Monday, November 29, 2010

IT'S SNOWING IT'S SNOWING IT'S SNOWING

First snow of the year in Madrid! More like slush that is not actually sticking, but it is still very pretty. I am sitting in the Bellas Artes library pretending to do work/watching the snow.


Bellas Artes, our not-so-beloved library in Madrid

This past week has not been very eventful because, since about half of our classes (the ones with American students) have ended, we now have finals and final papers to do/more accurately whine about. Biggest highlight of last week: THANKSGIVING!! Or, as it is known in España, EL DÍA DE ACCIÓN DE GRACIAS. Not as catchy. Probably because they really have no idea what it is or why we eat turkey.

After a horrifically full day of four classes, I went home on Thursday to skype with all of my family members who were gathered at my cousin's house in the burbs of Albany. Super fun to see and talk to everybody, especially my grandfather, who didn't really get that I could hear him speaking. Then we all went to our program Thanksgiving dinner at a pijo (fancy) restaurant. Many people's families were there and it was fun to meet them and observe how frighteningly similar some parents were to their children. Our first course of the meal was New England clam chowder. Kind of an odd choice for Thanksgiving, but I appreciate Spain's shout out to Massachusetts and the Pilgrims, and it was delicious. Our main course was everything you would expect to see at a classic Thanksgiving dinner, followed by amazing pumpkin pie for dessert.

HOORAY!


yum yum yum

After such an exciting beginning to the weekend, the rest of the weekend was mostly devoted to studying. I have less finals and work this week than most people, so I had time to do fun things as well. A bunch of us had PIZZA for lunch on Saturday, our first good pizza since August. Afterwards I went to the Rastrillo with Felicia, a charity market where her host mom was working. Her host mom was super nice, gave us cookies, and introduced us to all of her friends. Later we ordered Tio Pepe, which we thought was beer, but turned out to be sherry. It was surprisingly really good. On Sunday I sampled the best chocolate croissants in Madrid (clearly delicious) and saw Harry Potter y las Reliquias de la Muerte (again). Even better the second time. This is definitely my favorite movie of the series, and this is just part one. I really like watching English movies in Spanish theaters that are subtitled in Spanish because it's really interesting to compare the English to what is written in the subtitles, and we are always the only ones in the theater who laugh at all the puns because they don't translate well into Spanish.

It's still snowing. I'm so happy!!

Madrid has also begun turning on its Christmas lights at night. All of the major streets are lined with various kinds of Christmas lights. They are super pretty and generally very tasteful. My host mom told me they are much uglier this year than usual and I shouldn't bother looking at them. Apparently normally there are even more lights, but they had to cut back this year because of the economic crisis. ¡Qué pena! What a shame! I will still be looking at them.

Real Christmas tree in Callao


Fake light-up Christmas tree in Sol

Today was mostly spent walking around looking for a cafe to do work in that was not Starbucks, failing to find one, running into my friend Sarah from language class who was headed to a Starbucks (¡qué casualidad!), and joining her because being in Starbucks with a friend is at least slightly more enjoyable. We met a couple from Austria with an ADORABLE baby who were very nice and gave Sarah their email and phone number because she is visiting Vienna in a few weeks and they said they would love to hang out with her. Madrid is a crazy place.

Next weekend Hilary and I are trying to organize a trip to Granada before she goes on her epic adventure to Ireland. I am very excited to see the Alhambra. Get ready for pictures.

Hasta la vista,
Rachel

SNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOW

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

London Jubilation

We Love London!
This past weekend 10 Madrid friends and we met up with some Bologna friends in LONDON!!! 


We arrived late Thursday night, and we were surprised to find 4 rows of triple-decker bunk beds and not enough room to stand up at our hostel. They were not so sturdy and quite a tight fit.  Group meetings were conducted on the top bunks because that was the only place where we could sit. However, it was cozy!  A rando came and slept in our room and all were confused the next morning.  We are still not sure who she was. 
Friday morning we arose bright and early for a day of sightseeing!

First we went to the Westminster Abbey.  Here we took an audio tour narrated by Jeremy Irons.  ("We saw the famous dead people"-Rachel)  There was the Poet’s Corner where tons of famous writers are either buried / commemorated.  Many kings and queens of England are also interred here.  We liked the dueling tombs of QE1 and Queen Mary.  

Here is an illegal pic of us and Jeremy Irons

We happened upon the Changing of the Guards at Buckingham Palace.  (Lots of scary guys with silly hats –Rachel)  It was super formal, Felicia thought the Queen was arriving, but she was not, bummer.

We ate authentic British pub food for lunch i.e. fish n’ chips and some meat pie.  YUM!
 
