Going through some of my notes from the intensive course that I took at the beginning of the semester, I came across some quotes I had written down from the class that made me laugh. One, for example, was of a girl in the class who remarked to the professor (a 30-something mother of two young boys with a PhD), "Gosh! You always have so much energy in class!" to which our professor replied, "Well, yeah, it's because I do coke before class starts." Another comes from the review session we had before our exam. The profa. remarked, "...so those questions will all be about that topic. Now then, you need to know that I'll be leaving during your exam to get coffee - that's the time you should copy and ask each other questions." I muttered under my breath, "I love Spain...," which she heard, and replied, "that's why we live here."
Of course, my professor was joking - at least about the drugs. These things, however, could never be said in an American classroom - certainly not by a professor who is still up for tenure. Things are much more laid-back here. I also notice this in the way that every class starts about five or ten minutes late, one of my professors would occasionally be at his beach house and simply not come to class, and the way that everything shuts down for three hours in the middle of the day. It's not bad, though, just different, once you get into it. I started thinking about all of this yesterday, the last day of classes before our exams started. This was after last weekend when I had Friday off, Saturday everything was closed for Constitution Day, Sunday everything was closed because it was Sunday, and Monday everything was closed because it was the day of the Immaculate Conception. The country was shut down for three days in a row! Then, yesterday class was interrupted by the sound of champagne corks (more accurately, cava corks, Spain's home-grown version of the French stuff) popping. We all left the classroom to find some sort of celebration going on for everyone in the atrium, with long tables set up around the Christmas tree, candles and glowing mini tree-shaped lights hanging from the ceiling, and an enormous manger scene of the Most Holy Family complete with real sand. On the tables were almond sweets and cookies made by local nuns and hundreds of glasses of wine. This was all at about 12 noon, and in a government sponsored school no less! Turns out it was all for some sports team-related awards ceremony, but that didn't stop everyone from imbibing a little.
Someone mentioned to me once that Spain is about where the US was 40 to 50 years ago in terms of it's culture. I don't think that's true with everything - they're a lot more liberal here in regards to some things - but they're certainly not what you would call politically correct. Sometimes I think it's great and refreshing, but not everyone's always comfortable with it. For example, there are several Jewish people in the program, and Granada in itself is still quite a center of Islamic culture, despite the best efforts of the Catholic kings to quash that. That doesn't stop anyone from putting up huge Belenes (Bethlehems, essentially walk-through diorama towns) on the street, holy families on the roofs of department stores, and Christmas trees in the universities. My "brother" told me that Catholicism is especially alive and well here because it was so hard won; I can believe that, but it was back in 1492. I'm having a great time with it, though. Just an observation.
This is exam week, so I don't plan on being too interesting in the next few days.
Thursday, 11 December 2008
Monday, 1 December 2008
Acción de gracias y la Sierra Nevada
Happy Thanksgiving! It's been a busy week or so. I forgot to mention that two weekends ago I went to the Sierra Nevada (the mountain chain that surrounds Granada) to go skiing - yes, skiing during the third week in November when it was still 60 degrees in the city. It was phenomenal, and the best ski trip I'd ever been on. The ski station is just at the base of the tallest mountain on the Iberian peninsula, the Mulhacén, and I was up somewhere around 10,900 feet. Almost eleven-thousand feet! We were skiing above the clouds, until we skied through them, which was cold and a little scary, due to the lack of visibility. They say that, on a clear day from the top, you can see the Straight of Gibraltar and Africa. Very, very cool, but not too cold - it was only around 50 degrees the whole day. Besides the altitude sickness right when we got there, the day was perfect. The pistes even look like a James Bond set, complete with an enormous satellite dish control center, an observatory, and several concrete, man-made lakes. That night, the five of us who went bundled in for the night in an apartment which we rented, complete with kitchenette, and made plastic-tasting pizza, spaghetti, nachos, and hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps (this was a problem when the milk ran out and we started mixing peppermint schnapps with the cocoa powder and ice). All in all, not a bad trip.
The whole group.
