carnival y strange spanish norms

bueno, amigos.

we have returned from our first weekend away from madrid and we are glad to be back! we traveled to cádiz, spain for the festival of carnival. similar in nature to mardi gras, carnival is celebrated in cádiz for the entire month of february. lauren and i signed up for a trip with a tour company for students here. it was advertised as 3 days, 2 nights in a four-star hotel with free transportation to downtown cádiz for carnival. sounds great! while we did have a good time, the trip was not exactly as it seemed. friday morning we arrived (begrudgingly) at the bus meeting point at 7:45 am - but we did not arrive in cádiz until 7:45 pm that night (fyi: by train, it takes 6 hours to get from madrid to cádiz). we also found out that our hotel was an hour away from everything and had to eat the 25 euro buffet for dinner. NEVERTHELESS, saturday night we arrived at carnival and it was quite the experience. i have been to mardi gras in both new orleans and st. louis, but carnival was a completely different animal. throngs of people were drinking and dancing in the streets, eating from street vendors, and all in costume. i do not know if halloween is a big deal in spain, but the costumes we saw at carnival put the costumes we wear for halloween to shame. first of all, everyone dresses up as a group - not 3 or 4 people, but literally 10-20 people wearing the exact same costume. we saw groups of smurfs, french maids, and our personal favorite, a group dressed as spanish "abonos" or metro passes (see recent pictures above). another common theme was men dressed as women: for example, baywatch lifeguard, flamenco dancer, etc (my women and gender studies professor, dr. cislo, would thoroughly have enjoyed the abandonment of hetero-normativity - see mom and dad? i did learn something at school!). needless to say it was quite the éspectaculo. although sunday followed with another 10 hour bus ride, we really enjoyed participating in this quintessential spanish experience.

From madrid! (y granada y cádiz)

the rest of the week before carnival was a fairly normal week here in madrid, but as i spend more time here, i have started to pick up on things that are totally acceptable here and would be really freakin' weird in the united states:
1. walking on the street: here it is perfectly acceptable for a person to shove, push, or run into you while walking down the street, on the metro, etc without uttering a word. no "i'm sorry", no "perdón" - nada. rude right? no - here, when you apologize you come off as over-polite and everyone just slams into each other and then continues on with their lives.
2. in the gym locker room: at my gym in st. louis, people change in the locker room, but are fairly modest, don't really talk to the people around them and don't just stand around ass-naked. the only people i've ever seen talk is a group of elderly women after they finish with their water aerobics class (mom: confirmation that no one under the age of 60 does water aerobics). in spain, it is the complete opposite. whenever someone enters or leaves the locker room, every single person inside says "hola!" or "hasta luego!" like they're all old friends. they stand around (ESPECIALLY in the locker room at the pool) completely naked and chat each other up in the nude. welcome to europe. i'm trying to get comfortable with it since you all know i spend about 75% of my life running, swimming, and/or cybexing.
3. at the gym: at home i have learned that the proper amount of aerobic exercise is anywhere between 30-60 minutes a day, 5 days a week. accordingly, when you go to a gym, the general limit on machines is around 30 minutes when there are people waiting. here in madrid, the limit on machines is 10 minutes!! and people literally get on the treadmill for that amount of time or less and run at about 7.5 km/ hr (this is about a 13 minute mile aka not running). any time i see a person on a machine for more than fifteen minutes and remotely exerting themselves, i assume they are not spanish.
4. at a restaurant: first of all, you have to pay for the bread. it's usually only 1 or 2 euro, but still - free bread with dinner is probably one of the greatest things about going to a restaurant. second of all, they will not take any substitutions - and i mean any. being my father's daughter (he coined the phrase "chicken noodle soup, no noodle"), i usually want to adjust 3 things about my meal on average, so when i ask for my mixto con huevo sin queso or a bocadillo with only fried eggs, the staff just laughs in my face. get ready, dad.

as i come across more strange spanish norms, i will keep you updated. missing you all in the states, and love the emails/gchats/bbms/skype sessions. keep 'em coming!

hasta la semana próxima!

veeps

today in my spanish lengua class we learned about 15 different ways to greet someone, but i'm going to use my personal favorite:

hombre!

this does not mean man! but rather, why hello there!
i have a feeling i am the only person who thought that was funny. anyway, it is now our one month anniversary of arriving in spain and we are beginning our fourth week in madrid. we have finally been here for enough time that i feel like i can give you an accurate portrayal of our daily life:

monday through thursday we take class at our school, uc3m. i am taking lengua (spanish language), teatro (theatre - works, not acting), periodismo (journalism), and fundamentos del sistema juridico (fundamentals of the judicial system). the first three classes are all in spanish, but have only american students. these classes are fairly easy and are similar to spanish classes i have taken in high school and college. The latter of the four is my class with spaniards. there is one other person from the wash u program in the class with me, and we have to do group projects with the other people in our class. there is one main lecture class and one discussion class. the most bizarre part of all is during the lecture, students talk while the professor is talking, leave during the middle of class, and do not take notes - that is, if they even attend class. it is certainly going to be an experience. in addition, on wednesday nights, we have our 2-3 hour cultura y civilización class taught by the wash u faculty and attended by wash u students only. so far, work seems fairly light, but because it is all in spanish, we definitely feel like we are learning.