We went to the London Eye, which is a gigantic eye.  Just kidding it is a Ferris Wheel.  Rachel almost died in a 4D experience.  (not really, this just sounds like she almost died while time travelling).  We watched a 3d movie about the London Eye and lots of things flew out at us (I guess making it 4D), such as confetti, smoke, water, and Rachel thought she was being attacked by a sea gull and later a fire breathing dragon.  4D was a little too real for her. 
The Eye!
Riding the Eye.
View from the Eye

Anyway, the London Eye was super guay and we were able to view London from above during the sunset!  We guess this is kind of like London’s version of all the church towers that we had to climb in other cities (this time without steps).
After this we walked to the Millennium Bridge (featured in the 6th HP movie) and the London Tower and Tower Bridge.
 

For dinner we met with everyone and went to a ‘pub’ called The Horse where they randomly served Thai food.  It was great!  We made a quick stop at platform 9 and ¾ where we took the train to see the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (part 1) unfortunately this train was not the Hogwarts Express. 
9 3/4

The movie was in IMAX and was sooooooooo gooood. Unfortunately, in the middle an alarm rang out and we were quickly evacuated.  After an hour in the freezing cold we got back inside and finished the movie!  Hooray.

 Here are some of us looking sad and cold.(except Felicia seems to be happy about this)

After little sleep and some tight hostel maneuvering we got ourselves to the Tower for a tour.  Some of us left a little early and walked to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.  The Tower tour was a bit gimmicky but tons o’ fun!  Our guide was a Beefeater aka Yeoman Warder. 
We were dazzled by the Crown Jewels as we rode a conveyor belt right by them!  The largest diamond in the world was there. We were all jelly cat. 

Rachel and some peeps went to Chipotle for some Mexican and Hilary and some other people went to another pub and got burgers and sausages.

We took some pics walking across Abbey Road! (These were not on my camera and will be uploaded at another time)

And then entered a Winter Wonderland!  This was a Christmas themed fair/carnival.  Rachel says “It was probably the most genuinely Christmas-y thing I’ve ever gone to.”  It was so much FUN!  We got spiked hot chocolate, Rachel doesn’t know if she can ever have normal hot chocolate again.  It really was so delicious.  We also got hot pretzels, something Spain does not have.  AND we went on a ride!!!! 

WOOHOOO!
Stacy and Hilary with a stern looking Santa
Another Ferris Wheel!

We returned and played pool in the pub under our hostel.  Rachel was great, Hilary was not so great.  But it was fun!  After some Indian food we returned and played some more pool!! Everyone went to bed around midnight, except Rachel and our friend Ian, who continued to play pool until 3 am.

After a delayed flight, we arrived back in Madrid.  Although we love Spain, it was much easier to do everything in London because there was no language barrier (even though we did many British accent imitations).  Interactions were so much easier and less stressful in London.

We both want to go back; London was bloody BRILLIANT! 
This week we have thanksgiving and final exams/papers to look forward to!
Hasta la Vista,

Hilary y Raquel

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Volcanoes, Slag Heaps, Marshmallows and Screaming Norwegians


Hello!
Another great weekend was spent in Madrid, here is what went down:

On Thursday, Felicia and I went to the Reina Sofia and then to a Golden Age play, "El Alcalde de Zalamea" (The mayor of Zalamea) by Calderón de la Barca.  Although both of these events were mandatory for our classes, they were also AWESOME!  Afterwards we went to an all you can eat conveyor belt sushi restaurant. 
 Here is a funny anecdote:  I had no idea how to get to the theater from the metro (it was actually quite close) so I took a taxi for 3 blocks and then had to pay the driver with a 50, I could tell he really liked me.

On Friday, a bunch of us went to a super duper vegetarian restaurant.  It was so good I didn’t even miss meat!  We then went to a Renoir exhibit at the Prado.  While there we saw "The Garden of Earthly Delights" which is quite an odd piece of work.  Here it is:

 Can you believe that this was painted in the 15th Century?

Later that evening we went to a totally gnarly bar dudes; it was HAWAIIN themed.  There were parrots and fish and waiters in hawaiin shirts and lots of other theme-y stuff.  We got a smoking volcano to drink with very long straws.  The waiters gave us festive leis, drink umbrellas, and carnations.  It was radical.



Saturday we voyaged to El Escorial!  It is a monastery / autumn palace just outside of Madrid.  

It was all quite autumnal.  