Thanksgiving was also an adventure. It started out the night before the holiday, when one of my friends reminded me of a restaurant we had tried to eat at before based on the recommendation of a Scottish English professor who was in one of my Spanish classes at the beginning of the year, but which never seemed to be open when we were hungry. The restaurant (which everyone calls Sue's Place) is run by an English woman, expatriated to Spain to bring the joy of Sunday English roasts to all Granadinos. We figured, hey, if they do Sunday roasts, maybe she's doing something for Thanksgiving. She wasn't. However, we stalked Sue, begged her to help out our little group of homesick Americans, and she decided to see what she could do in the next 24 hours to find us a turkey. As it turned out, we had shrimp (a Spanish holiday staple), an electric-green and delicious soup, turkey, mashed potatoes, her attempt at stuffing, steamed vegetables(!!!), and homemade apple pie. Not entirely traditional, but wonderful just the same.
The day after Thanksgiving, my friend Curstin and I decided to be lazy and not to go skiing again like a large portion of the group - I counted it as a blessing that I didn't do some serious damage to myself the first time around - so we checked out the Science Park, practically just behind my house. This is a large science center, perfect for huge school groups. It was pretty unremarkable, though a great way to pass an afternoon. They are very excited about the recent opening of Spain's base in the Antarctic, and had a whole exhibit on the base station, complete with a walk in a blast freezer which reminded me a lot of Maine - I had forgotten what a pleasure it is to feel the inside of your nose seize up and freeze every time you take in a breath. It was also a pleasure to watch the 85 year-old Spanish abuelitas in their furs totter through. My two favorite parts were the butterfly jungle, and this great exhibition that they had going on which consisted of little mechanical dioramas made out of wood and metal which acted out a little scene powered by a hand crank - I spent about an hour in there.
Surgery on "Anatomy Jane," as Curstin put it. Does anyone get that reference? (Nicole? If you had access to a TV down there...)
This past weekend was when our program had decided to recreate Thanksgiving for us, in the mountains around Granada. We went to the Alpujarra, a beautiful region of lush green fields, olive groves, lemon trees, persimmons (which are great!), magical streams, and white villages. The goal was to go hiking the first day, stay in a beautiful country hotel whose chef we bribed to make three turkeys, visit three more towns the next day, hike around a bit more, and head home. It almost worked out.
The first day was great, if not a little chilly.
This first stream tasted like blood because of the insanely high iron content (look at the color of the rocks), but was apparently great for my liver and perhaps getting rid of evil spirits. Another one I tried I really liked, and was naturally carbonated by the rocks it passed through. Not quite Perrier, but...
More ham than I've ever cared to see in my life. This is a ham-drying center in the highest village in Europe (Trevélez, 4,900 feet) which is renowned for it's ham. Apparently, the place is so cold the whole year that they can dry ham naturally without using refrigerators. The ham was pretty good, but imagine the smell in there.
Thanksgiving (and a legit one at that, with homemade cranberry sauce!) before...
...and the aftermath.
The next morning, after going directly to bed after that disgustingly wonderful meal, we woke to find a fresh eight or nine inches of snow, no power, and no way to get the bus up the mountain. Instead, we all ate about five breakfasts, read, talked, played board games, and put our inadequate clothing on to go play in the snow. It reminded me of the storms during the summer that knock out the power just long enough for you to dig out the candles, be forced to turn the TV off, and reconnect with your family. It was great. The hotel itself was run by a warm family with a dog, had piles of books everywhere to read in about 12 languages, was immaculately clean, and just rustic enough. We finally got out of there around noon, but not before some good snowball fights and romps in the snow with the puppy.
A persimmon tree. Click on it - the colors are great.
If the ride up the mountain was bad, the ride down, on hairpin turns about which you usually read in motoring magazines which test Italian sports cars, in a bus which needed to put chains on its tires just to move a foot forward before starting a series of backwards slides, was hellish. But we made it. We were able only to hit up one of the towns on our itinerary, Pampaneira. Many of the towns in the Alpujarra have the -eira ending, which is really unusual in Spanish. This is a remnant of Gallego, the language of the Celtic/Spanish people from Spain's north Atlantic coastal region, Galicia, which itself was colonized by a combination of immigrants from the present day UK and Ireland and mainstream Roman-influenced Iberians. After the Catholic Kings kicked the Moors out of Granada in 1492, some Arabs retreated to the mountains around the city. After they were evicted from there as well, there was a massive, state-sponsored immigration in the 16th century of people from Galicia to the towns, which took on new names. At least I thought it was interesting.
