And virtue shall triumph at last...

Spring Break

Sarah's family and I piled into a rented car and headed south for Andalucia.

La Mancha:

Despite a few setbacks, like running into a curb and getting a flat tire before the car even got to our apartment and getting lost every few miles, we had an awesome trip.

First, we stopped by a little town in La Mancha, humming, "I am I, Don Quijote..." to see a bunch 16th century windmills alongside a castle whose age

I can't remember. The scenery was beautiful and we walked through the castle, currently undergoing restoration.

I got pretty terrified towards the top, because I'm afraid of heights, but Sarah was brave enough to climb all over the battlements.

Granada and the Alhambra:

Katie, me, Sarah, and her mom in the Alhambra.

Overlooking a fountain in one of the gardens.

The Alhambra is probably one of my favorite things in Spain so far, though it's hard to compare night clubs and cities. It's a complex of buildings - a city, a palace, a mosque, bath houses, and lush gardens - that were the stronghold for the Muslims in Spain until I believe Carlos I took over and built his own palace on part of the site (what a stupid idea - it looked tacky in comparison). The walk through the Alhambra and Generalife was beautiful and inspiring. It was cold and rainy, but it didn't matter to me. We also visited the cathedral in Granada where Queen Isabella, who unified Spain under one government and sent Christopher Colombus off to India, are buried.

Cartejma:

The second night of our road trip, we stayed in a tiny town near Ronda called Cartejima. It sits in the mountains and has about 140 people. A hippy British guy runs a hostal bed and breakfast (El Refugio, the Refuge, if you're curious), which turned out to be one of the coolest places I've ever stayed. We had a great night, even if we woke up to the blaring horn music from the church at 7am for Good Friday.

As we drove into the city, a flock of sheep crossed our path, and we saw this baby lamb stumble after its mother and struggle to keep up with her. It was so adorable. Spring's here, I guess!

Cueva de las Pilas

We tried to visit a cave where a farmer discovered paintings over 10,000 years old. Unfortunately, it was full both times we tried to go there. Worse yet - we had to climb halfway up a mountain on a narrow, winding path with deathly drops just over the edge AND NO HAND RAILING to get there. I survived, barely. In this picture, Sarah and Katie are smiling and I am terrified.

Sevilla (Seville) and Holy Week:

We got to Sevilla just as preparations for the Good Friday procession were underway. Holy Week is a big deal in Spain, and the biggest processions take place in Sevilla. We learned that all of the Catholic churches in Sevilla dress in different colors, and begin the procession at their respective churches. They meet up when they go through the cathetdral. The costumes look like the klan, so it was definitely a culture shock moment to see them marching through the streets.

At the cathedral in Sevilla, we saw what are supposed to be the remains of Christopher Colombus. I also think it was the first time I've seen flying buttresses (that I've noticed). Very cool city. We didn't stay too long because we had to get out before the procession began or we wouldn't be able to leave until very late, and we had many more miles to cover before the end of the night.

Arcos de la Frontera

Our last hotel was in Arcos, and although we didn't spend much time there, Sarah's dad snapped this beautiful picture of the town.

Castle of Lunch:

As we headed back to Madrid, we noticed a castle alongside the road. It was marked with only one sign. We drove up to it and found it open. A few men were working on it, and there was a sign that talked about its origins and history, but there were no markers besides that. We were able to walk around it freely. It's not only amazing that so much of it was still standing but that this kind of thing could just be sitting there without being a major tourist attraction. I guess that's what happens when you have a lot of fourteenth century castles lying around.

After climbing three (or four, depending on how crazy the individual) stories into it, the five of us ate lunch in the middle of the open courtyard. Beautiful day.

