Mostly somewhere else

Valencia Day 13

13 January 2006
Last day in Valencia

Getting up this morning was a struggle after last night’s celebrations, but Henning & I both made it to class, AND managed to stay awake through the movie. Being in Spain Spanish instead of the Latin American version of the language, it was pretty hard for me to follow, but fortunately it wasn’t deep or complex. Ends up with a taxi chasing a motorcycle that’s been hijacked by a kinda insane ex-wife who’s on her way to shoot her husband at the airport where he’s leaving for a trip with the lover with whom he’s been cheating on his current girlfriend, who is ready to kill him too but following in the taxi to try to save the sorry so-and-so, who’s the father of the baby she’s expecting but nobody knows about it. You get the drift.

Hugs and kisses all the way around at school, then off for another tow-hour tapas lunch, this time at a place on the Plaza de la Reina. Our favorite dish here was dates wrapped in bacon, which was rather shocking to the tongue. Susan of course would have nothing to do with the grilled squid, having declared herself opposed to putting in her mouth something that tastes like rubber bands. It was her loss; Suzanne & I chowed down.

A quick visit to the Plaza Redonda to pick up a couple of last-minute gifts, then I made the serious mistake of seeing a music box in the window of a fancy we-won’t-let-you-in-till-you-ring-the-bell jewelry store. We went in & they sucker-punched me by playing the tune. Tchaikovsky Waltz of the Flowers, which is a bit hackneyed but echoes & rolls around in the box beautifully. The top is inlaid with a design of music sheet, mandolin, flowers & leaves in several mellow colors. 15% off for a cash purchase, and between Susan & me, we came up with enough at the ATM to swing it. Keep your eyes off the windows of expensive stores if you know what’s good for you!

The ladies in the store gave us some sherry while we chatted, which definitely greased the skids - not a good image to use about this particular transaction, I can just imagine the looks of incomprehension on the faces of those elegant ladies. (Sherry is of course originally from Spain, from a city called Jerez, bastardized to sherry. I think when it’s made somewhere else it can’t have the name sherry.) Anyway, the last time I had it was when a guy was (successfully) trying to sell me a leather coat, in Barcelona. Those Spaniards know what they’re doing.

Then the challenge of packing everything. Are dirty clothes really THAT much fatter than clean ones? What IS the problem with repacking? In this case, it could have been the ceramics, wooden spoons, CDs, olive oil, paella pan, and even an empty wine bottle that caused the problem. Maybe.

Tomorrow we leave at 6:30 am to catch a plane to Madrid, then to New York, then to Houston. We will be in transit about 21 hours, so I’d better rest up.

Thanks for reading about this trip. I hope you are able to check out the photo album to get an idea of what the city is like.

Next adventure: Thailand & Cambodia in February. Stay posted.

Valencia Day 12

12 January 2006

Today was very pleasant. School went well enough, despite being very verb-oriented, then afterwards Susan, Suzanne, and I went to a two-hour lunch at a tapas place recommended by Paz. Turned out to be great! We had shrimp in garlic, grilled asparagus, meatballs, “patatas bravas,” which is a potato dish, all along with plenty of bread to sop up the juices. Yummmm.

Afterwards Susan & I went off in search of the Lladró store, which is a kind of slim, pastel, shiny-glazed ceramic figurine. If you saw it you would recognize it, they’re in most of the “better” department stores. Anyway, this is where they are made. Susan is a bit of a fan since she got one of her mother’s pieces. Nothing has been purchased yet, but it may just be a matter of time.

Then she went looking for a book store & I did more of the tourist thing. There were a few things left I wanted to see, & I’ve checked most of them off the list now. Saw inside the ayuntamiento building, it has a beautiful marble stairway that winds upward very luxuriously. Also went inside the Almudín, a granary in the 1400s, now an art museum with photos forbidden, too bad cuz it was a fabulous building. A Visigoth funerary chapel (later a jail in the 300s for the martyr St Vincent) was very interesting as well & I broke the photo prohibition (I know you’re shocked about that). Then headed over to Susan’s hotel to post last night’s message, but it didn’t work! Got an error message, so this put a dampener on things.

