Mary's novel--uh, update

photo link: http://picasaweb.google.com/mary.dellenbach

Hello again, dear friends and family!

It’s been a busy few weeks on this side of the pond, with lots of running around like a chicken with my head cut off: errands around Madrid; midterms; traveling for work, class, and fun; and starting to realize how (relatively) little time I have left over here. And to give you yet more ideas of why I love this place… I give you the world’s longest update. Oops.


Tengo nickel

In case I haven’t said so already, I have once again been extremely lucky in my housing. My roommates (brother and sister, José and Pichu, both teachers) are both fantastic, fun people—and they don’t mind cramming seven of us into the apartment! Over the past several weeks, I’ve two visitors and José has had three, bringing the total of languages in the apartment up to a high of seven: English, Spanish, French, Japanese, German, with a smattering of Gaelic and Italian just for fun. I think we redefine the concept of an international living situation.

Quick anecdote to explain the title: one day José was just plunked down in the hallway playing odd songs on his guitar (example: “Oh Susanna,” “This Land Is Your Land,” the graduation song…) to annoy Pichu (ahh, siblings… but seriously, they get along really well). So I asked him “Who put the nickel into you?” Hence, in pseudo-Spanish, “Tengo nickel” = “I have (a) nickel.” Antics frequently take musical form around here: José and his girlfriend Yuko, who’s staying with us for a while, are in a band together. We’re even attempting to see if my poetry will lend itself to lyrics.

A couple weeks ago I had the wonderful chance to go to a Real Madrid soccer game, thanks to an extra seat in the block my roommates’ family has in the stadium: about the 12th row up, right in the corner. Amazing seats, and quite the fun night, even if RM lost.

Other news: I’m still teaching English one hour a week to a very sweet 17-year-old, Rocío, and that’s going fabulously. My class at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM) is going really well. I’m mainly glad the red tape is over. Odd observation there: the UAM makes everything seem impossibly complicated, and then after stressing over how to get it all done, you find out it’s a five-minute simple process. This, as supposed to NYU’s method of making things seem easy-breezy and later screwing it up into one giant knot of confusion. Now, I don’t like making generalizations without caveats, but it rather seems to me that Spain’s reputation for impossible red tape might hide a reality slightly more convenient—at least at times—than the USA’s reputation for efficiency above all else. And as long as I’m comparing the two countries… Spain just had elections here, and things got a bit tense, as usual. I won’t comment on the actual politics, but I will say that for all the polarity and complicated history and posters lining the streets over here, there was still slightly less noise over the actual election here than there has been about the primaries back home. Perhaps it’s just easier to avoid having politics shoved in my face as an outsider, or perhaps the worldwide attention to our primaries is distorting my perspective a bit, but still. Of course, politics in Spain eventually leads to talk about regional autonomies, which brings me to my first trip in March….

Ciao, bacalao

Two weeks after my trip with the undergrads to Andalucía, the travel-craziness continued with my program’s trip to the País Vasco (the Basque Country), a region in northern Spain with a very strong nationalist streak (depending on whom you talk to), its own non-Indoeuropean language euskera, and amazing food. Title explanation: bacalao (cod) is a regional specialty, so we changed our “see ya later, alligator” equivalent of “ciao, pescao” (invented by my friend Mia; pescado is fish, but the /d/ oven gets elided in conversational speech) in honor of the weekend trip.

We started out in Bilbao, the region’s capital, where we promptly spent four hours in a classroom. To be fair, the lectures/conversations were very interesting, but I would have preferred more time to explore the city. I had to get up early to do that on my own! Yay city, yuck early. The first lecture was on that complicated language, euskera, and the even more complicated linguistic politics in the País Vasco. It was fascinating, though the purely linguistic component was a bit over my head—ergative verbs, anyone? I won’t go into the whole thing here; this will end up long enough without a half-political, half-linguistic treatise with a subject matter that goes back centuries! The second lecture was a bit more… controversial. A Basque nationalist (oh, and anarchist too… just don’t ask me how those two can actually go together) came to talk about the culture—that part was really interesting—and the politics—that part got rather heated. He never defended ETA, the Basque nationalist terrorist group, but he did say he “understood” their motives. I don’t put up with much of that happily.