Holy Toledo

This is us waiting in the train station in Madrid. Buying tickets isn't easy. It seems like I spent ten hours in line trying to get tickets to Toledo (only a 30-minute train ride), because by the time we got to the front of the line, the train would be full. We had to come back several times, but we finally got things together. The train station itself includes a jungle complete with a pond full of hundreds of mating turtles.
Toledo is a beautiful town on a hill surrounded on three sides by rivers. It was a fortress occupied at different points by pretty much everyone - Romans, Visigoths, Jews, Christians, and Muslims. The complicated architecture and lore make it a fascinating city. The bridge was originally built by the Romans, destroyed in the 11th or 12th century in a flood, and rebuilt. We liked it so much that we came back, and we'll be visiting one more time before we leave since it is such a cheap and beautiful trip. There's a corny tram ride that goes through the city's narrow streets and tells stories about the buildings, weaving in bits of myth and poetry. My favorite part is when it says that Toledo has been a "harmonious crossroads of cultures" and then follows up with how "The church is built on the site of the mosque" and "This arch was built from the tombstones from the Muslim cemetary". My second favorite part is how it tells that the pelican was used in sacrifice symbolism because it is the only bird that will eat its own flesh to feed its young.

Partly because of its crusade history, it is also famous for its swords and knives. Sarah's dad found a knife and sword shop and bought a knife for carving violins. He was also nice enough to buy us a beautiful kitchen knife that I have been enjoying ever since. I've become a chopping addict though, and I'm finding ways to add vegetables to things I wouldn't have bothered with normally. Who thought that a knife from Toledo would be good for our health?

Differences in College Life

Colleges don't have dorms and students don't really go away to college, they usually live with parents or relatives and commute. College is also WAAY cheaper here. At the public law/economics/business university that houses our study abroad program, tuition is 700 euro (about $1000) a year. (We are paying upwards of $8000 for one semester here, grr!) Also, the job market in Spain is awful and most people live with their parents until they're at least 25, and staying at home until 30 is not at all uncommon. Since college is cheap, lots of people go, but even with an advanced degree as an architect or engineer, young college graduates may not make more than 1000 euros a month.

However, very few students work until they're finished with school. Our Spanish teacher said that she didn't get her first job until she was 22 or so. Spanish students spend a lot of time going out, and often stay out late at bars, but don't really hang out at home since not many have their own apartments.

Relationships are also very public, people are always making out on the metro or on the street. It would be gross in the U.S., but a girl told me that people will think something's weird if two people are dating but their friends never see them touching or making out with each other.

Drinking, of course, is much different. Spain does have a legal drinking age, 18, but I've never seen it enforced. Bars, clubs, and restaurants don't card. Wine is very cheap. It costs about 1 to 3 euro a bottle, and comes with lunch at the cafeteria at school. Even though drinking is commonplace, being drunk isn't cool or acceptable like it is in the U.S. People go out all night partying, but would just think you're an idiot of you drink so much that you lose control of yourself. It's certainly a change from U of Iowa.

Art Museums

Anne´s mom has been in Madrid with us for the last week or so visiting, so we´ve had fun going to all the cool stuff downtown. The last two days we went to the Prado and the Museo Reina Sofia, the two big art museums in Madrid. The Prado has older artworks and the Reina Sofia has more modern art, including Picasso´s Guernica and a lot of art by Salvador Dali. Here are some of our favorite pieces:

The Prado:

Cheeseburger from Paradise

It´s a little hard to tell in this reproduction, but this painting is actually one of the first examples of product placement. In the painting, St. Paul the hermit´s prayer is answered when a crow comes from heaven and delivers a cheeseburger to him. The miracle is much more dramatic in real life, though. I advise going to the Prado yourself.

Mythology:

My favorite paintings were a couple by Velazquez and Rubens that depicted different myths. I had fun because we had studied a bunch of the same paintings in my classical mythology class. Here are a couple of my favorites.

Watch out, Venus

In this painting, Apollo the messenger god arrives at Vulcan´s forge to tell Vulcan that his wife, Venus, has been messing around with Mars, the god of War. Vulcan decides to get even and forges a magical net that he uses to catch the two in the act and trap them.

The Judgement of Paris - Peter Paul Reubens

In this painting, Athena, Aphrodite, and Hera get in a fight over who is the most beautiful. They pick a man named Paris, give him a golden apple marked ¨beauty¨and tell him to give it to the most beautiful goddess. Of course, being goddesses, they also all bribe him. Athena offers Paris success in war if he chooses her, Aphrodite offers him the most beautiful woman in the world, and Hera offers him greatness. Predictably, Paris chooses Aphrodite. Unfortunately, the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Troy, is already married. Aphrodite makes Helen fall in love with Paris, and the Trojan War begins.