Tonight “the Italians” made dinner for us. These are two Robertos from the school who stayed with Paz when they first came & still come over occasionally to cook. Tonight is the farewell dinner for Henning, a German in my class who is their friend & also lived with Paz. They were supposed to come over at 9 to cook, but Paz said usually just when she’s about ready to give up & climb into her pajamas at 10:30 or so, they show up & start cooking, with dinner about midnight. Tonight they came at 10 and we ate a nice penne pasta at 11, with the celebrations going till about 1:30 am. Well, that’s when I went to bed anyway. Then the kids went out clubbing afterwards.

Tomorrow’s our last day! We’re supposed to watch Almodovar’s movie Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, so it should be a pretty easy day. Good thing, after such a late night!

Valencia Day 11

11 January 2006
Happy birthday, George!

After all the rain yesterday it was a real pleasure to wake up this morning to clear skies. It wasn’t a real hard rain, varying between sprinkling & steady, nothing at all like a good (or actually, bad) Texas downpour, but they are so unaccustomed to much rain that the newspaper reported on it,

Un día de lluvia en Valencia (well, maybe I’d better translate)

A day of rain in Valencia

It rained, and not for just a little while. It rained in Valencia, and all day long, as it hasn’t in months or even years. … It started to fall at 10 and didn’t stop until late at night. The recoded amount of about 10 liters per square meter would be enough to fill 689 Olympic swimming pool. The wind increased the sensation of cold all day long.

Interesting the different perspective according to your experience. Guess that wind chill isn’t something they usually deal with, since it’s usually sunny. Apparently even if it rains here, it’s just briefly and then the sun comes out in the afternoon.

Before I report on the day let me say a couple of things I’ve forgotten to mention.

On Spain in general: I mentioned paseando, being out & about for a little stroll, and how people are so well-dressed for the occasion. The part I left out was that they’re always hanging on to each other. Just about every woman is on a man’s arm, or they are holding hands. If there is no man to grab onto, women may walk with their arms around each other, or holding hands. Much less sense of personal space than we seem to require.

On Valencia: Parking here is a real problem. There are some garages, but not nearly enough to cope with the need. Drivers seem to totally respect no-parking zones (I imagine there are heavy fines if you don’t, Spanish law seems to be very liberal with stiff fines), but they double-park like crazy. Just about every street seems to have cars parked 2 deep. Then when someone needs to get out and a double-parker is in the way, they just honk like crazy (the honking here makes NYC seem quiet). Or apparently, a driver will leave his parking brake off when double-parked so people can push the car out of the way as needed. Crazy. But Valencians love their cars, which Houstonians can identify with.

Since it was a nice day today I took some more photos. Got some of the inside of the post office before a guy walked up & told me it’s not allowed. Hmmm, I can see it being prohibited in an airport or train station, but the post office? It’s quite beautiful, maybe they want to sell you post cards of the décor & then the postage to go on them besides.

Today we took Suzanne the Canadian to lunch at a place where we ate last week. They make a bean stew (fabadas asturianas) every Wednesday, so we went back for that cuz it was really good comfort food. She was happy to come with us - she’s not really gone to restaurants since she doesn’t know how to read the menu or what to order. Fabadas, a salad, cider, coffee/tea, we were all happy. Then tonight for dinner Paz made – you guessed it, fabadas asurianas!

But before coming home for dinner I went to Suzanne’s place and she gave me a facial, with Aveda stuff, which somehow is based on Indian (Vedic?) philosophy of health & wellbeing. Anyway she did a great job so I’m all soft & smelling good besides. She’s going to do Susan tomorrow. Also on the schedule tomorrow is finding another tapas place, one that Paz recommends. So it should be another good day.
That’s it from me, I’ve got to do some confusing homework about all kinds of past tenses & when to use them, also sequence of tenses, etc. I’d better get after it!

Valencia Day 10

10 January 2006

The rain continues, but we also find a non-smoking restaurant

This morning when the alarm went off it was cold & rainy so I went back to sleep for an hour, which gave me 5 (yikes!) minutes to brush my teeth & throw on some clothes before running off to school. Our teacher Alfonso told us it was supposed to rain the rest of the week, and when Susan asked if he had any more good news for us, he said "Well, the 3 kings aren’t really real," with his usual smart-aleck smile. He’s very funny, a pleasure to have for a teacher.

During our break between classes Susan & I went into the Mercado Central, which is just across the street from the school. Like the mercados all over Spain, it’s huge & full of all kinds of food – fruit, veggies, snacks like nuts & dried fruits, seafood, shellfish, meat butchered on the spot – all totally fresh and with colors so vibrant they hurt your eyes.

