Sephardic communities still exist throughout the world, and families still have the keys to the homes left behind).

Whew! Throughout all of Toledo (which I spent the afternoon wandering through with some friends, because we could, and it is simultaneously cute and wowing with the picturesque streets weaving in and around history) there are Sephardic shops that specialize in el arte demasquinado. It is gorgeous. Generally not one for jewelry, especially not anything fancy and not usually big on gold, I was oohing and awing at every window of these artisans. But I didn’t want to pay fifteen to twenty or so euros for earrings, so I simply bookmarked Toledo as where I spend a bit of money on something superfluous (but so intricate and . . . wow . . .) and selfish when I’m rich . . . ;)

Friday, first stop: Valle de los Caídos. A monument constructed under Franco to himself, really. I’m not up to writing a historical essay here, so I’m going to trust my audience to do the research—but I will say the monument is controversial and if not frequently visited by the tourists, is less visited by the Spaniards, it is part of a rather widely ignored history: the civil war, the dictatorships, the mass graves to which both sides contributed . . .  but it is history, as Ricardo, our bus driver commented (I love hearing him talk about history, current events, lo que sea, he has well-formed and informed opinions built on a foundation of knowledge that is wowing in and of itself), no matter what one thinks of it. The inside of the monument was, like the cathedrals, big and awing, but in a very different way. Perhaps due to the lighting (or lack thereof) and dimensions (it was huge), or the knowledge of how it was construed and to whom under x circumstances, it was not a desirable “wow.” The aura was heavy; the feeling of smallness was a little crushing: directing the vision more to feet than up and around. It was a relief to step outside.

Second stop: El Escorial—I don’t remember it terribly well right now; I’ll have to muse about it later. The library was pretty sweet—I remember that much. And it was huge. It’s where all (well, not all) the Spanish royalty are laid to rest.

Third stop: Segovia. Roman Aqueduct. Just look at the pictures. Isn’t that something? And El Alcázar. Ahaha. Yaz. I’m not sure where to start with that one either. There is a lot of genius involved, but I’ll pull on the pattern theme from before. In the arte hispano-musulmán one will find, rather than paintings of angels, intricate, geometric patterns. These patterns are busy, but not overwhelming, colorful but not clashing. And yall’ll just have to use your imagination, because I cannot put words to what my camera could not capture. These designs, like the Sephardic damasquinado and Celtic patterns, are genius and captivating, but indescribable.

Saturday: Madrid all day. El Palacio Real. Calamaris y caña. Annie wandering Madrid: an exhibit on el arte romanico; a floor of the Thyssen (impressionism, Geiger, Rembrandt, Pissarro, Dyke, etc.); El Prado; Indian food . . . good night.

Sunday: A stroll through el Parque de Buen Retiro and a stop at Segóbriga, Roman ruins. My descriptors are running out, and getting boring (“pretty sweet”), and sleep is in order. I do have classes (no, we don’t just play here, believe it or not). Cheers! 

Adventure in Alicante

Destination: Alicante, Alicante.

Actually, my destination was Valencia with some friends, but I missed the bus. But it was more important to me to sit and eat breakfast with my mamá than try to get out the door.

PS—breakfast was delicious. Pan tostado (she has a toasting pan that she toasted the bread on), which we ate with aceite y sal (olive oil and salt) y café con leche. Mmmm.

Realizing I had missed the bus, I reverted to my earlier plans (before having been invited to Valencia) and caught the 8:20 train to Alicante. Honestly—I did nothing all day. I was going to try to find the Museum of Contemporary Art but I was more concerned with not being concerned or focused having a schedule or list of to-dos. I’ll have to go back, because I would like to go, this weekend simply wasn’t designed for it.

Okay, nothing is a lie. I walked. Wandered. Went shopping. Gasp. Bought shoes—18 euros and of quality my friends.

Drank my first coca-cola. Ever. I kind of like that—my first coca-cola I drank in Spain. Ha. There is something funny about that.

Ate pan recien hecho (recently made) and Spanish cheese (there are lots of cheeses, I don’t know this one’s name, or any, really) for lunch.

When I came back to Denia Sunday morning, I went the ocean directly, put my feet for a bit, and breathed, later enjoying a croissant and café at a panaderia/pastelería, then sitting on a bench in the sun before returning home.

Home. I slept from 14:30 o pico (2:30 or something) until 20 y pico (8 pm and a bit).

Dinner: Ensalada de: purple lettuce (it starts with an r), avocado, celery, seeds, cheese, olive oil, lemon juice . . . mmmm. Huevos revueltos: scrambled eggs with egg plant and some other stuff, I believe—delicious. Sopa: soup, crema de verdura, veggie cream soup, except it tastes like veggies, not cream. Mmm. Happy Sunday. 

Que Locura

Vhat can I shay, I’m losing my Mind . . .

Sometimes one does crazy things.

Like a Skype account. That of course, had a very specific reason, to chat with a professor. It was a rough weekend/week.