when we are not in class, we are either eating dinner with the rodriguez family or out exploring madrid. this weekend, our friends from another program were out of town, so lauren and i dubbed it our "cultural weekend" and did our best to explore madrid like real madrileñas. friday, we went to two museums: the thyssen, and the museo de jamón. the thyssen was the perfect amount of art - it is a private collection owned by the Thyssen-Bornemisza family that takes up three floors of a relatively small building. we were able to see paintings from caravaggio to to lichtenstein in just a few hours. the more famous works are housed at the prado and the reina sofía, but we found the thyssen to be much less overwhelming and still an incredible collection of art. later, we went to the aforementioned museo de jamón, which ended up being all lauren and i could have imagined and more. the museo de jamón is not literally a museum, but it is a three story store, bar, and restaurant. the walls are covered from floor to ceiling with whole jamones and there was one jamón iberico de bellota extra (refer to previous post for more info) that cost 90 euros per kilo. must be quite the jamón. lauren and i sat at the bar and each had a tomaca de jamón iberico (toasted bread covered with tomato-garlic puree and jamón) for 2 euro. needless to say, the museo de jamón did not disappoint and we will definitely be going back.

saturday, we took a 30 minute train to the bordering town of toledo, a beautiful little town up on a hill with famous cathedrals, mosques, and synagogues. first, we took a ride around the border of the city in a tiny antique train that showed us all of the main sights. then lauren and i wandered around for the rest of the day through the various cathedrals and jewish neighborhood. in the church of santa tome, we got to view the famous el greco painting, the burial of count orgaz, which i hadn't seen since art history in high school. the painting was massive, and below it was the actual tomb of the man depicted in the painting. slightly morbid, but at the same time, really amazing to see such a famous piece.

each night this weekend, we tried out different bars and clubs recommended to us by our host sister, gloria. as mentioned before, gloria is a former model and beauty queen, and thus, knows the coolest places to go out in madrid. she is what we would refer to in america as a "v.i.p." but in spain she is called a "vip" (pronounced veep). because gloria is a vip, she never pays to get into clubs here and knows the doorman basically everywhere. she told us that "necesitáis tener la actitud que no váis a pagar" (you need to have the attitude that you're not going to pay). ooook gloria. for the rest of us who aren't vips, we generally have the attitude that we will probably have to pay and by some stroke of luck, maybe we won't. but FEAR NOT. gloria has our back and each night we tried out a new place and got in for free! the best part of all was that every night we were probably the only americans at each place and got to see how the madrileños salen de la noche. at our favorite place of the weekend, a discoteca called vanila, the man was waiting at the door for us, let us in, and said, "two free drinks for the amigas americanas de gloria!" obviously, it was a great night. we can't wait to share all of our new places with our friends who were out of town.

to conclude, our cultural weekend was a success, and we are loving la vida española. next weekend we begin our travels out of madrid! in the next few weeks, we are going to cadíz, berlin, and london.

pues, nada. hasta luego!

jamón y más jamón

while constructing this post, i was trying to decide if i was going to write about my vida diara en madrid or jamón. i have decided to give it another week before i tell you about my day-to-day so that i can make sure that i give you all an accurate portrayal of spanish life (really, i just wanted to write a very detailed post about our favorite food).

although this weekend was mi cumpleaños and we spent it eating all of my favorite american foods (brunch and sushi), lauren and i are getting very accustomed to the spanish diet. staples here seem to be bread, cheese, coffee, eggs, bean soup, and ham (which from this point on will be referred to as jamón). Pretty standard, slightly different from what we are used to eating in the states, but we are open to trying new things and recently have come upon a shocking realization: WE LOVE JAMÓN.

A brief history of the torrid love affair: I grew up as a nice jewish girl in a nice jewish home where we didn't exactly keep kosher, but jamón (or any other pork product, for that matter) was not something we really kept in the house. We had an encounter with a christmas jamón about once a year when our family traveled to el paso to visit my grandparents during the holidays, which always sparked the conversation about how my grandmother, irene (or maybe it was my great grandmother and namesake, rae. mom, please clarify) invited the rabbi over for dinner and served up a beautiful jamón. Recently, we have been keeping jamón de estilo oscar mayer in our house for my dad. he makes jamón and butter sandwiches to eat on his 60+ mile bike rides instead of energy bars, because it is "what the guys on the tour de france do" (ok, dad...). Other than that, my encounters with jamón pre-spain were slim to none.

as i mentioned in one of my first posts, jamón is like a religion here, and it is difficult to walk into any restaurant, bar, or house without coming across it in some way, shape, or form. on just about every menu you can order a giant plate of jamón costing anywhere from 15-25 euros. however, before madrid, my idea of jamón was limited to the kind they sell covered in honey glaze during the holidays or the slimy lunch meat. jamón in spain is completely different, and completely delicious. although there are many, many different kinds to try here, lauren and i have tried (and loved) all of the staples:
1. Jamón York: this is your basic lunch meat jamón in spain, mild tasting, and not slimy like its american counterpart. we eat this daily at school on our favorite sandwich, mixto con huevo (a ham and cheese sandwich, toasted, with a fried egg in the middle)
2: Lomo: one of our more recent discoveries, lomo is basically like canadian bacon but thicker and more flavorful. maruja made it for us the other day for lunch with eggs and french fries. delicious.
3. Jamón Serrano: our first introduction to spanish jamón, this kind is similar to prosciutto and is the lower quality of the jamón that spaniards are famous for. rich in flavor, we eat it on toasted bread with olive oil or even alone
4. Jamón Iberico: the cream of the crop, jamón iberico comes in several types, the nicest being jamón iberico bellota. it comes from black pigs that are fed only acorns and has el sabor más rico que todos los jamones. it is similar in texture to jamón serrano, but is slightly more delicate. we had this the other day on top of a tomato-mozzarella salad and it was incredibly delicious.

our love for jamón will continue this week when we go to visit the museo de jamón (literally: museum of ham), a famous restaurant, bar, and store that sells, you guessed it, pretty much every type of jamón out there. for those of you who are coming to visit us in madrid, we will make sure we take you to taste the best kinds out there so that you can fully understand our newfound love for this spanish staple.

tienes hambre?