Valencia is in the midst of an area called the huerta, which is like a monster truck farm & orchard. Valencia exports a lot of food, which means that living here you get fresh food of very good quality. This is something that we Americans on the whole do not appreciate or even understand, since our food is picked around the world weeks in advance, way before it’s ready, then shipped in vast quantities for vast distances, to be sold in vast supermarkets. Compared to the food here, it’s like styrofoam.

Anyway for snacks we bought some oranges and cherries (to die for, really, such an explosion of flavor in your mouth – they taste dark red) and Susan got some saffron for gifts. One box she bought for 15 euros would have cost hundreds of $$ at home because this is where most saffron comes from, and it’s a staple of Spanish cooking.

Interesting things you see in Spain:

People paseando, just strolling along the sidewalks, seeing & being seen, greeting friends, strolling babies, letting kids run about & chase pigeons. Lots more parks & squares & plazas & public spaces than we have, which offer close & walk-to-able places that don’t require having to make a plan & get the car out & kids in the carseats.

Most everyone dresses about 10 times more formally than we do. Spaniards wouldn’t consider walking down the hall of their own houses dressed the way we do when we go out in public. So we are very very obviously Americans here, dressed in jeans or sweatpants, T-shirts, sneakers & fleece jackets instead of wool (or even leather) pants or skirts, silk blouses, cashmere sweaters, chic boots or spike heels, and all types of leather or fur jackets and coats. And that’s just the men. (joke! The men are equally well-dressed in well-cut suits, ties, & leather coats.) Children are dressed like little princes & princesses, beautiful wool dresses for girls, slacks & jackets for the boys, All coordinated. Bows in the girls’ hair, everyone’s hair neatly cut & combed, hardly any gray hair, all correctly colored as need be. The most dressed-up, though, are babies, in coordinated little knitted outfits & hats, tucked into their strollers under handmade linens. It’s all a bit overwhelming & makes you feel … well, dowdy, but also … comfortable.

We did a bit of souvenir shopping today in some booths around one of the small plazas, in a crowded & little-bit-shabby space that featured ceramics. The lady "of a certain age" who ran it was dressed to the 9s, a suit with silky blouse & beautiful scarf, jewelry por todos partes, hair colored & teased into a perfect blond helmet, heels & hose, all very formal & proper. So was her neighbor in the shop next door,

Tons of people smoking. Today we finally found a place for lunch that said "no smoking" on the door, and it was like a miracle, the clouds parting & the sun shining through, angels singing. (Well not quite, no angels & it was still raining outside, but still a great relief after about 10 days of hazy restaurants getting around the "no smoking" ban.)

Hours of operation here are quite different from what we’re accustomed to. Stores are open about 9 or 10 till 1 or 2, then shut down several hours for lunch, opening again 5 – 9. Bars are open very early for the breakfast crowd, folks dropping in on their way to work for a café or café con leche or cortado, maybe with a piece of toast or a roll, then pretty much stay open through the day until rather late at night. (The folks who went bar-hopping after dinner last night finished up about 5 am.) Restaurants open about 1 or 2 till 4 or 5, which is when people eat their "big meal." I imagine this doesn’t apply to Burger King or McDonald’s, but haven’t eaten there to confirm it.

The food in most eating establishments is pretty much the same – in bars bocadillos ("little mouthfuls," sandwiches) of ham or cheese or ham and cheese, and tortillas (Spanish version is a round casserole-ish thing of potatoes & eggs, cut into pie-shaped pieces); in restaurants, several kinds of fish & meats (usually chicken or lamb), potatoes or rice or fideo (Spanish noodles), salads with not much greenery, more cheese, tuna, & olives, veggies as an afterthought if at all, and pretty mushy besides. And paella, which is a combination of most all of that. No matter what the place is called, particularly if it’s a bar, the same food. Around the corner from me is a place called Tokio that serves – Sushi? Tempura? Sashimi? No, bocadillos & tortillas. A place that promised Mediterranean food (we were so hoping for falafel & kebabs & hummus!) had … ham, tortillas, fideo, and paella. This is not a complaint, just an observation.

Well, time to do my homework. Can’t let those 19-yr-olds show me up. Maybe tomorrow it won’t be cold & rainy. And maybe los reyes magos are really real too.