Or a FaceSpace account. Scary. Do you have any clue how many e-mails fly into the inbox with the creation of that diabolic account? Horrifying. These are things that can be deleted. Perhaps I will be after Spain. I’m really not crazy over it.

Or putting a picture of myself on-line. Que horror.

But what is on my mind recently as a crazy thing?

Hmm . . . Hair.

Tattoos are silly: they cost un montón and what if you decide you don’t like it? Bummer man. You had better be darn sure. But hair . . . hair grows out. Dying it wouldn’t be the best idea for me, because by time it grew back out, it might all be grey (I stopped counting grey hairs when my roommate straightened my hair—“pull it out! Another? Pull it out!!” there were quite a few, and of course they grow back and multiply regularly.

But hair . . . What has been my mantra, anyone?

Hmm. I haven’t done anything yet. I won’t clue you all in anymore to what I’m thinking, but maybe I’ll come back shocking yall. :) 

El Desayuno Diario

Siempre me ha gustado el desayuno. Siempre, siempre. En los EE.UU. y aquí en España. 

Aquí es sencilla pero los colores son geniales. Mira:

Zumo de naranja; tostada; aceite de oliva.

Café, claro, pero dedicaré un día al café, tengan paciencia.

[Breakfast: I have always loved it. So simple, so tasty, but the colors . . .]
[. . . fresh orange juice and rich olive oil . . .]

Vall de Laguar

Optional excursion. Cost: 30 Euros. Destination: Vall de Laguar.

Oodles of poodles signed up, oodles of poodles dropped out. 30 Euros was too much, supposedly. And on top of that, there was already too much homework. Oodles, I suppose that isn’t the word to describe less than 25 people, and I’m pretty sure the whole group hadn’t signed up, but in any case, eight students wound up going. And seventeen people missed out big time.

La Professora and eight students, including myself, took the bus up to a small town, a pueblo, behind Denia, in the mountains. Friday night we ate Espegetis (spaghetti) and Salad and Pan (bread) and aceite de oliva (olive oil) after toodling around town—primarily sitting at the kid’s park oohing and awing at the view of the valley dropping down from almendras y olivares (almond and olive trees) into orange fields below us, running into a Denia framed by Móntgo and lowering jagged peaks, into the ocean. Climbing up the terraces were yet more almendras y olivares—creating a pastel blur of beauty in the face of austere, rocky summits spotted with chaparral.

Saturday morning we had hot milk with the choice of colacaol (a sweet chocolatey powder) or coffee (café con leche) and pan. Bread, yes, we live on bread. There were breakfast crackers too. Or cookies. However you’d like to call them. At nine we headed out on our hike . . . and I’ll tell you what . . . I cannot describe it.

First off—I was thrilled out of my mind to be on this trip. I was thrilled that the group was small, and not only small, but low-key. We spent Friday night reading around the fireplace. If someone had a question, s/he would ask it and whoever had the answer would offer it. It was quiet, calm, relaxing . . . oh, and before all of this, we went on a prickly pear adventure. I offered the knowledge that the fruit on that cactus there is edible and quite tasty . . . seven of us spent probably an hour sitting on a rock off the side of the road eating prickly pears and spitting seeds with enthusiasm, and then spent the night trying to hide from the professor why we were picking at our hands and lips (we didn’t want to worry her with the knowledge that we were eating things off the side of road).

Anywho, the hike. It was long and a lot of climbing and descending and it was beautiful. Beautiful not in the well-watered sense of beautiful or the springing with florescent flowers, but beautiful in scent, beautiful for the painting of almendras (soft pink petals) and olivares (soft green leaves) leaning over rocky terraces, beautiful for the painting of orange and grey and brown on the cliffs, for the shape of the land, for the juxtaposition of mountain and ocean, for the deep blue sky, for the sky light warming the skin, and the taste of air, cool and green in the shadows, sweet and earthy in the sun.

That night the professor headed back and us kiddos, er, young adults, were left loose. We made tortillas españolas . . . mmmm. A spent another quiet night in front of the fireplace. Sunday was a day of exploration. seven of us headed out to find a trail and find out way to the top of those peaks over there. Ready, set, go . . . where? When you aren’t following a path, it is hard to get lost, so we were fine, and it was quite a bit of fun. I had missed exploring, climbing up, down, around rocks, looking for the trailing, giving up on the trail, and finding the summit. Awesome. Literally, awesome. We sat a good hour at the summit after trying to decide which rocks were higher (this one? No, that one looks higher. Oh! And that one’s even higher! In Spanish, of course). From our throne we could see Vall de Laguar on one side and trace out our route from the day before, and another valley on the other side, with mountains further back that appeared to be snowcapped.

 

When we descended, we spent another hour sitting in the kids park where we ate lunch—visualize three college aged girls sitting in a circle with bread, knifes, and a bottle of olive oil in the middle—and did absolutely nothing.