The whole group.Thanksgiving was also an adventure. It started out the night before the holiday, when one of my friends reminded me of a restaurant we had tried to eat at before based on the recommendation of a Scottish English professor who was in one of my Spanish classes at the beginning of the year, but which never seemed to be open when we were hungry. The restaurant (which everyone calls Sue's Place) is run by an English woman, expatriated to Spain to bring the joy of Sunday English roasts to all Granadinos. We figured, hey, if they do Sunday roasts, maybe she's doing something for Thanksgiving. She wasn't. However, we stalked Sue, begged her to help out our little group of homesick Americans, and she decided to see what she could do in the next 24 hours to find us a turkey. As it turned out, we had shrimp (a Spanish holiday staple), an electric-green and delicious soup, turkey, mashed potatoes, her attempt at stuffing, steamed vegetables(!!!), and homemade apple pie. Not entirely traditional, but wonderful just the same.
The day after Thanksgiving, my friend Curstin and I decided to be lazy and not to go skiing again like a large portion of the group - I counted it as a blessing that I didn't do some serious damage to myself the first time around - so we checked out the Science Park, practically just behind my house. This is a large science center, perfect for huge school groups. It was pretty unremarkable, though a great way to pass an afternoon. They are very excited about the recent opening of Spain's base in the Antarctic, and had a whole exhibit on the base station, complete with a walk in a blast freezer which reminded me a lot of Maine - I had forgotten what a pleasure it is to feel the inside of your nose seize up and freeze every time you take in a breath. It was also a pleasure to watch the 85 year-old Spanish abuelitas in their furs totter through. My two favorite parts were the butterfly jungle, and this great exhibition that they had going on which consisted of little mechanical dioramas made out of wood and metal which acted out a little scene powered by a hand crank - I spent about an hour in there.
Surgery on "Anatomy Jane," as Curstin put it. Does anyone get that reference? (Nicole? If you had access to a TV down there...)This past weekend was when our program had decided to recreate Thanksgiving for us, in the mountains around Granada. We went to the Alpujarra, a beautiful region of lush green fields, olive groves, lemon trees, persimmons (which are great!), magical streams, and white villages. The goal was to go hiking the first day, stay in a beautiful country hotel whose chef we bribed to make three turkeys, visit three more towns the next day, hike around a bit more, and head home. It almost worked out.
The first day was great, if not a little chilly.
This first stream tasted like blood because of the insanely high iron content (look at the color of the rocks), but was apparently great for my liver and perhaps getting rid of evil spirits. Another one I tried I really liked, and was naturally carbonated by the rocks it passed through. Not quite Perrier, but...
More ham than I've ever cared to see in my life. This is a ham-drying center in the highest village in Europe (Trevélez, 4,900 feet) which is renowned for it's ham. Apparently, the place is so cold the whole year that they can dry ham naturally without using refrigerators. The ham was pretty good, but imagine the smell in there.
Thanksgiving (and a legit one at that, with homemade cranberry sauce!) before...
...and the aftermath.The next morning, after going directly to bed after that disgustingly wonderful meal, we woke to find a fresh eight or nine inches of snow, no power, and no way to get the bus up the mountain. Instead, we all ate about five breakfasts, read, talked, played board games, and put our inadequate clothing on to go play in the snow. It reminded me of the storms during the summer that knock out the power just long enough for you to dig out the candles, be forced to turn the TV off, and reconnect with your family. It was great. The hotel itself was run by a warm family with a dog, had piles of books everywhere to read in about 12 languages, was immaculately clean, and just rustic enough. We finally got out of there around noon, but not before some good snowball fights and romps in the snow with the puppy.
