Happy Thanksgiving to everyone back home. It sure as hell doesn't feel like Thanksgiving here (i.e., I almost forgot).
I'm leaving on a jet plane tonight, so enjoy the turkey without me.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Notice
Quick note:
I promised a post today, and I started composing a draft, but I really couldn't finish due to schedule/course load. I have it about half-finished.
On a side note, I bought stamps today at the post office, so some of my lucky readers will be receiving post cards soon. The rest of you will have to wait until after I return from Barcelona.
Goodnight!
I promised a post today, and I started composing a draft, but I really couldn't finish due to schedule/course load. I have it about half-finished.
On a side note, I bought stamps today at the post office, so some of my lucky readers will be receiving post cards soon. The rest of you will have to wait until after I return from Barcelona.
Goodnight!
Voyages through Other People's Memories
Hola, Salut, Shalom, Salaam 'Aleikum
Gracie, i aprenc el catala, tambe.
I'm expanding the international vocabulary, slowly but sure, especially Catalan before I fly to Barcelona. I still think its a mistake of history that Castillian became the language of the Spanish empire instead of Catalan. Catalan is a more fluid language, and easier on the ears to boot.
Anyway, recap time.
In the past 2 weeks, I've been to Cadiz, Jerez de la Frontera, and Jaen. Of the three, gotta say Jerez is my favorite.
The Saturday before last, our school organized all of us who'd signed up for the trip at 7:30 AM and we departed for the coast. Spain may not be as big as the U.S., but don't be fooled: It's still the second largest country in the EU. We arrived at a horse farm outside of Jerez 4 hours later, and naturally, I slept the entire way through.
The horse farm in Jerez wasn't that special for me, a) having grown up in the Midwest, farms are old hat, and b) since living with Debbie, horses are even older. However, I will say this. Debbie, if you read my blog, get excited. I saw some real-life Andalucian horses, and they are every bit as cool as their reputation. Their gate was extremely distinctive: on a human, it would be called a military march. I haven't seen horses with that much dignity and natural distinction in my entire life. So in that sense, I wasn't entirely bored while all of the girls went "OHMIGOD LOOK AT THE PRETTY HORSES".
Our program director managed to pry the girls back onto the bus and we headed towards Jerez proper for lunch. Jerez is a very old city (like every other one in Spain), but not a very big one. The main square stretched lazily outwards, and the main avenues connected to the expansive center almost as an afterthought. Unlike Granada, which has very few wide streets, I found a cafe to have lunch with Lauren that was smack-dab in the middle of one of the main roads leading off of the plaza. The restaurant was nice, (can't beat a salami bocadillo), and we rendezvoused back up with our group to go the big attraction of Jerez: The sherry company.
As I mentioned in the post before last, Jerez is the home of sherry, the fortified wine that is internationally famous, thanks to the large Irish colony that lived in Cadiz (only about 20 miles away) for centuries. The Irish of Cadiz were very wealthy, and leveraged their business contacts with the Spanish Main with their native ties to the British Isles to make huge fortunes. Part and parcel of doing business, of course, is wine, and sherry quickly made its way from Cadiz to London and Dublin, and from there, the English-speaking world. The winery was cool; they toured us around on a toy train and at the end of the visit, we got to sample some sherry and port. Was not impressed by either, but I acknowledge that my wine palatte remains undeveloped. Then, after being in and out of the gift shop, we got back on the bus and headed to Cadiz.
Now Cadiz, I was looking forward to the most, and I guess that's why I was relatively disappointed. It wasn't just a lack of famous historical sites; that's not so important to me if a city has a good vibe. Cadiz reminded me of Venice, especially in its peculiar geography. Cadiz is on a small, isolated spit of land jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean, and at one time, was an island.
To this day, the medieval wall shoring up the far end of the peninsula still stands, although the Gaditanos (the demonym of the citizens of that old city), have cleverly remade the old wall into a beautiful arched gateway:
Our hotel was located in the heart of old Cadiz, but still. Something wasn't quite right, although I couldn't put my finger on it.