It sounds like a “nothing” weekend, but it was everything. Not just for me either, from what I gathered, everyone in the group needed it. We were all continually complimenting the group as a whole for being adventurous, kind, and calm. For being okay with sitting all together without saying much at all. For allowing silence, questions, room to breath, and opportunities to laugh. 

Bumbling about Barcelona

Thursday, bright and early, we (twenty-four students from Calvin, twenty-five high school aged students from Juan Chabas, and three professors) headed up to Cataluña, first stop Tarragona. In Tarragona: Roman ruins, coffee (at a very friendly pastry shop), a gorgeous Church . . . a good time. 

 

We stopped at Parque Güell, designed by Gaudí, en route to the seminary where stayed (which, p.s. was gorgeous) just outside of Barcelona. Wow, colors, funky, natural, dinosaurs . . . those are the words that come to my mind when I try to describe Gaudí, but more specifically Parque Güell. 

Friday we headed into Barcelona—first stop: La Pedrera y la Casa Milà. Second: La Sagrada Familia. The work designed and started by Gaudí and still not finished. This place is enormous. From a distance, it is a little unsightly, but upon approaching (once over the shock of size that is expanding with step closer) the intricacies become clear and the immensity of Gaudí's vision begins to seep into one's mind. This is, of course, before even entering the cathedral. The pillars, the stained glass, the precision and craft . . . wow . . .

 

The remainder of Friday is Annie wandering, bumbling about Barcelona. One thing I adore in Barcelona, and many of the Spanish cities that I have seen: shutters. The streets become narrow, the buildings are all tall (five or six stories), and in stretches of three to four (and sometimes more) windows, these never-ending structures are divided by color and material and matching shutters with miniature terraces. It was difficult for me to keep walking instead of pulling out my camera in attempt to capture each picturesque vista, an impossible feat.

 

Besides bumbling up and down the relatively quiet ways (that is to say, not swarming with tourists like myself), I passed some time sitting and staring at ruins while eating my bread I picked up at a panadería amidst my wandering, if they can be called that. I do not recall the name of the pictured structure, but I first spotted the wall simply glancing down a street from a main road et voilà: look what we have here.

 

Age is awesome, literally awesome. But so modernism. El modernismo catalán is the Spanish version, the version of Cataluña (and thus Barcelona) and of Gaudí but also of Lluís Domènech i Montaner, the architect of the Palau de la Música. Unfortunately, the Palau is private and pictures are forbidden but wow. Light and flowers. Mosaics and muses. Local materials. This place dazzles—as in I was dazzled out of my mind by its brilliance, by the way that the colors dance and compliment, by the concise details, by the meticulousness that prevents an overwhelming array of light and color from crossing the into obnoxious. It is so much as to dumfound but just enough.  Brilliant.

Saturday we visited el Montjuic (the mountain, which gave to quite the view of the city), the Villa Olímpico, el Barrio Gótico, el Barrio del Born, a church, and a cathedral. The summer Olympics in Barcelona was the spark of Barcelona as a modern city, a tourist attraction, a known name. And although I could tell yall all about the Olympic centers we saw—my favorite part was the church.

The church and the cathedral were started at the same time, but the cathedral has yet to be finished—the church was constructed in fifty years (it was a functional demand—it was to be the religious base for the people living in the area and therefore the its construction was willed and voluntary). The church is visibly smaller (but still huge . . . okay, okay, dinky in comparison to La Sagrada Familia), constructed in the gothic style, with much fewer details than the cathedral; it could be deemed as simple. 

 

For lunch—the Pike’s Place Market of Barcelona: la Boqueria. I just love the colors.

 

Last stop Saturday—Casa Batllo also constructed by Gaudí. Modernismo Catalán: light, very few if any straight lines, intentional use of the natural. Casa Batllo is full of light, of stained glass, and of ocean. The colors of the glass, the waving of the walls, the entry of through the center staircase, the colors of mosaics evokes the idea of an aquarium—not with the feeling of stuffiness or that of being stuck inside (usually where I am at after hours at the Monterey Bay Aquarium) but rather with the openness of the ocean; the overhead arches give an illusion of size and the stained glass is situated as to glow even in the most interior rooms. From the top of this maze of art, I watched a rosy sunset.

 

Sunday—the drive back. Boring. Actually, the sky was gorgeous, and the landscape provided a pleasant distraction. But. Cavas Codorniu—much more interesting. Very interesting. Cava is the Spanish version of Champagne. Yup, we went to a winery, oh gasp. I won’t put you all through translating what I was taught about the making of wines and champagne (a name claimed by the French, therefore, the beverage made in Spain is “Cava,” the Catalan word for Cave, seeing as that is where it is made), but it was fascinating. There is even a Codorniu vineyard in Napa, California. It wouldn’t be the same, of course, the climate is different and the soil is different . . . maybe I’m preaching to the choir but go on a tour of a winery—the science and art behind it all is absorbing.