Valencia Day 9

9 January 2006

The "welcome" dinner

It sure was hard to go back to school today after 3 days off – well, hard to get up at 7:30, for sure. Thought we might have some new classmates after the new batch came in today, but no. It’s still us & four 19-yr-olds (2 Norwegian girls & 2 guys, 1 German and 1 Dutch) at our level.

You may wonder why we’re so often in classes with European teenagers – it’s because after they finish high school pretty much all of them do something for a year, usually language study in a foreign country. This group is studying a while in Valencia, then in Seville, then another Spanish city. So after their year they will know Spain as well as Spanish before going into the university. Their governments either pay for their courses outside the country, or give them very cheap loans. Pretty good system, I’m sure they’re more mature when they start college than most of our kiddoes.

Immediately after school I had to rush to the dr for my follow-up appointment. He gave me a clean bill of health earwise, along with a big hug and kisses on each cheek. What a sweetie-pie, very caring while not losing any medical professionalism. So I felt cared for physically and emotionally all at once. Turns out he’s a friend of Paz’s father, which falls into the "small world" category.

Lunch at an Indian place, a good break from Spanish food. Unfortunately Susan’s tummy’s been bad, so she did not make the welcome dinner tonight. We should have had the dinner last Monday, but there were not enough new students, so it was tonight instead.

We met at the school & walked over to a restaurant near the Plaza de la Virgen. There were 10 of us including today’s new students, who are 2 older guys (well, still plenty younger than me, don’t worry) who came together, one from England and the other from Scotland, along with a "typical European student" (= 19) from Austria.

We immediately ran into language problems when the English guy introduced himself as something that sounded like "Pool." After he repeated it to me 5 times the Scot translated it as "Paul" & said not to worry, I couldn’t understand him cuz he’s very "posh." But then once the Scottish guy John started talking I had to admit that to understand him I needed subtitles, just like for Scottish movies. So Pool translated him to me, and vice versa. Then John had to translate me to Pool a couple of times, because he was too posh to get what I was saying when I spoke American. So the major communication problems at the table were between the English speakers.

We have another friend at the school, who came when we did – a Canadian named Suzanne, who has studied Spanish a bit but is the least advanced student at the school. She is outgoing & friendly & funny & we 3 have adapted to each other quite well as the only "North Americans." We do seem to have a different approach or attitude or something than the other, European, students. Goofier probably, certainly louder. More likely to laugh at things. Turns out she’s an "esthetician," (beautician), which the UK guys misheard as "obstetrician." (On second thought, perhaps part of the language problem at the dinner was the amount of been & wine consumed.) Anyway, I might swing a facial from her before we leave on Saturday, since the weather’s so nasty & rainy & sightseeing’s pretty much out.

After dinner everyone was going to start hitting the bars, which is what Spaniards do at night, but I told them I was too old to be out all night & needed my sleep. Buenas noches a todos.

Valencia Day 8

8 January 2006
Donna’s museum day

This turned out to be a nice day after all the rain yesterday. If possible, even more people are out shopping than yesterday, because of the weather I imagine. Susan & I started with a cup of tea in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento.

First we hit the ceramics museum, which in a huge townhouse-type palace previously owned by the Marquis de Dos Aguas. Sounds too frou-frou for words, doesn’t it? In fact, it is! You never saw such sumptuousness. (Well, I never did at least.) You start with the front door, which features around it an alabaster sculpture in which a couple of muscular guys wrestle with a bunch of foliage. Words cannot describe how over-the-top it is , so I will include a photo in the album. "Rococo" and "extreme" do come to mind, though. From a relatively small ground floor (if you consider a 4-story patio small potatoes) you move up a totally marble staircase, including all the banisters & handrails, which were wider than my hands. The first floor has a mere 17 rooms, all mirrored & flocked & marble & statues & hangings & inlay & chandeliers & curvy (uncomfortable) Frenchy gold-leafed furniture. Whoa! It kinda made your stomach hurt. But the ceramics part was very interesting. Ceramics is a big industry in this part of Spain.

Afterwards we headed back to the cathedral to see if the holy grail room was open & it was, so we took a while to sit in the chapel that holds it. Picture will be included. The chapel was amazingly plain, which was a vast relief after the visually heavy going in the ceramics museum. A quick stop to check out the artisan booths up front before they closed for the season, then it was time for lunch.