The Reina Sofia - Guernica

The Reina Sofia was huge and we didn´t get to see nearly all of it before we were pooped. The pieces by Picasso and Dali were neat. Probably the most famous piece of art there is Guernica by Picasso:

Guernica is huge, it takes up a whole wall. The story behind it is that Hitler wanted to test out a new type of bomb, so Franco gave him permission to bomb a city in northern Spain (I think in the Basque country, but I´m not sure) without repercussions. Picasso was exiled to France at this point in time, and painted this painting. It was shown in the World´s Fair in France and then was on display in France, but has only recently been allowed into Spain.

The museum also had a series of photographs on display by Dora Maar that were taken in Picasso´s studio while he was painting Guernica. The photos show the progression of the work from sketches to its final form. These are especially interesting because the painting was a lot different in its earlier stages. For instance, the bull on the left was a whole figure and fairly normal looking. The hand at the bottom with the broken sword was part of an entire body that extended one fist up into the air, and the horse head in the middle was pointing down. The transformation as he added layers was really interesting.

Marbella explained

For those I haven't bragged to yet, here's a little more about Marbella:

My mom works for Marriott part time, which helps pay for our horse, but also has the awesome benefit of great discounts on Marriott hotels. This weekend, and last weekend, we went to Marbella, which is on the south coast of Spain and has a beach resort that we got to stay at for about a quarter of the normal price.

Madrid is on a plateau and even though it's warmer than the midwest, it's still only about 40-55 degrees this time of year. Marbella, however, is about 70 now and on the beach with palm trees and sun. It's very close to Gilbraltar and Morocco. We were thinking about going to Morocco, but we decided to have another lazy day on the beach instead.

All of the pictures under "pictures from Marbella" are of us at the resort, except for the one with the country side, which is a picture of the olive trees taken from the bus on the way down South.

The Food Post

If it seems like all we do is talk about food, it’s probably because it’s become our number one pastime. I’m going to devote an entire post to food so that it looks intentional. We cook almost every day – it’s inexpensive and fun. I’ve learned to make a whole lot of new dishes. Most have been good, and a few were terrible. Kaiyan requested more food posts, so we're justified in writing about it again!

Brownies again

Our dangerous brownie shortage inspired us to take action and try to make them from scratch. I (Anne) found a recipe online using baking chocolate, but tragically, our oven was too hot as usual and the outside quickly burned. Fortunately, my genius presented itself. I cut the brownies into a bunch of pieces according to how cooked they were, threw away the burned outside, and baked the soggy middle again. We assembled the pathetic pieces on a plate and covered everything with sauce made from the leftover chocolate bar. Before serving, we threw it in the oven for a few minutes and served it to our friends in pieces with chocolate ice cream. We told them it was ‘chocolate lava cake’. It was fantastic! No one guessed that they were really eating burned brownies.

Cookies

To celebrate Carnaval, Sarah and I decided to cook another thing we can’t find anywhere in Spain: chocolate chip cookies. We were really proud of ourselves for finding all of the ingredients, a few of which – baking soda and vanilla -- we could only get in specialty stores. Brown sugar was also a problem. Sarah cut up a chocolate bar to substitute for chocolate chips, and we were really excited. Then, they came out of the oven. I can’t begin to describe how horrible they tasted. The brown sugar here is completely different, and it’s not just an aesthetic difference like we had hoped. The vanilla is more of a syrup than anything. We were crestfallen.

But we’re optimistic again. Sugar cookies don’t call for brown sugar. Would anyone be willing to post a good recipe for soft sugar cookies?

Oh my darlin’

Clementines! Tropical fruits are abundant here, and clementines have risen in status to become my second favorite fruit (after strawberries). They’re like oranges, but adorable (about half the size) and a little sweeter. Every time I peel one and eat the mini wedges, I feel like I’m in kindergarten again and it’s time for snacks.


Wait, potato chips?

I never liked potato chips much, but they’re really good here because they’re made with olive oil. They're also about 500 calories a serving, but it's hard to figure out how big a serving is anyway, since I don't know what "25 grams" means. I figure the whole bag is most likely single serving size.

Pictures from Marbella