But afterwards we went out for pintxos (tapas) in the heart of old Bilbao, and I had the most amazing food! I tried kokotxas de bacalao (cod cheeks), stuffed txipirones (baby squids stuffed with their own tentacles), and the marvelous calabacín relleno de bacalao (zucchini stuffed with cod in a lovely red sauce with peppers), along with a few croquetas and conversations when we could find each other in the crowd of locals flooding the most popular pintxos bars. I’m forever spoiled when it comes to food, especially tapas, after that night.

Before leaving, Bilbao, we did indeed make a stop at the Guggenheim: cooler outside than inside, but the surrealism exhibit (pretty much all I had time to see) was fascinating. The giant spider sculpture outside the museum was not my idea of fun, but Mia still got me under it for a photo op. She owes me. Inside all the gleaming silver curves we saw Dalí’s lobster phone and lip couch, some giant walk-through spirals, big glass roses, portraits made out of painted and broken plates, and other even more abstract things. Modern art doesn’t often do much for me, but it was an interesting museum.

Combing the Wind

I liked Bilbao, but I fell in love with San Sebastián. It’s a gorgeous seaside town, and they gave us several hours to wander around the old city center. A few of us ran across a bar where the pintxos went on forever, but we had been warned not to spoil our overly-large dinner, so unfortunately we didn’t get the chance to try any of the delectable little dishes. The promised dinner was indeed fantastic and very filling, though. We went to a sidrería, a cider house, on NYU’s dime. Imagine half a dozen enormous barrels of cider with spouts about head-level, a crabby old man in control of the spigot, and lines of people stooping to catch the arching stream of cider in their glasses at just the right angle, and just the right amount (very little: never more than quarter-fill your glass! It’s just not done). The meal was fabulous, and the highlight was the steak. I wouldn’t normally eat meat that rare, but it was so tasty! Somewhere there’s a picture floating around of me holding a very large knife and grinning like a maniac. If you see it, don’t worry. I was just looking at the steak.

I got up early again the next morning (who IS this girl?) to take a short walk down from our hotel to the sea, which is where I fell in love. I like beaches, and there was one, but I love a rocky shore—and I took several hundred pictures of it alone. At one end, several gigantic iron sculptures are welded onto the rocks. It’s a work called Peine del viento (Wind Comb) by the sculpture Eduardo Chillida, and somehow the huge metal curves manage to fit completely into the landscape. When my friends came and finally dragged me away from the spray and the waves, it was actually to go on a tour of a museum/sculpture garden of his. It was an excellent tour, and for the first time I can say I’ve had a tour guide who made abstract art make sense. We also just so happened to have the fantastic timing of being at the museum on the first Sunday of March, which is the day the new season’s cider is brought out for tasting. So we ate cheese and tasted cider, listened to musicians and the mayor’s welcome (given in euskera, naturally), and wandered around the green slopes and iron sculptures until it was time to go home to Madrid—and after all that sun, fresh air, and GREEN, it was a little difficult for all of us.

Castles galore

The following weekend I ended up making a second trip for work, which I was rather happy with since it allowed me to see parts of Spain I never would have reached on my own. We went to several cities in Extremadura, a region bordering Portugal, and even crossed the border for a day to see several castles in Portugal itself. (No passport stamp; why would there be anyone in the derelict border guard house?) The first stop was Mérida, with its extremely impressive collection of Roman ruins, including an amphitheater in remarkable shape with even more remarkable acoustics, and an aqueduct nothing at all like Segovia’s. Second stop, and our home base for the weekend, was Cáceres, a beautiful city with an inordinate amount of storks. Yes, my old cigüeña photographic obsession resurfaced. Again.