I had dinner with some friends and the program director joined us. It was pretty cool to talk to Javier; he's an interesting guy. Born in Galicia, got his doctorate in the US at the University of Kansas, married a Kansan, and taught at Washington State before moving back to Spain to run a study abroad program, first the one in Madrid, and then 2 years ago, starting the one in Granada himself. Certainly, I have a lot of respect for his wife, who agreed to move to Spain knowing almost no Spanish. She seems to be fitting in all right, given that she accompanied Javier on our trip.
Next day, we went to a Spanish National Park at the mouth of the Guadalquivir river (interestingly enough, that name is a distortion of the Arabic "Wadi Al-Kabir", the Big River, or as the Spanish say, the Rio Grande) and we got a tour on ATVs. It was really cool. We didn't get to see any lynx, but we saw several wild boar. Quite an experience.
After that, we piled our tired bodies back on to the bus and headed back for Granada. With 4 hours ahead of us, I managed to chat with a few people and finished my cultural history of Al-Andalus (some of which provided fodder for my own reflections on Andalucia).
This past weekend, I spent most of my time here in Granada laboring on various papers, but on Saturday, my friend Hillary and I set out for Jaen. And actually, I can get real pictures of Jaen, so I'll write about it in a joint post with Barcelona.
*Exit state left*
Gracie, i aprenc el catala, tambe.
I'm expanding the international vocabulary, slowly but sure, especially Catalan before I fly to Barcelona. I still think its a mistake of history that Castillian became the language of the Spanish empire instead of Catalan. Catalan is a more fluid language, and easier on the ears to boot.
Anyway, recap time.
In the past 2 weeks, I've been to Cadiz, Jerez de la Frontera, and Jaen. Of the three, gotta say Jerez is my favorite.
The Saturday before last, our school organized all of us who'd signed up for the trip at 7:30 AM and we departed for the coast. Spain may not be as big as the U.S., but don't be fooled: It's still the second largest country in the EU. We arrived at a horse farm outside of Jerez 4 hours later, and naturally, I slept the entire way through.
The horse farm in Jerez wasn't that special for me, a) having grown up in the Midwest, farms are old hat, and b) since living with Debbie, horses are even older. However, I will say this. Debbie, if you read my blog, get excited. I saw some real-life Andalucian horses, and they are every bit as cool as their reputation. Their gate was extremely distinctive: on a human, it would be called a military march. I haven't seen horses with that much dignity and natural distinction in my entire life. So in that sense, I wasn't entirely bored while all of the girls went "OHMIGOD LOOK AT THE PRETTY HORSES".
Our program director managed to pry the girls back onto the bus and we headed towards Jerez proper for lunch. Jerez is a very old city (like every other one in Spain), but not a very big one. The main square stretched lazily outwards, and the main avenues connected to the expansive center almost as an afterthought. Unlike Granada, which has very few wide streets, I found a cafe to have lunch with Lauren that was smack-dab in the middle of one of the main roads leading off of the plaza. The restaurant was nice, (can't beat a salami bocadillo), and we rendezvoused back up with our group to go the big attraction of Jerez: The sherry company.
As I mentioned in the post before last, Jerez is the home of sherry, the fortified wine that is internationally famous, thanks to the large Irish colony that lived in Cadiz (only about 20 miles away) for centuries. The Irish of Cadiz were very wealthy, and leveraged their business contacts with the Spanish Main with their native ties to the British Isles to make huge fortunes. Part and parcel of doing business, of course, is wine, and sherry quickly made its way from Cadiz to London and Dublin, and from there, the English-speaking world. The winery was cool; they toured us around on a toy train and at the end of the visit, we got to sample some sherry and port. Was not impressed by either, but I acknowledge that my wine palatte remains undeveloped. Then, after being in and out of the gift shop, we got back on the bus and headed to Cadiz.
Now Cadiz, I was looking forward to the most, and I guess that's why I was relatively disappointed. It wasn't just a lack of famous historical sites; that's not so important to me if a city has a good vibe. Cadiz reminded me of Venice, especially in its peculiar geography. Cadiz is on a small, isolated spit of land jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean, and at one time, was an island.
