Archive for ◊ November, 2008 ◊

28 Nov 2008 More Gaudí Observations
Author: Terran |  Category: History and Archaeology  | 2 Comments

Susan posted a lovely overview of our trip to Barcelona and falling in love with Gaudí’s architecture.  I don’t have a huge amount of text to add on this — she’s said a lot of what I felt as well.  But I wanted to point out some architectural details that caught my fancy and that Susan hasn’t already reported.  So this is mostly pictures.  Just stuff that randomly intrigued me — don’t expect any rhyme or reason.

more…

27 Nov 2008 Travel inefficiencies
Author: Terran |  Category: Daily Life  | Leave a Comment

As certified cheapskates, we want to be as economic as possible in most of our lives, and especially when we travel.  Our goal is to see as much cool stuff as we can, while not breaking the bank in the process.  So we cook for ourselves when we can, often stay at hostels, take public transit when possible, etc.

But we’ve discovered that you just have to accept a certain amount of “economic inefficiency” when traveling.  Indeed, sometimes it’s not only necessary, but welcome. more…

25 Nov 2008 Amazing Modernista Weekend (Or all Gaudi most of the time)
Author: Susan |  Category: History and Archaeology, People, Places and Sights  | 6 Comments

So, we’re back from Barcelona.

We went there specifically to visit our good friends Jared and Julia and their new son Zander, who are there on Jared’s sabbatical.  Jared and Terran started UNM at the same time, and by chance we ended up both spending the first half of sabbatical in the same country.  We had a wonderful time visiting, and it was great to spend time just hanging out with friends.  Unfortunately, the picture we took of us (sans Terran) completely failed to come out, or I’d post it here.  Sigh.  We should have thought to take more pictures together, but we were having a good time visiting and didn’t think of it.

So, I have heard that Barcelona is a grand old city, much older than Madrid, which really only dates as a city of significance to the 1700s.  So I expected to see a lot more old architecture.  But I completely failed to realize that Barcelona’s architectural claim to fame is Gaudi the Modernista.  So, instead of looking at more old buildings, we spent a lot of time looking at (relatively) NEW buildings.

Now, I have to say that I’m not generally a fan of weird modern architecture.  MIT, for example, is all about impractical ultramodern buildings now that it has recovered from its craze for large concrete blocks.  These buildings are wild to look at, but the all seem to be the kind of thing that is great to look at but lousy to try to use: poor acoustics, bad ventilation, unusable office spaces, no privacy, you name it.  And usually these things aren’t just mild annoyances but actual work-stoppers.  Before we left, they were planning to build a cubical farm for grad students out of cardboard.  No foolin’.  I don’t know how that worked out.

But I have to say that Gaudi absolutely blew me away.  Now THIS is a man who got it right.  Some of his buildings look like Chihuly seaforms or stranger, but he put meticulous care into the practicalities of life: ventilation, privacy, direction of natural and artificial light, chimney exhaust, air direction so that you don’t smell the clothes that are hung up to dry, all of it.  Exotically beautiful AND impeccably practical.  I didn’t know you could have both together.  We toured his townhome Casa Botlló and were blown away.

Here are some Gaudi pictures:

La Sagrada Familia

La Sagrada Familia

Possibly Gaudi’s most famous architectural project was La Sagrada Familia, or Temple of the Holy Family.  This project was unfinished when Gaudi died in 1926, and work has been progressing in dribs and drabs until now.  We’re not sure, but we think we heard a tour guide say that it was projected for completion in 30 years.  That means that the total construction time will fall in around 150 years.

The wild thing is that with modern stoneworking techniques, the whole thing looks like it could probably be done in a year or two.  Apparently, the issue is that it’s privately funded, so the limitation is the speed of fundraising rather than technology.  I don’t know if the city of Barcelona has tried to buy it up from the private group that owns it now.  I’m sure the city would love to have control of this tourist attraction.  I have to assume that they just ain’t sellin’.

The interior features columns in different shades of stone modeled to look like trees.

Interior of La Segrada Familia

Interior of La Segrada Familia

The funny thing is that when I was talking to Dad after we got home, he immediately brought up the unfinished cathedral.  It doesn’t look like all that much work has been done on it since he was there in the 60s. If it actually gets done after we retire, we absolutely have to come out to see it.  It will be amazing.

The tour of Casa Batlló was more than we wanted to pay, but it turned out to be well worth it.

Exterior of Casa Batlló

Exterior of Casa Batlló

We think we like Gaudi’s interiors better than his exteriors.  The interior of Casa Batlló was done in underwater themes.

A chandelier in Casa Batlló

A chandelier in Casa Batlló

Oh, and we also got a chance to see the traditional Castillian dancing in front of the Barcelona Cathedral at noon on Sunday.  Apparently this has been going on for a while too because Dad saw it while he was there.  It was kind of exciting that we both got to see it.