Our two stops in Portugal were too picturesque for words. Castelo de Vide was perhaps the more exciting, because we got to walk through the town, have lunch, and sit on a castle rooftop (although the undergrads sitting IN the crenellations just made me want to yank them down or cower on a flat, low spot and cover my eyes… I don’t do heights well), and because one of the students sliced his knee open playing soccer with a few Portuguese kids and needed stitches. Marvão’s castle was even higher up, with the most amazing views—and a rather strong wind. “Breathtaking” was the word of the day, and you’ll just have to look at the pictures when I get them up to see what I mean.

One of the perks to traveling for work is that I didn’t have to pay for anything but my own postcards. One night we had supper in one of those fancy restaurants where the food arrives looking so artfully prepared that it’s almost a shame to eat it—almost. It was delicious! At various points throughout the weekend, I had partridge, venison, and a delectable selection of local cheeses and hams. Spain is the king of ham—or, rather, ham is king in Spain.

How Gaudí

My friend Laura arrived just after midterms (following the Extremadura-Portugal trip), and as soon as my classes let out we were off bright and early for Barcelona, one of my favorite cities in the world. We had a hotel just off Las Ramblas, the colorful main avenue that threads through the Gothic quarter on its way to the old port, and so were perfectly located. Naturally, we spent some time at the beach, collected sea glass, ate paella, and admired the collection of people along the Ramblas: street performers, artists, florists, pet shop owners, and a bunch of vacationers celebrating St. Paddy’s Day with giant Guinness hats. We divided the rest of the time among Gaudí’s famous architecture scattered around the city…

Casa Batlló seems to be designed to look like a dragon with St. George’s sword through its back (St. George is the patron saint of the city). Inside everything looks like it’s part of the ocean: even the doors somehow seem to flow, and the light was amazing. We walked around the roof, too, and got to see the dragon’s-back scale-tiles up close—again, words just don’t do it justice. The inside of the Pedrera (another building designed by Gaudí along the same street) wasn’t nearly as impressive, but the roof is this giant, multi-level surface with dozens of chimneys designed like swirled crosses or knight’s helmets. Utterly surreal. And then, of course, we went to the Sagrada Familia, which might just be finished by 2025. Walking inside is like walking into the shell of a very bright cathedral, and the view from the towers is incredible. I made the mistake of walking down the stairs, though, rather than taking the elevator back down: at one point, the normal stairs kind of disappeared and turned into a very tight spiral staircase with a railing only on the wall side. I basically backed the whole way down, holding very tight to that railing. The pictures I have of that staircase are amazing, and it really does look like a snail’s shell, but it wasn’t the world’s calmest descent. Our last day in Barcelona, I took Laura to Parc Güell for a lovely walk through the trees and through more nature-inspired Gaudí architecture before hopping a flight back to Madrid…

Semana Santa

My friend Weez arrived the next day, and after a fun evening of cooking and catching up, all three of us went to Segovia for Holy Thursday. We spent the day wandering around my city, admiring the aqueduct, cathedral, alcazar (castle), an artisan market, and the lovely streets, punctuated with trips to my favorite café, La Colonial, for hot chocolate, and to the stylish bar Oso Blanco for some amazing tapas. We did get to see some of the Holy Week processions go to the cathedral before we had to catch the bus back to Madrid (pictures coming), but to be honest the Good Friday processions we saw in Madrid’s Plaza Mayor had far better music accompanying them.

We divided our time in Madrid among walking around to see the sights, spending money at the Rastro market, the Semana Santa processions, art museums (the Prado, of course, and the modern art Reina Sofia), pure silliness, getting into multiple-language conversations, and—bless Laura and Weez—cooking.

Sueños de la Alhambra

Early Monday morning we took a bus down to Granada, where I promptly went overboard and bought way too much tea. (The mix I fell in love with earlier this semester is called Sueños de la Alhambra, or Dreams of the Alhambra, and I bought four or five bags of it.) We wandered around the fringes of the Albayzín, the old Moorish quarter, to look at pretty things I’d love to decorate my house with someday; it became our afternoon ritual. We met up with Weezy’s old program director several times, we walked around town, had sweet, fruity tea in a tetería, ate gelato, and had paella… And on Wednesday we went up to the Alhambra.

