It's Carnival Time

This is my first time to not be in Louisiana for Carnival. Last year, I took my 9 am chemistry exam on Friday, drove to Louisiana immediately afterwards, to return to Austin on Sunday in order to cram for a killer history exam on Monday. Meeting up with friends in New Orleans, they were confounded by the fact that I not only had class during Mardi Gras week - I also had tests.

In Barcelona, Carnival is more for the kids. This past week or so, my morning rides on the bus have been a little less painful with the random cute Spanish kids in their costumes hopping on and off at each stop. So, since Barcelona didn't have much to offer in the way of Carnival, on Saturday a large group of exchange students headed to Sitges - a small beach town in Catalunya known for its Carnival festivities. We stepped off the train ready for blaring music and crowded streets. The place was empty. It seems that even during Carnival siesta must be observed. As it started to drizzle, we stepped into the most embarrassingly American building in the town of Sitges - a place called "Sports Bar." As the drizzle became pouring rain, we spent the next six hours sitting in Sports Bar, drinking "Estrella Damm" and eating very non-Spanish food. Like magic, at around 10 pm, the river of water that had us stranded in Sports Bar subsided and we ventured out to find streets jammed with people dressed in a mix of costumes. I will let the few pictures from that night speak for themselves:

http://new.photos.yahoo.com/lizzie.redman/album/576460762390688601

Last night, for Mardi Gras day, we took the train to Sitges, leaving Barcelona at around midnight. It felt wrong since technically Carnival was over and Lent had begun, but the Spanish do everything late, and I figured it was still Mardi Gras back home. I went with the Mozart 20 group (the four of us who live in that lovely building in South Gracia). Getting on the last train to Sitges was a fight. We were able to use parade-like tactics to make our way through the door of the train: spreading out, defending our territory, and pushing when necessary. Here is a video on youtube of the start to our crowded train ride.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9psDQQ6ruY

Tuesday night was great - tons of people, random parade floats popping up here and there, singing and dancing, and music on the beach. Here are links to pictures of that night in Sitges, as well as a link to a video clip of the streets of Sitges.

http://new.photos.yahoo.com/lizzie.redman/album/576460762390698828

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bAcV6x-Tpk

What wasn't so great was the trip home. We left the town center at 5 am to head to the train station. After waiting in line and again pushing our way onto the train, we were off at around 5:30 am to head back to Barcelona. The ride to Barcelona should take around 40 minutes. After around 30 minutes, the train made a stop and something was announced in Catalan. The passengers, still in costume, poured out of the train, running to another train across the platform. We followed. After another announcement was made in Catalan, the guy behind me entertained the train with a one-minute monologue of all the Spanish curse words they don't teach you in your high school Spanish class. Evidently, the train had been going in the wrong direction. After standing for a while, packed like sardines, I hear my name called. It was Karim, one of the Mozart 20 gang. He was with Shanti, a girl from ESADE. "There's another train going to Barcelona, come on!" he said. This train was less crowded and was off in another 10 minutes or so. Half-asleep, the train made its way back to where we had started - Sitges - and moved on at a sluggish pace to Barcelona. Arriving in Barcelona, I walked down Passeig de Gracia to my flat at 10 am, passing people on their way to work. At 10:15, I opened the door to my flat, drank a glass of water, and was asleep at 10:30.

I am still debating what to give up for Lent, but it has definitely been a unique start to the Lenten season.

Where are you from?

I get this question a lot here. It’s a lot like how people in Austin constantly ask me why I decided to come from Louisiana to U.T.

The conversation around this question has become pretty predictable. Here is the general script:

Person I’ve just met: Where are you from?
Me: the states
Person: Where in the states?
Me: Louisiana (I gave up on Baton Rouge very early on)
Person: Oh, right, okay.
Me: Do you know Louisiana?
Person: One of three options:
1) Yeah, I think there’s a song about it, right? What’s that song called? ....or....
2) It sounds familiar. ....or....
3) No, never heard of it.
Me: String together a whole bunch of stereotypical Louisiana things in one sentence (New Orleans, Cajuns, Mardi Gras, Katrina) until the person shows some sign of recognition.
Person: I’ve been to New York (other popular options are California and Florida).

Since arriving in Spain, I had yet to meet someone who had ever lived in Louisiana – it seems that us Cajuns don’t like to leave the bayou all that often. That changed a few nights ago.