Rings of Castilian dancers

Rings of Castilian dancers

We also visited the Gothic Barcelona Cathedral during mass.  I thought it was kind but weird that they would allow tourists come in and wander around their cathedral during services.  The cathedral has a famous cloister that was just as beautiful as it said in our tour book.  It was almost impossible to photograph, though.  Here’s an attempt to show a piece of it:

A bit of the cloister at the Barcelona Cathedral

A bit of the cloister at the Barcelona Cathedral

I’d never seen a cloister with an ornamental pond, a fountain, and a flock of (VERY mean) geese in it before.

We finished the weekend with a classical guitar concert with Jared and Julia in another old Gothic church.  The music was incredible, and old stone churches are fantastic places to listen to it.

All in all, a good time.

22 Nov 2008 In-cognates
Author: Terran |  Category: Adventures in Translation  | 2 Comments

Following up on the previous linguistic post, the other thing that we language newbies need to be wary of, of course, are words that we think we know what mean, but really don’t.  If you’ve studied another language at all — especially any Romance or Germanic languages, which have so much in common with English — you’ve run across these.  Fiendish word traps, waiting to ambush you with your ignorance.  Here are a couple I’ve noticed in the Spanish-English interface.  I’m quite sure that there are many more hiding out there, ready to zorch me.

  • Titular In English: a position having the appearance of power, but not actually having any real power or repsonsibility.  In Spanish: Title (as in job title), headline, or tenure (as in the professoriate).  In other words, something that actually has real meaning or power.
  • Constipado Sounds like a blockage of the lower intestine, doesn’t it?  Nope.  Apparently in Spanish, it means “to have a cold”.
  • Marcha Does, in fact, literally mean a march (military), among many other things (e.g., gear as in transmission).  But apparently in Madrid, in a social context, it means “lively” or “nightlife” and ir a marcha is to go out on the town.
  • Eso es Literally, “that’s it”, more loosely, “exactly”.  But if you say it quickly, you’ll discover, as the Italian student in our Spanish class did, that it sounds very much like “S.O.S.”…
  • Último/a Last.  In English, “ultimate” may technically mean the last (whence, “the rule of the antepenultimate accented syllable”), but usually we think of it as “best” or “greatest”.  (And, for geeks of a certain age, a series of addictive computer RPGs, which never seemed to actually reach el último.)

And we’re in Barcelona this weekend (more on that later), where the dominant language is Catalan, and proper means next.  (As opposed to Castellano Spanish, in which próximo/a is next.)

Also, another one for the “lingusitic minefield” category: caña means “small glass of beer” (popular order in cervezarias).  On the other hand, coño means “cunt”.  Ouch.

20 Nov 2008 Epic Technology Fail (Or: How not to buy train tickets in Spain)
Author: Susan |  Category: Mirror World  | One Comment

So, we’ve been learning a lot about how to travel in Europe by gallivanting around and getting it wrong.

For example, we spent all week trying to buy train tickets to Barcelona for the weekend.  We USED to be able to buy these online with our credit card.  This time, we kept getting an error that our transaction could not go through.  Calls to our credit card company indicated that the transaction had never even been submitted to them.  Combine this with the fact that a normal experience on the Renfe website is a minor nightmare: it can’t remember what language it is using, and it constantly forgets your search results.

After a lot of growling and gnashing of teeth, we did some searching around to figure out what might be wrong.  And we found some enlightening and colorful descriptions of the Renfe website.

Trip Advisor says: “The website is a bit surreal. It is like Alice in Wonderland, where nothing seems to be what it really is.”

Other sites indicate that things will work and fail to work apparently randomly, so don’t take it too seriously.

Additionally, it turns out that Spanish credit cards actually have more security features than American ones.  Sites may just blindly try to communicate the Spanish protocol to your American credit card company and get confused.

New solution?  Just walk down the street to a travel agent and pay a 2€ fee to have them buy and print the tickets for you.  Yes, a travel agent.  You remember those.

19 Nov 2008 Linguistic minefields
Author: Terran |  Category: Adventures in Translation  | One Comment

So we’ve all heard about those linguistic traps for the newbies to a given language.  Words and idioms that are almost, but not quite, pronounced or structured identically, but with embarassingly different meanings.  Like the Japanese words for “cute” and “godzilla ugly” that differ only by the length of a vowel sound.  shudder Or John F. Kennedy’s classic faux pas, “I am a jelly donut”.  (“Resident of Berlin” differs from “Jelly donut originating in Berlin” only by an article.)

Since Susan and I are struggling to learn intro Spanish, we’ve been trying to keep an eye out for some of these.  So far, we’ve identified only a couple of clear ones, though I’m sure that there are many more out there waiting to trap us.  ;-)

  • Año means “year”, while ano means “anus”.  Yay.  There’s an easy one to screw up while describing yourself.
  • If you’ve had a few years of French in High School (as both of us have), you would be tempted to pronounce the European city Paris as “pah-ree”.  However, your Spanish instructor will point out that en español, those sounds are interpreted as “parí”, meaning “I gave birth”.  Not the best way to describe your recent holiday trip.