A persimmon tree. Click on it - the colors are great.If the ride up the mountain was bad, the ride down, on hairpin turns about which you usually read in motoring magazines which test Italian sports cars, in a bus which needed to put chains on its tires just to move a foot forward before starting a series of backwards slides, was hellish. But we made it. We were able only to hit up one of the towns on our itinerary, Pampaneira. Many of the towns in the Alpujarra have the -eira ending, which is really unusual in Spanish. This is a remnant of Gallego, the language of the Celtic/Spanish people from Spain's north Atlantic coastal region, Galicia, which itself was colonized by a combination of immigrants from the present day UK and Ireland and mainstream Roman-influenced Iberians. After the Catholic Kings kicked the Moors out of Granada in 1492, some Arabs retreated to the mountains around the city. After they were evicted from there as well, there was a massive, state-sponsored immigration in the 16th century of people from Galicia to the towns, which took on new names. At least I thought it was interesting.
Monday, 24 November 2008
Familia
I had a very sad conversation with my host mother today; better said, our conversation was poignant for me, and simply the way things are for her. We had just sat down to dinner, while the muffled announcement of her lottery numbers wafted into the room from the ever-present TV on behind us, to a meal of pea soup, chicken with vegetables, and homemade ricotta cake. This was after my tutoring session, and after a quick stop with some friends for two glasses of wine which, like usual, came with two little tapa sandwiches. Needless to say, at this point I can barely breathe. I decided, in an attempt to make conversation, to ask her about her Christmas traditions. She chuckled to herself quietly, and asked me where I meant - did I want to know what things were like back in Italy when she was a young girl, in Africa after she was married, or here in Spain where she raised her three boys? All of it, I said. Why not? We had a lot of food to work through.
Irma has never been one for Christmas. Back in Italy, it was just her and her mother, and as an only child growing up in a family where there obviously wasn't much money, she never expected much. Sure she would hear about big celebrations in big families, but it was never something that she really looked forward to. Italy is a "Catholic country" like Spain, which means that Christmas is the religious portion of the holiday, and Kings' Day, the day that the Three Wisemen finally made it with their gifts to baby Jesus, is the day that everyone gives presents. She skipped over Africa to tell me about Spain with her boys; Irma and her husband owned several Italian restaurants here, a pizzeria, and a bakery, and after her husband died, she worked in a university residence hall feeding 50 students three times a day by herself. She told me that the family always tried to do something on Christmas, but the restaurants were still open and the bakery was always busy, and at the end of the long day serving hundreds of other families, there wasn't much spirit left in anyone to celebrate at home. Normally they'd open a bottle of wine, have some fried fish and maybe some chicken (Italian fish and chicken, she assured me), and get to bed. The kids always had a few presents on Kings' Day, but the family was never rich, and it was always better to have a nice meal or something made at home then something expensive which would be forgotten about in two months but which they would make payments on for the whole year.
These days, one of her sons lives his own life back in Italy, and she almost never gets over there to see him or her grandchildren. Her middle son, Neno, who lives with us, generally leaves his mom at home by herself on holidays and will go over to a friend's house, she thinks - she's not entirely sure where he ends up. Her youngest son, Juan Miguel, lives in Spain and has an English girlfriend with a huge family. He seems to love the holidays, she says, but she never goes with him, because "it's a rich family, and it's not like you can show up at the house with one hand in the other. I don't work anymore and neither does Neno, and holidays are expensive, such an effort." She also told me that she's "lost her taste for wine and beer," so there's not even that to celebrate with. These days, she says, she wakes up, starts making herself the dough for her ricotta and spinach ravioli, and gives herself the day off from housework. "Who would I go visit, honestly?" she told me. "Everyone I was friends with is dead, and so is my husband. I guess I could have a get-together in the cemetery with my ravioli." This makes us both laugh, her genuinely, and me self-consciously.