Thursday night some Catalan students from ESADE invited the exchange students to a typical “Spanish dinner” – with first and second courses, bread, lots of wine, and dessert. On my left were exchange students and on my right were ESADE students from Barcelona. My conversation with the Spanish students began with them asking me where I was from. To my surprise, when I answered Louisiana, the guy to my right lit up with excitement, asking, “Really?” He had just spent the semester in New Orleans studying at Loyola, and he was more than happy to swap stories about gumbo, Bourbon Street, and Audubon Park.

To hear him talk about New Orleans was great. He talked about how nice the people were, and how he was able to attend the Saints first game in the Superdome since Katrina. “Yeah, it was great,” he said. “The players, they all run out. And, then they play the song, ‘The Saints Are Coming.’ Man, it was really great.” (Others might know the song as “When the Saints Come Marching In.”

After having received many confused looks from English native speakers and non-English native speakers when I use the word “yall” in every other sentence, I asked him if he picked up any New Orleans or Southern lingo when abroad. He replied, “Oh my God, it was horrible. All this ‘yall’ and ‘yo’ and some people, when they talk, it was not even like English. I had to get them to repeat everything they said.” He told about a time he went to the Wendy’s and ordered a beer. Evidently the black lady working the cash register really lit into him. He said, “I have no idea was she said, but she moved her finger back and forth in front of my face the whole time.”

He told me at one point that his time in New Orleans was the best time of his life and talked about how he couldn’t wait to go back. I was proud.

Figueres, Spain

Last weekend, a French friend from ESADE and I took a day trip outside of Barcelona to Figueres - a town in Catalunya, near the French border. Most likely, Figueres would not be the tourist destination it is today if Salvador Dali had not grown up and chosen to build his museum there.

Like most Catalan artists, Dali was an eccentric. When asked if he was on drugs, Dali replied: "I am the drug...take me." Here are few more anecdotes from wikipedia that testify as to Dali's unique personality:

"Dalí was a colorful and imposing presence in his ever-present long cape, walking stick, haughty expression, and upturned waxed mustache, famous for having said that 'every morning upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dalí.' The entertainer Cher and her husband Sonny Bono, when young, came to a party at Dalí's expensive residence in New York's Plaza Hotel and were startled when Cher sat down on an oddly-shaped sexual vibrator left in an easy chair. When signing autographs for fans, Dalí would always keep their pens. When interviewed by Mike Wallace on his Sixty Minutes television show, Dalí kept referring to himself in the third person, and told the startled Mr. Wallace matter-of factly that 'Dalí is immortal and will not die.' During another television appearance, on the Tonight Show, Dalí carried with him a leather rhinoceros and refused to sit upon anything else."

Dali was most known for his surrealist paintings - paintings that were dream-like and often included eye-tricks. Yet Dali believed that a true genius, like Leonardo DaVinci, had to excel in many things. In addition to painting, Dali was know for his strange sculptures and also worked in theatre, film making, fashion, and photography.

Dali returned to Figueres in his later years to design and complete his museum. The exterior of the museum with its red towers, egg-ed roof, and golden bread loaves was completely designed by Dali, with the each exhibit also being arranged under Dali's watchful eye. Dali refused to include explanations and descriptions of his pieces, saying that there are two kinds of visitors: those who don't need a description and those who aren't worth a description. Dali died while working at the museum, and his body was buried at the center of the museum's main exhibit. The grave is unmarked and while visiting the museum, I saw four Asian girls walk continually back and forth (unknowingly) over Dali's grave.

Before our visit to the Dali museum, we climbed to the Castell de Sant Ferran, a castle and fortress that guarded Figueres, a coastal and border town, from invasion. The castle was amazing, with history to be told in its walls of the Spanish Civil War and the constant harassment by the French.

To see pictures of Figures (the town, Castell de Sant Ferran, and the Dali Museum), click the following link: http://new.photos.yahoo.com/lizzie.redman/album/576460762388760425


Oh, and one more thing I learned on this trip: French people demand excellent food service. As Bahria, my friend from France said when a waiter reached to switch out our napkin dispenser in the train station restaurant, "They would have never reach across a table like that in Paris. We were talking. And, he didn't even ask if our food was satisfactory."