To this day, the medieval wall shoring up the far end of the peninsula still stands, although the Gaditanos (the demonym of the citizens of that old city), have cleverly remade the old wall into a beautiful arched gateway:
Our hotel was located in the heart of old Cadiz, but still. Something wasn't quite right, although I couldn't put my finger on it.
I had dinner with some friends and the program director joined us. It was pretty cool to talk to Javier; he's an interesting guy. Born in Galicia, got his doctorate in the US at the University of Kansas, married a Kansan, and taught at Washington State before moving back to Spain to run a study abroad program, first the one in Madrid, and then 2 years ago, starting the one in Granada himself. Certainly, I have a lot of respect for his wife, who agreed to move to Spain knowing almost no Spanish. She seems to be fitting in all right, given that she accompanied Javier on our trip.
Next day, we went to a Spanish National Park at the mouth of the Guadalquivir river (interestingly enough, that name is a distortion of the Arabic "Wadi Al-Kabir", the Big River, or as the Spanish say, the Rio Grande) and we got a tour on ATVs. It was really cool. We didn't get to see any lynx, but we saw several wild boar. Quite an experience.
After that, we piled our tired bodies back on to the bus and headed back for Granada. With 4 hours ahead of us, I managed to chat with a few people and finished my cultural history of Al-Andalus (some of which provided fodder for my own reflections on Andalucia).
This past weekend, I spent most of my time here in Granada laboring on various papers, but on Saturday, my friend Hillary and I set out for Jaen. And actually, I can get real pictures of Jaen, so I'll write about it in a joint post with Barcelona.
*Exit state left*
Monday, November 19, 2007
Ten piedad para el ciego; no hay una pena mas profunda que ser ciego en Andalucia
"Ten piedad en el ciego; no hay una pena mas profunda que ser ciego en Granada."
"Take pity on the blind man; there is no deeper shame than to be blind in Granada."
The same really could be true of Andalucia.
Surrealism, the famous art and literary movement had its start here in Andalucia, and it is no accident. The Spanish relationship with reality has been touch and go since the time of Don Quixote, but modern Spain all the more so. To the untrained eye, Spain appears as an undifferentiated pillar of Western Europe: Another faded glory integrating itself yearly more and more deeply into the Holy Trinity of Modern Europe: The EU, Xenophobia, and Secularism. However, here on the ground, I have to admit I feel like reality is much thinner here. After being here longer than a week, you start to get the sensation that things aren't really as they seem. After another week, you begin to have the feeling that you're REALLY missing something. Soon, there's a quiet voice warning you that if you look closely, the facade could crumble around any corner at any moment. A lot of the sensation has to do with the realization that Spain isn't a real country.
Not real in the sense of France or the U.S. Spain is an amalgam of several different petty kingdoms, cultures, and languages. Even 500 years after unification, the bruising experiences of the Civil War, the dictatorship, the Inquisition, and the various uprisings, insurgencies, and foreign invasions that have been the sad, long story of this country since the Roman period have left a tell-tale mark on this land. No place more so than Andalucia, the poorest corner of Western Europe. Andalucia, where New Christians were especially targeted by the Inquisition, based in Cordoba in fact, and pork-eating was seen as a social declaration of your faith. In this place, where out of my window is a Carthusian monastery that was a former mosque, and I pass beneath the shadow of one of the mightiest memory palaces in the world every morning. The surreal is going to the Grand Mosque and being struck by the absurdity of graceful Muslim arches being adorned by plaster cherubs. Even within the walls of the Alhambra, the heart of the complex was razed and rebuilt as a palace for the Emperor Charles V. Not only is it jarring to see such an ostentatiously neo-classical edifice in what is obviously a Muslim structure, but it doesn't mitigate the sense of something amiss to find script from the Qur'an adorned on every wall.
The Grand Mosque is a good metaphor for Andalucians. The polish and veneer of Castillianess is not only completely unconvincing, but even a casual glance reveals the ineffectiveness at the attempts to remake Andalucia into just another version of Castille and Leon. It did not end even by the 20th century. Whereas in the 1500's, the good Catholics of Seville, Toledo, and Granada had to wonder if their neighbors were secret Jews and Muslims, in the time of the Franco dictatorship, the modern religions (fascism and communism) did battle, with the good old Guardia Civil wondering if the pedestrian who had just spat in their direction was a secret Republican sympathizer. (3 guesses which province Franco drew the most support from, and its definitely not here. I have never seen so much anti-Fascist graffiti in my entire life). It is telling that the hero of Granada isn't a general; its a gay playwright from the 1920's-30's who was killed by a fascist Falangist follower of Franco. The even named the airport after him!
(Is it any mistake that Don Quixote's windmills aren't in Castille and Leon, far to the north and the traditional heart of the Kingdom of Spain, but instead on the road between Granada and Madrid?)
Anyway, enough ruminating.
I wanted to share some thoughts with my readers on where I'm living; these past 2 weekends, I did some traveling around the province, to Jaen, Cadiz, and Jerez de la Frontera. Jaen, I doubt you've ever heard of. It deserves its obscurity. Cadiz is a bit more famous, as it has the distinction of both being the oldest continuously inhabited city in Western Europe, and as being the place where Columbus first set sail for the New World. Jerez de la Frontera is famous not because of history but because of its very name: most people in the English world know it as Sherry, the home of the eponymous wine. Additionally, Jerez is the home of Flamenco, and the famous Andalucian stallions. However, the "de la Frontera" part is important too. For 250 years, Jerez was on the border between the Castillian state and the rump state of Granada, the last Muslim emirate in Europe. Thus, if you travel in that region of Andalucia, almost every town bears the suffix "de la Frontera"= of the border.
I'll give a more detailed account of my travels tomorrow. Also, dear readers, this Thursday, I will once more be paying homage to Catalonia and I will fly to Barcelona Thanksgiving night.
"Take pity on the blind man; there is no deeper shame than to be blind in Granada."
The same really could be true of Andalucia.
Surrealism, the famous art and literary movement had its start here in Andalucia, and it is no accident. The Spanish relationship with reality has been touch and go since the time of Don Quixote, but modern Spain all the more so. To the untrained eye, Spain appears as an undifferentiated pillar of Western Europe: Another faded glory integrating itself yearly more and more deeply into the Holy Trinity of Modern Europe: The EU, Xenophobia, and Secularism. However, here on the ground, I have to admit I feel like reality is much thinner here. After being here longer than a week, you start to get the sensation that things aren't really as they seem. After another week, you begin to have the feeling that you're REALLY missing something. Soon, there's a quiet voice warning you that if you look closely, the facade could crumble around any corner at any moment. A lot of the sensation has to do with the realization that Spain isn't a real country.
Not real in the sense of France or the U.S. Spain is an amalgam of several different petty kingdoms, cultures, and languages. Even 500 years after unification, the bruising experiences of the Civil War, the dictatorship, the Inquisition, and the various uprisings, insurgencies, and foreign invasions that have been the sad, long story of this country since the Roman period have left a tell-tale mark on this land. No place more so than Andalucia, the poorest corner of Western Europe. Andalucia, where New Christians were especially targeted by the Inquisition, based in Cordoba in fact, and pork-eating was seen as a social declaration of your faith. In this place, where out of my window is a Carthusian monastery that was a former mosque, and I pass beneath the shadow of one of the mightiest memory palaces in the world every morning. The surreal is going to the Grand Mosque and being struck by the absurdity of graceful Muslim arches being adorned by plaster cherubs. Even within the walls of the Alhambra, the heart of the complex was razed and rebuilt as a palace for the Emperor Charles V. Not only is it jarring to see such an ostentatiously neo-classical edifice in what is obviously a Muslim structure, but it doesn't mitigate the sense of something amiss to find script from the Qur'an adorned on every wall.
The Grand Mosque is a good metaphor for Andalucians. The polish and veneer of Castillianess is not only completely unconvincing, but even a casual glance reveals the ineffectiveness at the attempts to remake Andalucia into just another version of Castille and Leon. It did not end even by the 20th century. Whereas in the 1500's, the good Catholics of Seville, Toledo, and Granada had to wonder if their neighbors were secret Jews and Muslims, in the time of the Franco dictatorship, the modern religions (fascism and communism) did battle, with the good old Guardia Civil wondering if the pedestrian who had just spat in their direction was a secret Republican sympathizer. (3 guesses which province Franco drew the most support from, and its definitely not here. I have never seen so much anti-Fascist graffiti in my entire life). It is telling that the hero of Granada isn't a general; its a gay playwright from the 1920's-30's who was killed by a fascist Falangist follower of Franco. The even named the airport after him!
(Is it any mistake that Don Quixote's windmills aren't in Castille and Leon, far to the north and the traditional heart of the Kingdom of Spain, but instead on the road between Granada and Madrid?)
Anyway, enough ruminating.
I wanted to share some thoughts with my readers on where I'm living; these past 2 weekends, I did some traveling around the province, to Jaen, Cadiz, and Jerez de la Frontera. Jaen, I doubt you've ever heard of. It deserves its obscurity. Cadiz is a bit more famous, as it has the distinction of both being the oldest continuously inhabited city in Western Europe, and as being the place where Columbus first set sail for the New World. Jerez de la Frontera is famous not because of history but because of its very name: most people in the English world know it as Sherry, the home of the eponymous wine. Additionally, Jerez is the home of Flamenco, and the famous Andalucian stallions. However, the "de la Frontera" part is important too. For 250 years, Jerez was on the border between the Castillian state and the rump state of Granada, the last Muslim emirate in Europe. Thus, if you travel in that region of Andalucia, almost every town bears the suffix "de la Frontera"= of the border.
I'll give a more detailed account of my travels tomorrow. Also, dear readers, this Thursday, I will once more be paying homage to Catalonia and I will fly to Barcelona Thanksgiving night.
Friday, November 9, 2007
The Generalife in her labyrinth
A relatively uneventful week, since Mark and Marina left. Last weekend was a 4 day holiday, because all Catholic countries celebrate All Saint's Day on Nov. 1. Marina and Mark arrived late on Thursday, and by Sunday, when they left again, Scott and I had taken them to see Cordoba (just Marina, Mark had to work on a paper), the gardens of the Alhambra (Known as the Generalife, from a distortion of the Arabic "Jannat al-Rif"), and we just generally bummed around.
A note on the Alhambra. I want to clarify some things now. Although it is the most famous structure still remaining from the Muslim period here in Spain, it is more of a compound than a single unified structure. The foundation is the fortress, which is little more than a battery facing towards the city and a series of walls. Within, is a series of other buildings, including an inn, a world-class restaurant, the Palace of Charles V (Habsburg), the Generalife, and the absolutely incredible world-class treasure of the Nazari Palace, the palace of the last Muslim king.
The Alhambra is so popular that on Saturday morning, Scott got in line at 7:10, 50 minutes before the ticket office opened, and not only did all of the 2,000 tickets for the morning sell out, but all 3,000 did too by the time we arrived at the front. Thus, we were only able to show Marina and Mark the Generalife, which is sold separately. I must admit that I liked the gardens of the Alcazar of the Catholic Kings in Cordoba better, but this is not to impugn the Generalife. The coolest part was the water staircase
Essentially, the chutes are the handrails. Amazing.
Although this is far more prevalent inside the Nazari Palace, the Gardens are the only Muslim site in the world where the inscriptions on the walls are not verses from the Kor'an: They are instead poetry. This is important. Traditionally, secular Arabic poetry addresses itself to a female love, and the poetry within the Alhambra is no different. Seeing as how its hard to dedicate a fortress to your favorite concubine, the king's poet instead turned the gardens into the female love, and thus the subject of all of the odes to the "beautiful lover" is in praise of the natural beauty surrounding the emir. However, in a sense, it is the architect of the Generalife praising himself, having the workers inscribe these odes to the gardens on the walls of the the porticos of the complex. This vanity was not lost on the kings, and thus the garden's were given their proper name: Jannat al-Rif, the Architect's Garden, and thus distorted by the Spanish into the name "Generalife".