That palatial complex never ceases to amaze me. Everything is a work of art, and every piece of artwork is so intricate, from the tiles low on the walls to the stalactite-like carvings on the ceilings. And then, of course, there are the Generalife gardens: everything smelled like flowers and oranges, and the only sounds (other than tourists talking) were birdsong and trickling water. It was so peaceful and beautiful, with such impressive views and details—I could spend weeks there, I’m sure. Unfortunately, they now sell 7,000 tickets daily and sell out easily, so that’s not quite possible.

We ended our trip by visiting Weezy’s old host family, where we were treated to a delicious home-cooked meal of lentil soup and tortilla de patatas, two of our favorite Spanish staples. We then had to hop the bus back to Madrid, where Weez and Laura got to spend a day wandering around the Prado while I ran errands and went to class. Then it was all packing and goodbyes and a little music-making with the roommates.

A Spanish Wedding

It was wonderful to have two close friends around for Easter, and wonderful to travel around Spain with them. But one of the highlights of the entire year has to be this past Saturday, when I went to Segovia for my old host sister’s wedding. I got to their house just as Ana was getting ready (so many buttons on that gorgeous dress!); it was insane with brothers and photographers running all over, but they just welcomed me in like one of the family—again—and it still warms my heart like you wouldn’t believe. The ceremony took place in a church beneath the Alcázar (Sleeping Beauty castle), in the Iglesia de San Juan de la Cruz, which I had actually done a small project on two years ago. It’s a very pretty church with a beautiful abstract mural behind the altar, based on a poem by St. John of the Cross. Alberto (youngest brother) walked Ana down the aisle, and it was a beautiful wedding (if shorter than the American norm!). As Ana and her new husband, José, left the church, the choir—including Alfredo (oldest brother)—serenaded them before everyone started chucking rice at the happy couple. Then there was nothing else to be done but pose for pictures, first in the church and then beneath the castle. I was honored to be included in one of the sets of family photos, so here’s hoping that photographer’s fancy camera was digital so I can someday get a copy!

The reception was at a fancy restaurant/hotel just outside the city, and the meal was both large and delicious: a plate of hams and cheeses followed by fish, a palate-cleansing sorbet, salad, and the famous Segovian cochinillo (suckling pig), heralded by a pair of musicians. Cochinillo is supposed to be so tender you can cut it with a plate, and so apparently there’s a Segovian tradition of the bride and groom doing the “carving” and then breaking the plates. To be honest, I hadn’t been expecting a lot of differences between Spanish and American weddings—but when the pigs came out and the plates crashed on the floor, I threw that assumption out the window. The newlyweds fed each other bits of cake perched on the tip of a small sword (naturally), the friends of the groom passed out souvenir cigars, the friends of the bride cut her garter into tiny bits and passed them out to guests for donations (Spanish version of the dollar dance, I guess), and then all the tables were pushed aside and the dancing began. The playlist of music, needless to say, was not the same as what we’re used to, and it ranged from current hits to more traditional Spanish songs (and dances) which I didn’t know at all. After a few hours, the party shifted from the restaurant to a bar back in town, I went to my hostal and changed, and the dancing and chatting continued… I escaped the smoke for a brief while with Alberto, his girlfriend Ruth, and a few of his friends: there was a gastronomy market visiting nearby, and we went down for a bit of fresh air, wine, ribs, and brief English lessons (a.k.a. it’s “to pull someone’s leg” not “to take someone’s leg off”). After dancing with all my Segovian siblings and various friends of theirs, I was dead tired and went to bed just after Ana and José left at about 3:30, but I’m sure the merriment continued well after that! It usually does, here.

And that’s finally all for now, folks. I’m getting pictures organized and online slowly but surely, so keep checking back… but my thesis is looming, and suddenly classes take precedence once more (except the gorgeous weather will be a slight challenge to productivity…). I hope you all had a wonderful spring break of some kind and were able to relax a little. Stay warm over there J

I know I haven't yet responded to all of your notes to me, but please know that I do read and appreciate all of them very much! It makes me feel more connected to home, which in turn makes it seem like I am home over here, since family and friends aren't that far away after all.

Hugs and prayers,
Mary