We have also been running the reverse exercise: what are the linguistic traps in English?  It’s hard to figure them out as a native speaker, of course, because the words are so transparently different to us.  But we did notice that “can’t” differs from a very naughty word only by a vowel sound.  ;-)

Any other ideas out there?  Or suggestions on other Spanish traps to beware of?

17 Nov 2008 A few more things that that are not like the others
Author: Susan |  Category: Mirror World  | Leave a Comment

So here are a few more Mirror World tidbits about Madrid:

Almost all the doors to businesses open inward, like a house.  This would be against fire code in the US, I think, because if there were a stampede out of the building, everyone would be trapped against a door they can’t open.  However, a FEW doors open outward.  The door to International House, where we take our Spanish class, opens outward.  Common visual signals are also wrong, since there are often decorative pull-handles on the push side.  So we’re pretty much guaranteed to try to open every door the wrong way first.

In the US, if you’re in a car planning to turn left or right, and the crosswalk over your destination street has pedestrians on it, you generally don’t turn until the path is clear.  In Madrid, cars turn anyway, then stop with their bumper just into the crosswalk, and sit there half in the intersection until you get out of their way.  When I see this happening, I always think the car is going to hit me.

Most grocery stores don’t have pushcarts.  Instead, they have little plastic baskets on wheels that you tug behind you like a rollerbag.  A lot of people also have light canvass rollerbags that they use to carry larger purchases home on foot.  You usually can’t take these rollerbags into stores, so there are places just inside the door for people to lock them up with bike locks.

Fewer things are self-serve.  One of the grocery stores we use employs a full-time grocer to bag, weigh, and put prices on your produce choices.  A lot of stores are small, with the majority of their stock in the back, and you’re expected to request what you want from the shopkeeper.  This is a bit of a challenge for the language-impaired.  Our experience buying a litter box and supplies for our soon-to-arrive cats with no Spanish was pretty amusing.

Visa/Mastercard is definitely not everywhere you want to be.  The economy is almost entirely cash.  In the US, we generally carry around a small amount of cash and expect to use our credit card for most purchases.  Here, most places don’t take credit cards, and some that do won’t take an International one.  This probably contributes to Madrid’s high rate of petty crime, since people carry around so much more cash.  When Terran’s pocket was picked, we were carrying at least 3x the cash we would have expected to carry in the US.

The order of operations for the ATM is different than we expect.  After you finish making your request, the machine spits out your card first, then whirs for a bit, then finally spits out your cash, followed by your receipt.  This was very disconcerting the first couple of times but, you have to admit, it seems like a reasonable protocol.  Probably reduces the number of times that cards get left behind by accident.

A common kitchen implement in cooking stores is a special slicing rack for ham legs.  This should not have been a surprise, but it was.

10 Nov 2008 Our big souvenir
Author: Susan |  Category: Food!, Places and Sights  | 2 Comments

So, SB and I aren’t big souvenir collectors.  We tend to enjoy writing travel diaries (like this one!) and taking pictures over buying items that will remind us of a place.  That is, unless we find EXACTLY the right item.

So, we have our souvenir from our trip to Spain.  It’s a sentoku knife of made of Damascus steel.  (A sentoku knife is a Japanese chef’s knife — almost the same as a normal chef’s knife, but with a slightly different shape that we’re geeky enough to prefer.)  We bought it on our trip to Toledo on Saturday.

You might want to click the picture to really see the wavy patterns in the steel.

Damascus steel cooking knife from Toledo

Damascus steel cooking knife from Toledo

Toledo is THE place for Damascus steel.  Toledo is filled with shops selling all variety of Toledo steel: fancy tableware, hunting knives, full plate armor, decorative artwork, you name it.  And let’s not forget swords — replica swords from all nationalities and time periods.  In fact, many of the ornamental swords for our armed forces come from there.

And for the more media-minded, movie prop reproductions like these from The Lord of the Rings.

Reproduction helmet and gauntlet of Sauron

Reproduction helmet and gauntlet of Sauron

But the cool thing about a chef’s knife is that Terran and I cook like crazy people.  We’ve been whining about the lack of a good cooking knife in our apartment since we got here.  This is something that is special to the area, pretty, and we’ll use it constantly, even when we get home.  That’s an exciting kind of souvenir, something that kind remind you of a cool place that you will use almost every day.

06 Nov 2008 More food explorations
Author: Terran |  Category: Food!  | 2 Comments

We’ve been meaning to post more food observations for some time… more…

06 Nov 2008 Great events
Author: Terran |  Category: World views  | 2 Comments

I don’t generally want to mire this blog in politics — it’s really a travel journal.  But Obama’s victory is big enough that it does actually end up being a travel observation. more…