The palace, commissioned by Felipe II, was nippy noodles, but well worth it.  The ‘coolest’ part were the enormous crypts called the Royal Pantheon.  There were tons of sarcophagi housing most of the kings of Spain and their families since Carlos V, a Holy Roman Emperor.   There is a giant mannerist basilica in the center of the palace as well as art and architecture museums.  My favorite place though, was the library.  It was not enormous, but it was super guay and there was a really cool looking Platonic globe thing that looked like a sphere of gears and was used to do astronomy things, I am quite the expert on these things.  Here are some interesting facts.  El Escorial is mostly made out of granite, which is abundant in the nearby hills.  Escorial, the word, signifies slag heap, hmmm that does not seem to be a majestic title.  
After some chocolate con churros
We went our separate ways



That night we went to a purple glowing bar that served us marshmallows and candy.  I accidently got us two free drinks when the waiter presumed I was waving at him for his good looks.  I was not.  But we drank the beers anyway.

Sunday was a day of work after a lunch of ramen YUM!  However, Starbucks has holiday decorations and drinks, so that made HW much more enjoyable (if less productive). 

Last night I went to a concert that was ostensibly jazz.  Rachel did not attend.  Anyway, it was not jazz.  It was some group of drunk Nordics.  Most of the songs were pretty normal. But there was this one that started out as a Norwegian folk song that then turned into a lullaby that then turned into some crazy satanic screaming.  I couldn’t control myself. 

Anyway, that is pretty much all that has occurred of note. Tomorrow an enormous delegation of VWMers are flying to London (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) both to explore the city and to see HARRY POTTER!!!  I am so excited! 
Hasta la Vista,
Hilary

Here are two unrelated but awesome pictures.  (I do not want my post to pale in comparison to Rachel's so I am adding some more photos)

Here we are jumping in Sevilla
Please note the hilarity of this picture. Eli and I have assumed the same strange pose. Rob’s (the guy on the right) face is priceless.  Ben and Helios look so victorious.  And Erin is firmly on the ground and blocking her face.  It just gets funnier every time I see this picture.


And here is some really divine subway graffiti.








Sunday, November 14, 2010

Candy canes and cathedrals: Visita to Sevilla and Córdoba

Last weekend, we went on our last program trip (SAD!) to Sevilla and Córdoba. Like our trip to Valencia, it was amazing, but in a very different sort of way. Sevilla and Córdoba are both located in southern Spain. The weather was beautiful. It must have been over 70 degrees and sunny the whole time. Some people were wearing shorts. Very confusing for November. I took the most pictures this weekend than I have probably taken in the rest of my life (over 500 pictures in 3 days), so be prepared for a very foto-filled post.

Day 1: Friday
We left Madrid early Friday morning to take the Ave to Sevilla. The Ave is a high-speed train that goes up to 300 mph. (or maybe 300 kph? Either way…REALLY fast.) It was the smoothest (and FASTEST!) train ride I’ve ever been on and it was very peaceful watching pretty Spanish landscapes zooming by. We crossed about half of Spain in under 3 hours. Very cool.

When we arrived in Sevilla, we checked into our hotel and then had a couple free hours to get our own lunch. Luckily my señora had packed me a bocadillo (sandwich) large enough to feed 3 of me, so I ate that but tagged along to hang out at lunch anyway. The main highlight from lunch according to the people who actually ordered food was the dessert: fried cookies. It was one of those things that sounds kind of revolting, but in reality is disgustingly delicious. Sevilla is a very cute city. The houses are all brightly painted yellows and pinks and there are palm trees everywhere. Typical of many of the Spanish cities we’ve been to, the streets are ridiculously narrow and we had to be ready to smush ourselves against buildings when cars were coming. Good thing we are pros at this by now.

This is more of an alley than a street.

After lunch, we began our tour of Sevilla with a visit to the cathedral (of course). Even after the zillions of cathedrals we’ve seen, this was EASILY one of the best. It is just MASSIVE. The cathedral of Sevilla is known as the third largest cathedral in the world, the biggest cathedral in Spain, and the largest Gothic cathedral in the world. Absolutely incredible.

View from outside. The palm tree just makes it cooler.

Arched entryway.

Sevilla has a ton of religious history. Centuries and centuries ago, Muslims ruled southern Spain and built beautiful mosques everywhere. The Muslims kings encouraged religious tolerance, so there were also a lot of synagogues built in the south during the same time period. Later, the Christian kings, who had been hanging out in northern Spain slowly gaining more power, conquered the whole peninsula (except Granada, the last Muslim stronghold) and either destroyed all the mosques and synagogues or converted them (potential pun not intended?) into cathedrals. This is what happened to the Sevilla cathedral- it used to be a mosque, but was later transformed into a gigantic cathedral. The bell tower and some of the outer architecture were preserved from the original mosque, but most of it was built by the Catholics.  