We ate lunch, I had a nice bit of roasted chicken , grease happily sopped up with bread. Yummmm. Overall the food in Spain is a bit well tasteless, particularly because we are so used to food that’s more picante, but this hit the spot with me. Then Susan headed back to her hotel room & I got serious about site-seeing. I checked out:

Palacio de Benicarló, now the seat of the Valencian parliament but previously the home of the Borgias. Very sedate, but livened up with flapping birds featured on top of the drainpipes.

Museo de Bellas Artes, returning to buy a few postcards of the art & take photos in the beautiful patio, then lounging a while in the attached gardens.

Hiked over to the IVAM, the modern art museum. Usually I’m not much for the art in this kind of museum, but like the buildings themselves. This was an exception, because both were excellent. I saw a nice exhibit about the sea that ranged from Greek vases & Roman carvings to very stark modern representations of ships, one made of three sticks, two strings, and a rock. Also an exhibit in honor of the 400^th anniversary of the publication of Don Quixote, drawings by Joan Castejón that were quite moving. I would have bought the book for either of those exhibits but they both cost too much & were too heavy to tote back.

After a day of a LOT of walking I came back home & started the homework I’d put off all weekend. Pretty much got it done when our new student showed up, a guy from England, 30ish. Not too comfortable with Spanish, so after Paz went through "it all" with him (rules, how the keys work, where the food is, when meals are, etc), I went back over it in English.

After which it was WAY late, way past bedtime – especially for someone who’s been sleeping till 10 or 11 and will have to get up in the morning at 7:30. Ugh.

So, tomorrow the saga continues as we see if we get more students in our class when the fresh meat arrives on Monday.

Valencia Day 7

7 January 2006

Today was rainy, so we decided to check out the art museum, Museo de Bellas Artes. We have been walking everywhere but this was far enough away & with the rain too, we decided to spring for a cab. Pretty radical for two students! But at 7.15 euros it didn’t break the bank.

The museum building was originally a seminary, San Pio V, built in the 1600s. Although inside it mostly looks, well, museum-ish, there are parts where you can see the former purpose. Particularly resonant was the cloistered courtyard, the cloisters lined with really old stuff – sarcophagi from the 400s, statues and other stone bits from the Visigoth era, a couple of them going back to the 300s! Cool. About those sarcophagus things, though – where are the people who used to be in them? Dust to dust I suppose.

The collection included a few Goyas, a Velasquez self-portrait, and a nice El Greco of John the Baptist. Also some Riberas, very identifiable with everyone’s eyes cast mournfully toward heaven & looking like their stomachs hurt. The vast preponderance of the collection though was art & altarpieces from various churches & convents. I have to admit I love that stuff, I’m a total sucker for gold leaf. Show me a descent from the cross picture & I’ll walk right past, but put a bit of gold leaf all around it & I’m hooked. One of them has Saint Martin dying, with his spirit slipping our through his lips & looking like a cross between Casper the friendly ghost & a cartoon speech-bubble. Another one had different saints with their methods of martyrdom, the most striking being a woman (Catherine?) displaying her breasts on a silver platter like two rather perky eggs over easy.

The upstairs had rather badly-lighted examples of 19^th century painters, which were very nice slice-of-life pieces, especially by Gil & Sorollo – although there were also scattered in a few portraits of women in Sevilliana costumes (loud polka-dotted dresses & shawls, flowers over the ear) that I suppose are authentic to the time, or during fiestas even now, but look almost stereotypical.

After the museum we went to the Mercado de Colon, a recently refurbished modernista building that you can see in the photo album. It is huge & tall & open all around, with glassed-in shops & cafes inside that are dwarfed by the vast expanse of the interior. Beautifully done. We ate lunch at a little-bit pricey spot called Bamboo, but enjoyed every bite of it. We justified the expense as our celebratory Día de los Reyes meal.

By the way, an interesting thing is happening in Spain. As of January 1, public places have no smoking. This is really really extreme in Europe. Funny thing is you can’t find any place that is actually non-smoking because there was so much clamor over the new law that it was amended to say that if an establishment is less than I think 100 square meters in size (ie, most bars & cafes), the proprietor can decide what is best for his customers. So everyplace and I mean every place has signs that say "Smoking permitted inside this establishment." At lunch they had 2 areas, smoking & non, which was really the first evidence we’ve seen of the much-discussed (and cussed too) new law. Everywhere else it seems to be business as usual.

Since the weather this weekend is as we say in Houston, "Christmasy," cold & rainy, we had to go buy something in the sales! So after lunch, off to Corte Inglés, about a block from my house.