The great thing about Irma is that she's not one of those older people who feel bad for themselves and want you to do the same - in fact, she seems happy if not extatic about life, and keeps herself involved with tai chi and water aerobics three times a week. Not your typical 75 year-old. "When you grow up not really knowing something, not really celebrating a holiday, you don't miss it." An interesting point. It made me that much more thankful for my own traditions. In a year when I'm not at home much and I'm missing events like Thanksgiving, birthdays, and funerals, family and friends have been on my mind a lot. In an effort to avoid making this sound like a holiday-themed after-school special, I'll spare you anything too mushy, but really, the people are what's important. At least we have them. Life is too short to get hung-up on problems with logistics, material stuff, the fact that our families are insane and whatnot. Presents are fun, and if I don't have a re-creation of Thanksgiving bundled with everything wonderful about Christmas when I get home I'll be sorely disappointed, but the thing I'm most looking forward to this year is being home with my family, whether I'm related to them by blood or not.
Irma has never been one for Christmas. Back in Italy, it was just her and her mother, and as an only child growing up in a family where there obviously wasn't much money, she never expected much. Sure she would hear about big celebrations in big families, but it was never something that she really looked forward to. Italy is a "Catholic country" like Spain, which means that Christmas is the religious portion of the holiday, and Kings' Day, the day that the Three Wisemen finally made it with their gifts to baby Jesus, is the day that everyone gives presents. She skipped over Africa to tell me about Spain with her boys; Irma and her husband owned several Italian restaurants here, a pizzeria, and a bakery, and after her husband died, she worked in a university residence hall feeding 50 students three times a day by herself. She told me that the family always tried to do something on Christmas, but the restaurants were still open and the bakery was always busy, and at the end of the long day serving hundreds of other families, there wasn't much spirit left in anyone to celebrate at home. Normally they'd open a bottle of wine, have some fried fish and maybe some chicken (Italian fish and chicken, she assured me), and get to bed. The kids always had a few presents on Kings' Day, but the family was never rich, and it was always better to have a nice meal or something made at home then something expensive which would be forgotten about in two months but which they would make payments on for the whole year.
These days, one of her sons lives his own life back in Italy, and she almost never gets over there to see him or her grandchildren. Her middle son, Neno, who lives with us, generally leaves his mom at home by herself on holidays and will go over to a friend's house, she thinks - she's not entirely sure where he ends up. Her youngest son, Juan Miguel, lives in Spain and has an English girlfriend with a huge family. He seems to love the holidays, she says, but she never goes with him, because "it's a rich family, and it's not like you can show up at the house with one hand in the other. I don't work anymore and neither does Neno, and holidays are expensive, such an effort." She also told me that she's "lost her taste for wine and beer," so there's not even that to celebrate with. These days, she says, she wakes up, starts making herself the dough for her ricotta and spinach ravioli, and gives herself the day off from housework. "Who would I go visit, honestly?" she told me. "Everyone I was friends with is dead, and so is my husband. I guess I could have a get-together in the cemetery with my ravioli." This makes us both laugh, her genuinely, and me self-consciously.
The great thing about Irma is that she's not one of those older people who feel bad for themselves and want you to do the same - in fact, she seems happy if not extatic about life, and keeps herself involved with tai chi and water aerobics three times a week. Not your typical 75 year-old. "When you grow up not really knowing something, not really celebrating a holiday, you don't miss it." An interesting point. It made me that much more thankful for my own traditions. In a year when I'm not at home much and I'm missing events like Thanksgiving, birthdays, and funerals, family and friends have been on my mind a lot. In an effort to avoid making this sound like a holiday-themed after-school special, I'll spare you anything too mushy, but really, the people are what's important. At least we have them. Life is too short to get hung-up on problems with logistics, material stuff, the fact that our families are insane and whatnot. Presents are fun, and if I don't have a re-creation of Thanksgiving bundled with everything wonderful about Christmas when I get home I'll be sorely disappointed, but the thing I'm most looking forward to this year is being home with my family, whether I'm related to them by blood or not.