Main altar. Each of those little figures is about 2 meters tall. Huge.

Some cathedral highlights:
-Christopher Columbus’s tomb: Columbus’s remains are allegedly in the Sevilla cathedral, even though the Dominican Republic claims to have them as well. Spain adamantly denies this and has built this awesome monument inside the cathedral to hold up Columbus’s coffin:

Each of the four guys holding up the coffin represents a region of Spain, which is symbolized by the crest of the front of their armor. The only region not represented is Granada because it was still under Muslim control when Columbus died and this monument was built. To recognize this, there is a granada (the Spanish word for pomegranate) under the guy on the right’s staff. So the tomb is a subtle insult to the Muslim kings, suggesting that the Christians would soon conquer Granada. I’m sure dear old Christopher Columbus would have approved.

-Bell tower. Like always, we got to climb the highest point of the cathedral. As I mentioned before, the bell tower was originally part of a mosque. The best part about it was that it didn’t have stairs, like all of the other ridiculously high things we have climbed. It was built with RAMPS instead, so that people could ride horses up it! So cool. Five times a day people rode horses up the tower to ring the bells as a call to prayer. I guess they were too lazy to walk and realized that it would be so much easier to go on horseback. We, unfortunately, did not get to go on horseback and had to walk up dozens of ramps to climb the 70-meter high tower. It was definitely worth it for the incredible view.





View from ground.

After our cathedral visit, we continued on a walking tour of Sevilla to experience the city. That night we got good Mexican food for dinner and went back to the hotel early with a bunch of our friends to watch Zoolander because we never have the opportunity to watch movies together in Madrid, and Ben Stiller is really, really ridiculously good looking.

Day 2: Saturday
We started Saturday morning with delicious breakfast at the hotel (THEY HAD TOAST! I WAS THRILLED!) and then headed out for a tour of a really old hospital with a beautiful chapel. Hilary was a little bit nervy that someone would catch the bubonic plague, but we all made it out okay.

Inside of chapel

Afterwards, we went to see an old fortress with a gorgeous garden. It had a bunch of peacocks, or “pavo real” in Spanish, which literally means royal turkey.

Very small part of the gardens.

Pretty Arabic architecture

For lunch, we had our program meal, which is really what we were most looking forward to all weekend. We had all kinds of delicious tapas, copious amounts of wine, and chocolate cake at the end. Amazing. Then a few of us went on an optional trip to an art museum.

I was clearly more impressed by the ceiling than the actual art in the museum.

Before heading back to the hotel, we went to the river that runs through Sevilla to catch the sunset. That night, we skipped dinner because we were still so full from lunch. We decided to be lazy bums and stay in the hotel watching Arrested Development. A bunch of our friends went to sleep before 9, and we stayed up a little while longer watching Tarzan in Spanish with our friend Ben. I think we all needed a weekend to be lazy old people and get a lot of sleep. We also love hanging out together in hotels and getting a break from host family awkwardness.

Day 3: Sunday. CÓRDOBA
We woke up at 7 am to take another train to Córdoba. When we arrived, we went to a ridiculously fancy hotel to drop our bags off for the day. Seriously…our director got a room in this hotel for our bags to hang out in all day while we walked around. Our bags had a nicer place to sleep than we did. After that, we began our walking tour of the city. Our tour guide was my favorite so far; she was very cool and very honest. Córdoba is kind of sad because it has amazing history like Sevilla, but now is a dying city with a 30% unemployment rate.


The clear highlight of Córdoba was its mosque. Like in Sevilla, this building was a little confused because parts of it were turned into a cathedral after the Christian takeover.


The entire mosque was FILLED with these candy cane arches. Endless arches.


Islamic architecture + Jesus


The arches did not stop


Christian altar part of the mosque

Sitting outside the mosque

So that was our awesome weekend visiting southern Spain, which was followed by a less than thrilling week at our not-so-beloved univeristy, Carlos III.

UPCOMING THINGS TO LOOK FORWARD TO:
-London, this coming Thursday! Including Harry Potter in IMAX.
-Thanksgiving dinner with our program. It's going to be deliciously delightful.
-Half of our classes end in two weeks. That's insane.
Hasta la vista,
Rachel

If you made it to the end of this long and historical blog post, HOORAY!

Thursday, November 4, 2010

The Clowder

We have finally spent a weekend in Madrid, after having traveled the past three weekends to Paris, Valencia, and Morocco.  It was super fun as everyone was here including some of our Vassar buds from France, Italy, and Greece!