This week in our cultural class we have talked about cantautores, singer/songwriters of a political bent whose material was originally in response to the Franco regime, the assassination of Allende in Chile, etc, but now addresses wider social issues. Corte Inglés has an after-Reyes sale of 3 for 2 on CDs, so I got one each by Rosana, Alejandro Sanz, & Javier Krahe, who we heard in class. My favorite by the last guy was "La Hoguera," a tongue-in-cheek number that sounds a bit like a kiddie song ("The people on the bus go up & down …"), but is about different kinds of capital punishment. He says his favorite is burning at the stake, but there are plenty of other excellent options – the guillotine, so chic & French, the electric chair, so practical & American, etc.

The after-holiday sale crowds are, if possible, more of a crush than the ones before the Reyes. You can hardly move through them, or as my grandma would say, you can’t stir ‘em with a stick. The part of town where I live is full of shops, so we are right in the midst of all the clamor. I’ve enjoyed seeing the artisans who have tables & booths here & there for the holidays. After tomorrow they will all be gone until this time next year.

It’s about dinnertime, so I will close this post before Paz hollers "¡A cenar!" After dinner I will climb into bed & maybe finish the murder mystery I brought with me, again sleeping till I wake up. Luxurious.

Hope you are all having a good weekend too.

Valencia Day 6

6 January 2006

Well it’s the Día de los Reyes and all is quiet here in Valencia after the shopping euphoria of the past few days. Most of the stores are locked up tight, the metal garage-type doors that protect them at night rolled down and latched. When these doors are down you don’t even know what is behind them. The first few days I was here I left for school before the ones on my block were opened & came back a way that avoided most of the block (I’m almost on the corner), so I didn’t realize that I’m in the midst of 2 art galleries, some upscale clothing stores, and a couple of fabulous places for housewares. Some shopping may be in order when they open back up tomorrow & sales have started.

Today I didn’t sleep till noon, but almost made it to 11, how elegant! Then stayed in pretty much all day, snacking on oranges, nuts, raisins, and … well, OK, I admit it, Spanish chocolate (¡fabuloso!) Read a bit about the history of Valencia, so I will hit a couple of high points that might ring a bell.

• In 221 BC (? I think?) Carthage, still smarting from defeat in the first Punic War with Rome, attacked Sargento, the Roman stronghold just north of Valencia (we’re hoping to visit it this weekend to see the Roman ruins there), in the person of … Hannibal, thereby starting the second Punic War. From there he & his buddies headed north & crossed the Alps on the famous elephants.
• The city of Valencia was established in 138 AD by some Roman legionnaires who were given land along the River Turia as a retirement community. (The same was true of a town near Seville that I visited, Italica I think. Can it be that most of Spain was originally an old-folks’ home for retired Romans?)
• Then there’s lots of back & forth between Romans, Visigoths, Byzantines, and of course Arabs (called Moors in Spain), which lasted until 1492. But during all this we have another famous name. In 1093 a knight of Alfonso 6^th, Christian king of Castilla y Leon, captured ("liberated"?) the city of Valencia for a period that lasted about 10 years before it went back to the Moors again. He was called El Cid, and he looked a lot like Charleton Heston, which means he also favored Moses & Ben Hur & lots of other famous folk.

Since the Christmas season is officially over now, Paz his taking down her decorations. My favorite has been a long table in the hall that has a manger scene at one end with a huge swath of tabletop in front of it, scattered with trees and ceramic shepherds & sheep & townspeople, & a little river of blue cardboard crossed by a tiny bridge of sticks. Every day she moves the Magi on their camels a bit closer to the manger, and since they got there today, the party’s over. She said she’s done it since she was a tiny girl, her mother let her & her 2 brothers each move one of the wise men throughout the season. She says all Spanish kids do it.

If you think that sounds goofy, you’ve never dealt with children & holiday traditions. You should hear some of the scenarios my sons & their friends & I cook up for our annual gingerbread house. This year it was Shakespearean, with chubby gingerbread folks playing Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, Mr & Mrs Macbeth, the 3 witches, the forest of ?? approaching Macbeth’s castle (well, Macbeth’s gingerbread house) with gingerbread soldiers behind the gingerbread trees, the fairy royalty Titania & Oberon & Bottom in his donkey guise in the Athenian wood, all being narrated by Biondello of Taming of the Shrew, next to his half-dead horse pulling the sleigh, this year featuring Shakespeare as Santa, bringing scripts to all the good boys & girls. Makes Paz’s little wise-man scenario seem positively down-to-earth.