Tuesday, 18 November 2008
Edinburgo
Settle in with some Spanish hot chocolate for this one, people:
I've never, ever experienced a city like Edinburgh - and that's pronounced Edinborough, for those of you, like myself, a bit out of practise with the Scottish brough. It's hard to describe the city, since it's really more of a collection of towns which kept bumping into each other rather than a a city with a consistent sense of identity. The most glaring example of this is the topographical complexity of it all, which is dominated by two ancient, volcanic mountains plopped down in the middle of everything. On one of them (Castle Rock) we find Edinburgh Castle, which, if I'm not mistaken, has it's roots in the 12th century. Today, it's picturesque, but not all that interesting - they use it as a military base. My friend Hannah, with whom I stayed while I was in the city, told me not to bother paying to go inside, so instead we climbed up the hill at night and had a spectacular view of the city. From that vantage point, we were in the middle of the original walled city, surrounded by the Flodden Wall built in the 16th century after city residents became paranoid about another English attack after the Battle of Flodden. Unfortunately for the Edinburgers (I just coined that - does that work?), the wall was only one mile by one-fourth of a mile, and absolutely no one wanted to live outside of it. This wasn't a big problem, until the city became one of the most populous in Europe in the 17th century. At that point, the residents started digging down, making a creepy "underground city" (more on that later), and building up, creating some of the first skyscrapers at around 14 stories. Thankfully at about the same time, the British were basically in control of everything anyway, so they built a bridge over the loch in the middle of the city and built the New Town just outside the wall, which looks a lot like London, and opened things up a bit.
Near to my friend's dorm is Arthur's Seat, a really, really big hill which is covered in lush, green golfing grass. It's the epitome of the craggy Scottish landscape, and offers great views over the city. It's name actually comes from the corruption of some Scottish gaelic construction, but it's fun to think that it refers to King Arthur. You can literally be in a Starbucks one minute, swing by the local H&M, and ten minutes later be hiking in the middle of this wind-ravaged, rocky, natural park. It used to belong to the royal family as the hunting grounds attached to Holyrood Palace, the Queen's official residence when she's in Scotland, but it's open now. The palace was pretty cool, too, as it was the former home of Mary Queen of Scots, and is now the site of the Queen's famous Garden Party. From the top of Arthur's Seat (which my friend and I were nearly blown off of - we've got a picture of us hanging on to our jackets, which are sticking out parallel to the ground while we were pelted by mist yet, strangely, didn't get wet - welcome to Scottish weather...) I could see the coastline and the seaport of Leith, still all part of Edinburgh. On the way down, we passed through Duddingston, an ancient little village in the heart of the city at the base of the former hunting grounds, with, they say, the oldest pub in Scotland. This is in the middle of a very modern city!
This is the famous café where JK Rowling started writing the Harry Potter books. I became a bit disillusioned with her when I saw the view out of the back of the place (see picture below), which spoke volumes as to the inspiration for much of her work. It's OK, though, I love the books anyway.
That's Edinburgh Castle in the background. Click on this guy.
I also made my way to Roslin, a little town in the country outside of the city made famous by the book The DaVinci Code and the recent movie adaptation with Tom Hanks. In it you'll find Rosslyn Chapel, which is without a doubt one of the most magical places I've ever been. It's a chapel that was constructed through a partnership between the Knights Templar (an ancient religious order) and (perhaps) the Freemasons in the middle of the 15th century, and every single surface in it is covered in exquisite carvings, codes, and secret meanings. There are, obviously, hundreds of legends to go with it all, but perhaps the most intriguing is that the Holy Grail, or perhaps the body/head of Christ, is hidden in the secret chamber under the chapel that they found with sonar but which no one can seem to find a way into. I was lucky enough to be late for the tour, so I had the whole outside of the chapel to myself while 500 tourists packed into the church, and got in there again when it was nearly empty. Afterwards, I wandered around the graveyard and countryside, down to the crumbling Roslin Castle, hidden in the woods near a brook. It was pretty surreal. They are not happy to let you take pictures inside the chapel, but here's one from Wikipedia:
Now, originally, I was supposed to travel to Edinburgh with three friends from my program and my friend Steve who's in Oxford for the year, but through a series of events, I ended up flying with only one friend of mine from the program here in Granada, who was also going to visit a friend studying in the city. We got off the plane, and since I had a hotel for that first night by myself, decided that we would all meet up later in the night. That was before I realized that neither of the cellphones I had with me would work, and that I had no way to call anyone. I ran into a Boots pharmacy, the only thing open at around 10:00 at night there, and asked to buy a phonecard. Thirty minutes and several renditions of "All I Want for Christmas" by Mariah Carey later, they had located one for me (apparently, in Edinburgh as in much of Europe without the benefit of Thanksgiving as a buffer, the Christmas decorations have been up since September, and the night that I stopped in was a special "VIP Shopping Evening," the only reason the store was open). Not that my phonecard helped me to call Julianne, because her phone didn't work either. Needless to say, that first night I had a beer and cheeseburger in a pub by myself, and I resigned myself to not seeing my friend for the weekend. However, after I toured the chapel and had walked around a while, I was hungry, and in need of a pub. I stopped at the only option in town, and was shocked while sitting at the bar to notice Julianne and her friend walk in the door. It was the one and only time I saw her that weekend, but the coincidence, the fact that we met up in a tiny pub in a tiny town outside of the city, was creepy.