On Wednesday, Greg arrived form Paris, and Rachel, he, and I went out for a welcome to Madrid dinner!

Thursday night we all went to Kapital, a 7-story dace club.  I left early so the following account is Rachel’s:
 A PreKapital Photo

         "Kapital was definitely an experience worth doing once.  We had the most fun doing karaoke on the second floor. I sang two songs with various friends: Human by the Killers (who apparently are MORMONS. Who knew.) and Circus by Britney Spears. The best surprise was that the Spaniards who had programmed the lyrics to the songs did not speak English well enough to handle that, and some of the words were hilariously wrong. Instead of “Are we human or are we dancer?” the screen read, “Are we human…or are we denser?” We died laughing on the stage. And during Circus, instead of saying “I run a tight ship,” it read, “I run a tifship.” WHAT is a tifship. I surely have no idea. The karaoke atmosphere was really fun because everyone in the room would sing along (with various international accents…the Germans were the funniest). 

After enjoying our one free drink, a few of us decided to go dance on the main floor. This was a pretty odd experience because the “music” was just a continuous throbbing beat which got pretty tiring after about 10 minutes. There was a stage in front of the main dance floor with a scantily clad man and woman doing very odd dances. Every few minutes a HUGE gust of wind blew over everything (to cool you off?) but it scared the crap out of me each time. I think the dance scene at Kapital was a little disappointing/overrated. I’m not going to hurry back any time soon. But I do love karaoke. Afterwards we walked to Sol and got chocolate con churros, the best way to end any night." 

And now back to me!

The next day we cultured ourselves with a visit to the Sorolla museum and a trip to the Temple of Debod.  Joaquin Sorolla is known as the painter of light.  His paintings are really awesome, here is one of my faves:

The Temple of Debod is an Egyptian temple that was saved form destruction by Spain and then transplanted here. 



Later on Friday Rachel and I and a few other lucky dicks (I apologize for the obscenity, but I made this hilarious typo and now need to share it with the virtual world because it is so ridiculous!) were invited to Heather’s house for her madre’s world famous paella.  It was so delish, and I am super jelly cat because I have been eating lentils and frozen food.  I impressed all with my champagne opening skills, AND I got to sit in a swively chair because of my enormous size!   For dessert we had flan with pomegranates.  It was one of the best meals of my life.


We brought our worldly friends and our program friends to our fave place…….. CASA DE CERVEZAAAA!!!  It was even better than usual but even better because it was decorated for Halloween.

On Saturday we went for Thai and then the Thyssen, a huge private collection museum with tons of famous works.  There was a special exhibit by Mario Testino a fashion photographer.  He photos were super guay.  We then went to our fave sangria/ piano bar, Las Cuevas del Sesamo where we transformed into a CLOWDER OF CATS and 1 pirate.  Did you know that a group of cats is called a clowder (did you also know that a group of gnu(s(?)) is called an implausibility? (this may not really be true, but it is funny anyway)) 

 There were more cats in our clowder not captured here

Yes, we were a clowder of cats, and Greg was a pirate.  I thought we all had great costumes for the night before Halloween (which is not even a real holiday here (haha the Halloween eve is not a holiday anywhere as it is already All Hallow's Eve, I mean that Halloween is not such a real holiday here).  

The Spanish interpretation of Halloween is much different.  Their costumes were SO SO SO SCARY!  Every one had either blood coming out of their ears or eyes, multiple and painful looking lacerations, or serial killer masks!  It was kind of like in Mean Girls, when Cady Heron (a foreigner) goes to a Halloween party dressed like a zombie bride (ex wife) and no one understands.  Well, here is it is opposite, the clowder of cats was not understood.  I think we were lacking in blood.

After las cuevas we went to another bar and then got some chocolate con churros!  Meow!

Sunday was a day of rest, but a night of no sleep!  The resurrected clowder plus some hula girls and light-up bunnies, went to a Spanish person’s house where we encountered, SURPRISE, more people in terrifying costumes.  By the end of introductions everyone was a little bloody from cheek kissing those gruesome Spaniards. 

After this we went to a triplely appropriate club named ZOMBIE! Here are the obvious reasons why it was fitting: 
1. it was HALLOWEEN (duh)
2. Zombies were everywhere
3. I left at 6 and was a zombie

Well anyway, that was pretty much all that happened this last weekend. BUT, here is something great and awesome!  I was just watching the news and a story about Bruce Springsteen came on!  I was so excited that I started speaking English! 

Tomorrow we take a speeding train to Sevilla!  
Hasta la Vista,
Hilary

P.S.  here is one of my fave pics of all time: