Sunday at Alcanada

So there are a few hikes near Alcúdia that my friend Laura and I have been trying to do, but the days are still just a bit too short for the amount of time they'll take.  So instead of a longer walk, we went to a part of Alcúdia called Alcanada, found a spot and had a bit of a picnic. 
The part where we were wasn't particularly beachy, though in warmer weather it wouldn't be a bad place to swim, off of rocks. 
The weather was beyond gorgeous, the weather forecast said a high of 61°F but it had to be warmer, and I definitely got a bit of sun, though some parts of me are so pasty that I think I reflect the light more than I absorb it.
Alas, here are three views from where we were sitting:

Regrets about the watermarks; if you want to use my photos elsewhere, please feel free to contact me and we can work something out.

One more reason to love Slovakia:

The mullet lives, unironically!

Christmas Break part 3: Vienna

Ahhh Vienna.  To be in the former bosom of my ancestral imperial overlords is always a good feeling -- it's a place where I don't seem to need a map, I just can be and get where I need to go, wherever that might be.  During the holidays, it's a beautiful place to be, with all of the lights and people out enjoying it and everything.

In general, January is quite possibly the best time of year to buy clothing in Europe.  To be in a city like Vienna during such sales borders on dangerous, and would have been if I was in a more reckless mood.  I did get a few new pieces for my wardrobe, though.  And I hit up one of my favorite casual restaurant chains (for a chain concept restaurant, very pleasant), Vapiano.

But since my mother thinks I never go into churches, here's some proof:

The Rusyn Greek Catholic icon of Our Lady of Máriapócs, looted by Emperor Leopold I at the beginning of the 18th century

Rockstar Christmas decorations in Stephansdom, totally wonderful

Other than that, the only other thing I have to share from this quick stop in Vienna is this:

Grandma would've had a great time working with them!

Christmas Break part 2: Slovakia

Getting from Barcelona to Prešov was about a 16-hour affair, including a significant wait in Bratislava Hlavná Stanica, which is a not very nice place.  However, there is free wifi and a cart selling rezeň sandwiches, so it's a bit better than I remember it and it's now tolerable.

You can't buy train tickets with seat reservations from abroad, and anyway, by the time I got to Wien Südbanhof Ost, the ÖBB office there was already closed.  I knew I'd have plenty of time to buy tickets in Bratislava anyway.  Buying a sleeping space on a train that left at 11:45PM was a good idea.

In my bed on the train

When I got to my spot, the conductor for the car took my ticket and asked if I wanted coffee or tea in the morning.  Knowing that coffee would either mean Slovak-style Turkish coffee or instant, I opted for tea, which was a good choice.  The train went straight to Prešov, meaning no switch in purgatorial Kysak.  Before the train left the station, there was some socializing happening on the train between the compartments -- the other lady in my compartment and the guy next door were chatting, and I was brought into the conversation.  She asked me where I was going (Prešov), was I studying there (no) and so then where was I from?  I asked her if she couldn't notice my accent, and she couldn't (East Slovak and an American accent are not always so far removed from each other) and it turns out, she actually couldn't tell, because she was a Hungarian Slovak!  So after I spread the Rusyn Gospel, we briefly discussed minorities in Slovakia and went to sleep.  Except sleeping on a train is a bit ridiculous, even on the smooth Slovak rails, with lovely crispy starched sheets and duvet covers. 

As much of the compartment as I could fit into one frame

I'm going to guess that the current cars are the former first class cars -- because really, I don't remember it being this nice on our (or rather my dad's) (literally) ill-fated trip from Humenné to Vienna in July 1992.  The compartment was Slovak standard eat-off-the-floor-clean, with water, towels, wafer crackers and the aforementioned tea.  So civilized, especially for something I generally try to avoid doing (taking overnight train rides).

The rest of the week I was in Slovakia, I think I took maybe 3 other pictures, which were not very interesting.  My visit was not purely social, but I had a blast at the molody.Rusyny zabava, and other than that got a lot of concrete things accomplished and am looking forward to getting back in the summer.  When I visit with people there now, there are no long prolonged goodbyes anymore, it's just expected by all parties involved I'll be back soon -- and I will.  The biggest compliment I can get there (because really, being mistaken for a local by a Hungarian is mostly funny in the context) is, "Maria, už sy naša (basically, Maria, you're one of us)" and it makes me feel so good, because it's how I feel there too.

After a too-quick stop to see my Ružomberok crew, I left for Vienna.

Christmas Break part 1: Barcelona

I know I've been horrible about updating lately.  I want to, but I also want to keep this blog at a certain level and my standards are often too high for myself, unfortunately.

On Christmas Eve, I flew to Barcelona, and enjoyed walking around the city center.  People were still out walking and hanging out on Las Ramblas until late, so it wasn't too bad.  However, Christmas Eve dinner was a rather sad affair, at a tapas bar, and consisting of crab croquettes, bacalao croquettes, some quite nice roasted pork with vegetables, and a beer.  Sitting by myself at the bar.  It made me a bit crabby and teary, but I also realize in retrospect I was having some PMS and that is what made me more teary -- the being alone part made me more sad and angry.  Angry, I don't know why, and not sad for myself but because I know there are tons of people who also don't have anyone to spend holidays with and that's horrible.

Christmas morning, I got up really early to get the first train to Montserrat.  I was so excited to go back there -- my first visit there was so special, and this time I knew exactly how to get there.  While waiting for the Aeri, I was in line behind an Italian family, and the little girl said something to me in Italian, and I responded normally in Italian.  She asked me what region I was from, and I said, "L'America" and the look on her face was precious.  She reminded me of the sweet little girls I met and talked to once in Calabria -- they were the ones who asked me if there were crocodiles in the NYC subway (no, just huge rats at Canal Street station).

Fog rising from the valleys, as seen from the top of the Aeri station.

My first priority when I got there was to get some coffee, and then by that time it was time for mass at 11am.  The famous boys choir sang, and everything was completely in beautiful Catalan.  I can get on board with the clash of nationalist fervor and Catholicism when it's a nationalist fervor I'm sympathetic to -- souvenir in the gift shop had the Virgin of Montserrat with the following text: La meva terra, Catalunya - La meva parla, el català - La meva dansa, la sardana - El meu desig, la llibertat (My land, Catalunya - My language, Catalan - My dance, the sardana - My desire, freedom). 

Wax votives left in thanksgiving for favors received.

The last Aeri (and train, for that matter) down the mountain was at 2PM, so I left a bit early to avoid the rush, and then enjoyed walking around Barcelona on Christmas afternoon.  The city was full of locals and tourists out for a walk and it was a gorgeous day.  I was a bit unnerved, however, to see the McDonald's at MareMagnum bursting to capacity... 

Courtyard in the Barcelona cathedral

Towards the end of the evening (for me, anyway) I walked up the Passeig de Gràcia, window shopping and admiring the Casa Battlò and La Pedrera again.

Casa Battlò

The next morning, I flew from BCN to VIE -- Austrian Airlines plays waltzes during boarding, which makes it a much more pleasant experience, relaxing and setting the mood. 

Teaching Christmas Songs

When I'm in a navel-gazing sort of mode, sometimes I like to fool myself into thinking I'm really independent and especially independent-minded, but It's interesting how sometimes I can be kind of made to do things I don't particularly want to do.  The good thing is that usually it turns out well and is a character-building, growth experience (with the exception of that Laurel Caverns trip, right mom?) and in the end, this followed the trend and that Laurel Caverns trip remains the exception that proves the rule -- and parents, consider not sending your children underground in dark caves on a tour alone.  Or going to wax museums before age 16.

In one of the schools where I teach, I occasionally am asked to prepare a lesson for a group of first year secondary students (around 11-12 years old) who are taught music in English.  The first time I did this, they were studying musicals, so we built vocabulary based on "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music -- but the lesson ended with this version by Pomplamoose.  For those of my dear readers who may think they are getting old, 11 year olds now have little to no idea who Julie Andrews is.

When the teacher asked me to do some Christmas carols, I of course agreed, but on the inside, I wasn't too enthused (among other things, I wanted to be sensitive to diversity of holiday traditions and religious backgrounds, even though it would seem that things are not so wildly PC here and the group is quite homogenous -- also, who wants to listen to Christmas music when so far away from home like this?  Not really me).

After unsuccessfully googling existing ESL/EFL solutions, and coming to the realization that large parts of Asia may have strange ideas about American cultural practices, I started poking around YouTube (maybe or maybe not on the morning I was supposed to be teaching the lesson) and thinking about what Christmas music I liked that was also cool, and thought about the Muppets with John Denver.  But a lot of those songs are a bit too advanced for my students, so to scale back, I settled on vocabulary building with "Jingle Bell Rock" -- first, a version with lyrics and then this one:
 

 The discussion before was something like this:
Maria: Do you guys know "Jingle Bells"?
The Kids: Yes!!!
Maria: Good!! So, we're not going to sing that, because you already know it!
[we learn "Jingle Bell Rock", occasionally dancing in our seats a bit]
For those of my dear readers who may think they are getting old, this was one of those times when the 11 year old kids were kind of shocked to learn that such a cool song was first popular in 1954.

Then, I had told them at the beginning we were going to learn two songs, one would be easy and one would be difficult, and if I was going to sing, we were all going to sing.  As often happens, the kids blew me over with their quickness and coolness.  They did sing (I don't know, when I was their age, I wasn't into singing in music class at. all.), and what I thought might be difficult wasn't at all for them.  I split the class up into three groups, and put these words up on the projector:

Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat

Please put a penny in the old man's hat

If you haven't got a penny, a ha'penny will do

If you haven't got a ha'penny, then God bless you!

It was at this point that I was going to have to bring it, and I sang it once for the class.  They immediately picked it up, amazing considering my not very good singing skills, and then we tried it as a round, in the three groups.  Excellent, I was in front of a group of enthusiastic musical geniuses!  Just to show them that I wasn't making this up, we ended the class with this:


It ended up being a really fun class, and I might be able to be convinced more easily to sing in a classroom setting in the future.  Maybe.

Tapas in Andorra

I wanted to post this earlier in the week, but life gets in the way of life sometimes, doesn't it.

December 6 and December 8 are national holidays in Spain, and so since the 8th was a Thursday and I don't go to school Fridays, with some friends I decided to make a puente/pont out of it!  The goal was skiing in Andorra, but skiing didn't happen, unfortunately -- not for lack of wanting to, certainly, but due to other variables.

The good news is that I got to go to a lovely microstate, I learned the medical history of a Moroccan taxi driver and his bowel troubles that were cured by the geothermal waters, and then got to relax in said waters.  With my friends I also went on the world's longest alpine roller coaster and on an 8km downhill walk on a gorgeous day.  Most importantly though, we discovered Bar Turistic, which became a daily goal for the 3 days we were there.

When we arrived Wednesday 7 December around 11:30PM, after getting checked in to dour hotel and everything, we really needed to eat, because I was the only one who had brought something for the 3 hour bus ride from Barcelona (I had stuffed pizza a taglio from Pizza Gege, yes!).  However, food at midnight in Andorra is harder to come by than one would expect, since it seems people don't sleep much in this part of the world, and if they do, it's got to be Chuck Norris style or something -- haven't figured that out yet.  Anyway, after asking the locals for suggestions, we were heading to another place when we happened upon Bar Turistic.

Sometimes you find somewhere to eat that's just so good that you can't help yourself.  This ended up being that place for us on this trip.  Homemade, straightforward food that 4 people could eat + drink generously for under €10 a head.  And because it's Andorra, also breathe in secondhand smoke and watch locals play darts.

So a first night surprise, and I don't even remember how this came up, except that I think the proprietor just brought them to our table and immediately, it was a throwback to childhood -- madeleines of sorts -- lupini beans (Catalan: tramussos)!

Lupini beans, one of the tastes of my childhood

Saturday night, the 10th, was the football match to watch, the Clásico, Barça v. Madrid.  So of course, above the bar, there was a betting pool:

This chart grew over the next few days, but Santi M. and Tomas were already to be winners.
Visca Barça!

The next day was spent in the mountains of south west Andorra, and after an 8km walk downhill, not only were we feeling it in our hips, we were also feeling it in our stomachs.  While not eaten at Bar Turistic, this botifarra was magnificent: fresh sausage, white beans with some rosemary:

Botifarra at a locally-recommended place underneath the Andorran Ministry of Justice.

But that was just a snack, because there were already more things we wanted to try at Bar Turistic!  First off, the home made croquettes, a specialty of the house:

Chicken croquettes, also involving potatoes and maybe some cheese.  

Often at tapas places, or at bars where there are also tapas, there's a tabletop refrigerated case on top of the bar, and you can see some of what's available to eat.  So from this, we chose some pintxos of pork with some curry seasoning:

Pintxo is a Basque word meaning "spike" and this meat was prepared and cooked on a skewer.

Then something funny happened.  One of the food staples here in Mallorca is pa amb oli, bread with oil, but also involving tomatoes, called pan amb tomàquet in Catalunya.  First off, saying it in Mallorquìn was apparently kind of funny to the Andorran Catalan ear, and then, I made the comment, when it was suggested that we have some, that "we eat that all the time."  This was interpreted as, "give us your best shot," at which point the proprietor was like, "well, how about tongue" and of course, we could not decline.

Pork tongue!

This is now the second time in my life where tongue was presented as a challenge food.  The first time was over a decade ago in Poland, when our tour guide complained that we were being served too much sausage, and they were like, "hahaha we'll show you, here's some tongue in green aspic!"  I liked this dish, as the texture of the tongue was not completely offensive, and the sauce it was cooked in was delightful, along with some sauteed onions.  However, I would probably not order and eat a whole portion myself.

The next, and last night, we had more croquettes, because they really were quite good, and some of this cod salad -- I wasn't expecting it to be cold, or a salad -- but it was really very refreshing, perfectly acidic, and just the right amount of salty, the way good cod should be.

I'm not sure if all of this is particularly "typical" Andorran food -- most of the "Made in Andorra" food there seemed to be cow- and cheese-centered -- but this is typical tapas, and the elements that needed to be present for it to be successful were there: homemade and good company with whom to share it.

Coming attraction:

Català, mallorquín, castellano: the politics of communication

Els castellers de Mallorca

[This took place on 15 October - I had problems uploading the video, so I'm finally posting now.]

Already four years ago, in Tarragona, we saw this incredible sculpture of the castellers, and at the time I never thought I'd see the castellers in real life.  As it turns out, the castells were declared as having UNESCO Intangible World Heritage protection status in 2010.

I got to the Plaça de Cort really early, which was good because I got a primo spot on some built-in benches of the Palma city hall, perfect for watching everything.  The building itself is really rather interesting, because of the aforementioned built-in benches and an exaggeratedly large cornice, making it clear in 16-18th century architectural vernacular that it is a publicly-minded building. 

The first to arrive, besides an old lady and me, was the ambulance crew.

Soon enough, people started to arrive wearing similarly-colored shirts, and then all of a sudden I started to hear shouting, chanting, then nasally-sounding instruments, and then gigants in motion!  The castellers were coming down the street, en masse!  The home team, Els Castellers de Mallorca, made a small castell, a pilar, and sent a kid up to the balcony of the city hall, the other two teams, els Al·lots de Llevant, and els Margeners de Guissona, also made pilars, and then the fun began with the castells.


In the video, you'll see the gigants leading the parade of castellers down the street.  Gigants are huge puppets used during festive occasions all over the island, and each town seems to keep theirs on view in the city hall when not in use.  The smaller demon gigant is especially used on Mallorca during the feast of Saint Anthony the Abbot on 17 January.

As they were parading up the streets, the castellers were also putting on their long black sashes, called faixa, which are like cumberbunds supporting their lower backs (important) and are also used as like stairs or footholds when people are climbing up the castell.

At the base of the castell is the pinya, the mass of people at the base.  At the center, they are holding hands in a circle, and then each person behind them supports the arms of the person in front of them, and so on and so on:

The pinya forming

I liked seeing this because I thought it was a lovely metaphor for the kind of world I want to live in, starting from the point that everyone is supporting each other, and people from the different teams join in to support the team who is actually making the tower.  Everyone's prepared to get stepped on a little, and the tower might collapse, but they're all there to stay supportive to the end -- and the metaphor can keep going on and on and on.  Maybe the video will inspire some continuations and/or variations of the metaphor.

In the meantime, there are instruments being played: a drum, and some grallas, which are double-reed instruments making the nasal-sounding accompanying music, called the toc - there are different songs for coming in, and the start of the music announces the start of the castell and seems to help create rhythm for the feat.

Playing the gralla

The each of the three teams took turns making a castell, and then finally the home team made one last attempt:


This is really worth watching, because [spoiler alert] the tower collapses towards the end of the video.  In real life, as on the video, it happened in slow motion, like it was expected but maybe it also would've been fine.  What's also awesome is the end of the end - it's all still a celebration of success and above all, teamwork!

The next Wednesday, I was in the teacher's room at one of the schools where I teach, and I realized that one of my colleagues is a casteller.  I was asking him about it, like why he did it (do you wake up one morning and decide you want to be a casteller?) and in addition to learning that the younger people in the middle sections of the tower are usually the ones who were at the top when they were smaller, meaning that everyone has years of practice doing this (they practice weekly) and there is a coordinating person. It's partly a cultural expression, and partly just a group of friends who hang out doing this every week.  When I commented on the collapse, he said, "oh, people don't usually get hurt just a few bruises maybe.  It's safer than playing football." I replied, "that's like saying it's safer to fly in a plane than it is to ride in a car." His response? "well, it is."  But how many people can say that their hobby has UNESCO World Heritage status?

November is a month for writing!

Writer types of people are perhaps already familiar with November as NaNoWriMo, and of course it's Movember, but it's also the 30 Days of Independent Travel Project!  Hopefully it will help me to articulate some of the thoughts and feelings I've been having lately about travel.

The first prompt was about goals, and really, right now, I don't have any huge travel goals.  What I'd like to make some comments on is ch-ch-ch-change.

In the last year, I've become a lot less resistant to the idea of using a backpack as a way of carrying things while I travel.  This is directly attributable to the Hadrian's Wall Path trip, out of efficiency and necessity.  During my formative years in Rome, I would see people with outrageously huge packs wearing flipflops (can't be good for your feet) arguing in front of the ticket windows in Termini, and it just didn't seem like the kind of traveler I wanted to be.  So for years, I tried to project a more business-like, jet setter look with a black carry-on roller suitcase, which can be fine for intercity travel but is obviously impractical for tromping through sheep fields in Northern England.  When you stop and think about it, it's also impractical for the incredibly unevenness of urban streets, as well. 

Most of my distaste for backpacks comes from trips staying in youth hostels and sleeping in the back of a Volkswagen Eurovan with my parents in the early 1990s.  My reactionary travel style developed into a sort of middle ground, trying to seem as normal and cultured as possible while still keeping the budget low.  This usually ends up meaning means private rooms with shared bathrooms as accommodations and using a carry-on wheelie suitcase, and doesn't go much further.  Lately, I've also been thinking about how much the internet has changed the way we travel - comparison-shopping for flights and hotels, and I'm addicted to TripAdvisor reviews to give myself the sort of experience I want and expect to have.

A bit sunburnt, too!

Though the Hadrian's Wall Path trip caused me to go and buy a backpack, spending so much time on trains in Slovakia is what softened me to the idea.  Students traveling to and from Bratislava on weekends use big backpacks like I'd see in Roma Termini, and they clearly were also not backpackers.  Yet, as I plan and do more and more independent travel, and I think back on various journeys, really, deep down, I'm more of a backpacker than I'm often willing to admit -- and I couldn't do what I do otherwise.  I've picked up skills, habits and tolerances (making choices as an adult, not as a 4 year old, though that certainly helped!) doing this style of travel in Europe that have been making me dream of Megabusing it all over America (really? yes.) and I think I can accept the greater self-awareness and especially self-acceptance: 

Hello, my name is Maria, and I am a backpacker.