Tonight for dinner we had a soup of garbanzos, carrots, spinach, & garlic. I bought some cookies at a fancy bakery across the street, so we had those for dessert. Then I showed pictures of our house at Christmas, our tree & of course the Shakespearean gingerbread house. It seems that none of them had ever seen a gingerbread house before, so where do they come from?

Then I went out to take a few more photos since the lights will all go dark tomorrow. Pretty sad since the city is quite beautiful with them lit.

It’s about 11:30 so I’ve been up 12 hours – about time to go back to bed! It will take a while to get around to that because I have to bathe & do pills & sniffs & drops for my ear. Taking a shower without getting it wet is a crazy operation, especially since I can’t turn around in the shower stall without whacking the wall or the door. So I’d best get started.

Hope everyone had a fabulous Día de los Reyes. I sure did.

Valencia Day 5

5 January 2006

This was the night of the big parade, La Cabalgata de Los Reyes Magos. I think everyone in Valencia and possibly the rest of Spain was there to enjoy it. It was different from the parade last year in Granada, which was more professional in that it had lots of real floats, not some props thrown up on a flatbed truck or on a wagon-type thing pulled by a big tractor. But both were equally fun.

Of course the most important thing is there were plenty of people throwing stuff to the crowd – candy, balloons, balls, small very cheap plastic toys. Major participants were the Red Cross (in ambulances, and in rescue boats on trailers pulled by SUVs); firemen with their families, on their ladder trucks (vintage 1950ish); police on horses or motorcycles, blue lights flashing; the zoo; radio & TV stations; El Corte Ingles (big department store); marching bands of all kinds, often as small as a dozen people – some with the usual trombones & clarinets, others with instruments I’ve never seen; and on the biggest & flashiest I-don’t know-what-it-was-it-was-so-massive thing was the Valencia football (= soccer) team. When they came into sight everyone burst into what must be their theme song. But there were also very small groups of people, dressed in all manner of get-up and representing … who knows?

It was more like Halloween than Christmas, with Superman & clowns and circus people, boatloads (really, boats) of pirates & even … Vikings? and Star Wars characters. You’ll be relieved to hear that Darth Vader made it, along with lots of his storm troopers, but neither .Leia nor Han nor Luke was in evidence. Guess their costumes were too bo-o-o-o-ring and nobody wanted to be them. Lots of light sabers though.

There were also a good number of folks on horses, dressed like really glitzy Arabs. One of the horses did that famous really controlled dancing - don’t know what it’s called, but very impressive. Talking about animals, I don’t want to leave out the herd of sheep (!), with the little lambs scampering along trying to keep up.

Roundly booed were the folks dressed like Roman soldiers, and of course the float that carried a huge pile of coal, nothing else. It sobered the kids up, since that’s what bad Spanish kids get instead of switches.

The major stars were of course the three kings, each with his own advance guard, folks carrying his gift (chests of gold, frankincense, myrrh, with maybe a bit of space left over for a few things for the kids of Valencia), dancing girls, vestal virgins, people with torches, all looking straight out of Cleopatra (the Liz Taylor movie, that is, or maybe Lawrence of Arabia). These were really beautiful costumes. Everybody knew the names of each king when they saw him coming, and shouted out "Gaspar!" "Baltazar!" or "Melchior!" Then the parade was over where I was standing. They were heading for city hall to be received by the head honchos, then there was a fireworks display that I’ve been hearing while I type.

To me the funny thing about it all is how people behave in this kind of parade, where there is loot. This was like a Mardi Gras parade, where everyone throws out their arms & begs "Hey mistah throw me somethin’," to get some cheap plastic beads (okay, I like the beads too but it becomes a mania). Here in Spain everyone is going for hard candies they call caramelos, which probably sell for about 50 cents a pound.. Normally if they saw a piece of this stuff on the ground they wouldn’t bother (no, deign) to pick it up, but when it’s being thrown from a truck by somebody in a costume, they scramble around for it as if it were gold, snatching like a crazy person before someone else can claim the prize. Three people within my sight were even using the brazen upside-down umbrella ploy to really rake in the loot. I was taking photos instead of screaming for candy, but it was flying so thick & fast that about 10 pieces ended up in my pockets & creases of my clothes.