What else happened that weekend? I saw the James Bond movie because it was released in the UK before anywhere else and, finally, was a movie that was not dubbed, but the script was bad and it was more like a Bourne Identity movie than a Bond flick. Worth seeing, but a little disappointing. We went on a ghost tour of some of the underground vaults beneath the city where plague victims were thrown and where the poor lived when the city became overpopulated. It was more informative than scary, except when we were in one room in particular, where there is said to lurk the "Southbridge Entity," and it was really, really cold. Spooky. Hannah and I cooked twice, the first time improvising with some chicken and herbs that I didn't eat much of because I was full from the pub but was still quite tasty, and the next morning a lovely tomato and cheese omlette with crumpets. I was impressed with our skills. I also discovered that I own a drug store in the city.
I think I enjoyed Edinburgh more than any other city I've visited in Europe on this trip. It's got an amazing combination of city and country, mountain and sea, creepy-spooky-scary-Halloweeny architecture and stories about body-snatchers, and lovely, warm people. It was a good time.
I've never, ever experienced a city like Edinburgh - and that's pronounced Edinborough, for those of you, like myself, a bit out of practise with the Scottish brough. It's hard to describe the city, since it's really more of a collection of towns which kept bumping into each other rather than a a city with a consistent sense of identity. The most glaring example of this is the topographical complexity of it all, which is dominated by two ancient, volcanic mountains plopped down in the middle of everything. On one of them (Castle Rock) we find Edinburgh Castle, which, if I'm not mistaken, has it's roots in the 12th century. Today, it's picturesque, but not all that interesting - they use it as a military base. My friend Hannah, with whom I stayed while I was in the city, told me not to bother paying to go inside, so instead we climbed up the hill at night and had a spectacular view of the city. From that vantage point, we were in the middle of the original walled city, surrounded by the Flodden Wall built in the 16th century after city residents became paranoid about another English attack after the Battle of Flodden. Unfortunately for the Edinburgers (I just coined that - does that work?), the wall was only one mile by one-fourth of a mile, and absolutely no one wanted to live outside of it. This wasn't a big problem, until the city became one of the most populous in Europe in the 17th century. At that point, the residents started digging down, making a creepy "underground city" (more on that later), and building up, creating some of the first skyscrapers at around 14 stories. Thankfully at about the same time, the British were basically in control of everything anyway, so they built a bridge over the loch in the middle of the city and built the New Town just outside the wall, which looks a lot like London, and opened things up a bit.
Near to my friend's dorm is Arthur's Seat, a really, really big hill which is covered in lush, green golfing grass. It's the epitome of the craggy Scottish landscape, and offers great views over the city. It's name actually comes from the corruption of some Scottish gaelic construction, but it's fun to think that it refers to King Arthur. You can literally be in a Starbucks one minute, swing by the local H&M, and ten minutes later be hiking in the middle of this wind-ravaged, rocky, natural park. It used to belong to the royal family as the hunting grounds attached to Holyrood Palace, the Queen's official residence when she's in Scotland, but it's open now. The palace was pretty cool, too, as it was the former home of Mary Queen of Scots, and is now the site of the Queen's famous Garden Party. From the top of Arthur's Seat (which my friend and I were nearly blown off of - we've got a picture of us hanging on to our jackets, which are sticking out parallel to the ground while we were pelted by mist yet, strangely, didn't get wet - welcome to Scottish weather...) I could see the coastline and the seaport of Leith, still all part of Edinburgh. On the way down, we passed through Duddingston, an ancient little village in the heart of the city at the base of the former hunting grounds, with, they say, the oldest pub in Scotland. This is in the middle of a very modern city!