They left on Sunday, and I have spent the last week just taking care of business as normal. Or as normal as Spain can be. Wednesday, I had to watch 2 atrocious Spanish films in the surrealist style, which is often difficult to appreciate in English, let alone in the sheer absurdity that the Catalans have taken it to.
In another shot at my title, I have been watching with interest the events in Pakistan. Truly, history may not repeat itself but it knows how to keep a good beat. I am very curious to see how it all plays out. No matter what way you slice this one, Musharraf is going to lose and the U.S. can only hope we don't get dragged down with him. Our name has already been dragged through the mud enough these past few years.
Additionally, I am trying to set some groundwork for my return to Brandeis. Spring housing, employment, classes, even a summer job. Unfortunately, my vacation won't last forever.
On that last note, tomorrow, we're off to Cadiz and Jerez! I'll update again next week.
Vaya con Dios.
A note on the Alhambra. I want to clarify some things now. Although it is the most famous structure still remaining from the Muslim period here in Spain, it is more of a compound than a single unified structure. The foundation is the fortress, which is little more than a battery facing towards the city and a series of walls. Within, is a series of other buildings, including an inn, a world-class restaurant, the Palace of Charles V (Habsburg), the Generalife, and the absolutely incredible world-class treasure of the Nazari Palace, the palace of the last Muslim king.
The Alhambra is so popular that on Saturday morning, Scott got in line at 7:10, 50 minutes before the ticket office opened, and not only did all of the 2,000 tickets for the morning sell out, but all 3,000 did too by the time we arrived at the front. Thus, we were only able to show Marina and Mark the Generalife, which is sold separately. I must admit that I liked the gardens of the Alcazar of the Catholic Kings in Cordoba better, but this is not to impugn the Generalife. The coolest part was the water staircase
Essentially, the chutes are the handrails. Amazing.
Although this is far more prevalent inside the Nazari Palace, the Gardens are the only Muslim site in the world where the inscriptions on the walls are not verses from the Kor'an: They are instead poetry. This is important. Traditionally, secular Arabic poetry addresses itself to a female love, and the poetry within the Alhambra is no different. Seeing as how its hard to dedicate a fortress to your favorite concubine, the king's poet instead turned the gardens into the female love, and thus the subject of all of the odes to the "beautiful lover" is in praise of the natural beauty surrounding the emir. However, in a sense, it is the architect of the Generalife praising himself, having the workers inscribe these odes to the gardens on the walls of the the porticos of the complex. This vanity was not lost on the kings, and thus the garden's were given their proper name: Jannat al-Rif, the Architect's Garden, and thus distorted by the Spanish into the name "Generalife".
They left on Sunday, and I have spent the last week just taking care of business as normal. Or as normal as Spain can be. Wednesday, I had to watch 2 atrocious Spanish films in the surrealist style, which is often difficult to appreciate in English, let alone in the sheer absurdity that the Catalans have taken it to.
In another shot at my title, I have been watching with interest the events in Pakistan. Truly, history may not repeat itself but it knows how to keep a good beat. I am very curious to see how it all plays out. No matter what way you slice this one, Musharraf is going to lose and the U.S. can only hope we don't get dragged down with him. Our name has already been dragged through the mud enough these past few years.
Additionally, I am trying to set some groundwork for my return to Brandeis. Spring housing, employment, classes, even a summer job. Unfortunately, my vacation won't last forever.
On that last note, tomorrow, we're off to Cadiz and Jerez! I'll update again next week.
Vaya con Dios.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Crackin' down
It's time to crack down.
My free time will now equal math. I need to get back into math-shape. Otherwise, I'll be 'jodido' this coming semester.
All right, more later. I'm off to class.
My free time will now equal math. I need to get back into math-shape. Otherwise, I'll be 'jodido' this coming semester.
All right, more later. I'm off to class.
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