The great thing about it was that it wasn’t too professional, and very family-oriented. After all, it’s for the kids, isn’t it? The people on the floats were families, with the kids throwing out the candy. Even people in costume (bears? lions?) pushing baby strollers & tossing out treats. Sometimes people walking along in the parade knew those in the crowd and stopped to say howdy.

After the parade all the stores were open for last-minute shopping. The street in front of the school will be filled with tents & booths from about midnight till 5 am so that people can run out & buy stuff while the kiddies are asleep. I understand that the Spanish are compulsive mega-shoppers for this holiday, not that they have anything over Americans at Christmas. I think it’s a dead heat. I can tell you for sure it’s been a physical challenge the last few days to even get past the Corte Ingles to cross the street.

For dinner we had a stew of fish, potatoes, and clams (still in the shells), then Paz gave us little presents since we’re her children this year. I gave her my little gifts, and then we all headed to bed full and happy.

Tomorrow will be quiet. Susan & I will not get together, but each just rest "at home." I plan to sleep till I wake up (noon if possible), then process some photos to post and lounge about reading a trashy novel - while the Spanish kids are riding new bikes, playing new video games, dressing up new dolls, and thanking the 3 kings that they didn’t get coal for el día de los reyes magos.

I'm starting to to photos in an album instead.  Hope you can go see them  (next door).

Valencia Day 4

4 January 2006

Today was another beautiful day, but colder. On my way to school this morning I noticed it was 7 degrees – what is that, about 40? Should have worn my jacket instead of just a vest, but that’s what’s so good about having a warm scarf – not heavy or bulky, so you can carry it everywhere & have it ready for just such an occasion.

Tomorrow is the night that the Three Kings come to bring presents to all the good little Spanish children. The cabalgata is tomorrow night starting about 8 pm. This is the parade in which the kings come to town & are welcomed at city hall. It starts at the port because they come on boats. Paz has recommended that we see if there are seats available for sale, which would be better than the crush I was in last year in Granada. We will not eat dinner until after the parade, which may be about midnight. There will be no school on Friday because it’s a holiday (essentially, Christmas Day). So I can sleep late.

This afternoon we wandered about a bit to see some of the old center of the city. We started with the two sets of gates that date from the 1200s or so, the only thing remaining of the wall that separated the city from the countryside. The Torres de Quart still carry the holes of French cannonballs during the war of independence from France in the 1800s. There were some pretty birds with green bodies & red heads, like parrots, perched in one of them!

We also made it to the cathedral, which has the actual real authentic Holy Grail on display (if you think Jesus was drinking out of something that featured jewels like this has, I’d like to talk to you about buying a bridge). We also saw a creepy relic, the left arm of San Vicente, black & shrunken with fingers like claws, yuk. Yet somehow relics are totally fascinating in a strange twisted kind of way. Why exactly is having a bit of a holy person on display a good thing? To somehow help the public believe they existed? soak up a bit of their goodness? impress folks from other places with your importance as evidenced by having a major body part of a significant saint? Hmmm, could be a combination I suppose.

Outside the cathedral is a small flea market set up just during the Christmas season, but it’s all high-quality artesania stuff. We were able to pass up everything till we got to the fans, which Spaniards really know how to make since they have to use them. They help a lot when there’s no AC. I got a couple of handpainted ones, and Susan got one. I’m trying to hold off buying things until after the Tres Reyes come, cuz everything goes on sale then. Like December 26^th for us.

After it started getting dark I was able to get some more photos of the decorations around town, which I will include in this post.

Still no resolution on the class level, talked to the administrator but he was not inclined to honor promises that he didn’t make & wasn’t consulted about, since our attendance at the school was coordinated by somebody in "headquarters" (Salamanca, I think). Fair enough. The saga will continue.

Tonight Paz made a veggie paella, a huge flat pan of saffron rice with green beans, peas, carrots, etc.. Yummy! Paella originated in Valencia.

Speaking of things originating here, the Valencians also have their own language, appropriately enough called Valenciano. It’s a variant of Catalan. The street signs here are mostly in Valenciano (Carrer de les Carabasses vs. Calle de Calabazas), but really not much else is. They are not as fanatic as the Catalunyans (or Basques either) in this regard.

Way past my bedtime & I haven’t even done my homework yet!  will probably not post tomorrow, the whole town will be buttoned down & i want to sleep very very late.  Que descanses.