This is the famous café where JK Rowling started writing the Harry Potter books. I became a bit disillusioned with her when I saw the view out of the back of the place (see picture below), which spoke volumes as to the inspiration for much of her work. It's OK, though, I love the books anyway.
That's Edinburgh Castle in the background. Click on this guy.
I also made my way to Roslin, a little town in the country outside of the city made famous by the book The DaVinci Code and the recent movie adaptation with Tom Hanks. In it you'll find Rosslyn Chapel, which is without a doubt one of the most magical places I've ever been. It's a chapel that was constructed through a partnership between the Knights Templar (an ancient religious order) and (perhaps) the Freemasons in the middle of the 15th century, and every single surface in it is covered in exquisite carvings, codes, and secret meanings. There are, obviously, hundreds of legends to go with it all, but perhaps the most intriguing is that the Holy Grail, or perhaps the body/head of Christ, is hidden in the secret chamber under the chapel that they found with sonar but which no one can seem to find a way into. I was lucky enough to be late for the tour, so I had the whole outside of the chapel to myself while 500 tourists packed into the church, and got in there again when it was nearly empty. Afterwards, I wandered around the graveyard and countryside, down to the crumbling Roslin Castle, hidden in the woods near a brook. It was pretty surreal. They are not happy to let you take pictures inside the chapel, but here's one from Wikipedia:
Now, originally, I was supposed to travel to Edinburgh with three friends from my program and my friend Steve who's in Oxford for the year, but through a series of events, I ended up flying with only one friend of mine from the program here in Granada, who was also going to visit a friend studying in the city. We got off the plane, and since I had a hotel for that first night by myself, decided that we would all meet up later in the night. That was before I realized that neither of the cellphones I had with me would work, and that I had no way to call anyone. I ran into a Boots pharmacy, the only thing open at around 10:00 at night there, and asked to buy a phonecard. Thirty minutes and several renditions of "All I Want for Christmas" by Mariah Carey later, they had located one for me (apparently, in Edinburgh as in much of Europe without the benefit of Thanksgiving as a buffer, the Christmas decorations have been up since September, and the night that I stopped in was a special "VIP Shopping Evening," the only reason the store was open). Not that my phonecard helped me to call Julianne, because her phone didn't work either. Needless to say, that first night I had a beer and cheeseburger in a pub by myself, and I resigned myself to not seeing my friend for the weekend. However, after I toured the chapel and had walked around a while, I was hungry, and in need of a pub. I stopped at the only option in town, and was shocked while sitting at the bar to notice Julianne and her friend walk in the door. It was the one and only time I saw her that weekend, but the coincidence, the fact that we met up in a tiny pub in a tiny town outside of the city, was creepy.
What else happened that weekend? I saw the James Bond movie because it was released in the UK before anywhere else and, finally, was a movie that was not dubbed, but the script was bad and it was more like a Bourne Identity movie than a Bond flick. Worth seeing, but a little disappointing. We went on a ghost tour of some of the underground vaults beneath the city where plague victims were thrown and where the poor lived when the city became overpopulated. It was more informative than scary, except when we were in one room in particular, where there is said to lurk the "Southbridge Entity," and it was really, really cold. Spooky. Hannah and I cooked twice, the first time improvising with some chicken and herbs that I didn't eat much of because I was full from the pub but was still quite tasty, and the next morning a lovely tomato and cheese omlette with crumpets. I was impressed with our skills. I also discovered that I own a drug store in the city.
I think I enjoyed Edinburgh more than any other city I've visited in Europe on this trip. It's got an amazing combination of city and country, mountain and sea, creepy-spooky-scary-Halloweeny architecture and stories about body-snatchers, and lovely, warm people. It was a good time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)