Good news, I learned how to cook some classic Catalan food at a cooking class. When I get home I will have to make a big dinner for everyone! This is what we cooked as a class

Chupito de Sopa de Tomate al Aroma de Idiazábal (Tomato soup shot flavored with Idiazabal cheese)

• This is basically a variation of gazpacho but with aioli sauce, a mix of nuts garlic and parsley topping, and some cheese. And we just had a small amount so she called it a shot.

Pan con Tomate

• So easy to make but still SO delicious

Spanish Tortilla de Patatas ( Potato omelette)

• For me this dish is a little boring but during the class me and a friend but some of the extra garlic aioli on it and it was sooooo good

Paella Valencian Style ( Valencian = Vegetables and Chicken

Crema Catalana

• Basically a creme brûlée kinda thing but different. We also used mini blow torches to crystalize some sugar on top!

We all split up the work so I didn’t get to help with everything but I saw how most of it was done and have recipes for all of them!!

Soup Shot

Pan con Tomate

Tortilla

The paella cooking, I didn’t get a pic of the final product but it was a lot prettier!

The table that we ate and cooked at. We went to a place that was like a test kitchen kind of place, it was really nice in side

Working on the Crema Catalana

Working on the toppings for the soup

Preparing stuff for the Paella

View of the Albaicin

Courtyard in the Alhambra

Flamenco Dancer

Alhambra from afar

The cathedral

behind the altar

Inside the cathedral

The cathedral facade

Outside of Royal Chapel

Isabella and Columbus

So our program took a trip to the city of Granada. The city is in the south of Spain in the region known as Andalucía. Granada and the region in general are a really important part of Spain’s history.  This region is where the Moors lived and Granada specifically was the last territory occupied by the Muslims before Ferdinand and Isabella conquered it in 1492.  Just outside of Granada is town called Santa Fe, this is where Isabella finally gave in and agreed to finance Christopher Columbus’ little adventure across the Atlanticin 1492 as well. She was little busy that year and also her and Ferdinand decided to expel the Jews while they were at it. Therefore Granada is a smaller city but one with a ton of history and a lot to do.

We took a flight from Barcelona early Friday morning. After dropping off our bags we took a walking tour of the city center, the cathedral, the royal chapel and a bunch of other stuff. The Royal chapel was really cool because buried there are the Catholic Kings themselves Ferdinand and Isabella. That goes to show just how important Granada was to them. Above their grave there are two huge marble memorials for them and their daughter Juana and her husband Philip. Juana and Philip’s son was Carlos I of Spain and V of Hapsburg. He was pretty big deal, and the definition of trust fund baby inheriting both the Spanish and Austrian Empire in one big swoop. He later moved his parents’ remains from the chapel but Ferdinand and Isabella are still there.
Next was the Cathedral. I have seen a lot of Cathedral’s along this trip but this one was by far my favorite! It was beyond huge, the tour guide claimed it was the 4^th largest Cathedral but tour guides here claim a lot of things that end up being false! Even if it isn’t the 4^th largest in the world it is still huge and very impressive. The inside is also all white which makes it a lot lighter than most other cathedrals I have been in. After the tours we had lunch and then some Arab tea.

The next day we went on a tour of an area of the city known as the Albaicin. This part of the city is in the hills across from Alhambra (more about this later). It is mostly homes and restaurants built like caves into the mountainside. It is the old part of the city and is the area in which most of the Gypsy population lives. It is also where all the Flamenco shows are held. We got to a show later that night and it was a really cool experience. The show is put on in this small cave like thing with pots and pans hanging everywhere for the acoustics. Flamenco is a very emotional dance and music and was just really cool.
Finally on Sunday we visited the Alhambra. This is a Moor palace that sits on a hill overlooking the city. It is historically significant because the sultan that ruled it is the one who surrendered to Ferdinand and Isabella allowing them o fully unite Spain under Catholicism. But besides that it is just a beautiful place. The palace is well preserved and has a ton of amazing detail in the decoration. Almost everything you see is carved with some crazy design or covered in colorful tiles. There is also a lot of cool fountains or just running water throughout the palace because of the Muslim traditions for bathing. The pictures cannot really do it justice but just imagine all the small details times a million and on everything. It was super beautiful.

Besides the big things the city just had a lot of small streets that used to be silk markets but are now markets for anything you could imagine. For the most part it is things probably from Morocco so we di not buy much knowing we could get it for cheaper ourselves in Morocco in a couple of weeks.

Overall the blend of cultures was just really cool. Ferdinand and Isabella may have conquered the Moors but the Muslim culture is still very strong in the south of Spain and it is cool to see such a range of things all in one place.

Being a tourist!

Back of Cathedral

View from Roman Wall

View from Roman Wall

Església del Convent de Domènec

Ruins of a jewish home

Jewish tombstone

So european

Church converted into an Architecture museum

Gardens!

Roof of the Arab bath house

Where the fire burned!

Arab bath house

Window in the Arab bath house

looking up!

Arab bath house

Arab bath house

Arab bath house

Inside the Arab bath house

pretty city

Courtyard

Courtyard of Catherdal

Facade of Cathedral

Steps to the Cathedral

Few from top of Cathedral steps

Inside the Cathedral

Tower of Cathedral

Side entrance to cathedral!

A corner of the Cathedral

Pretty steps

Small streets are the best part of Europe

Riu Onyar

Today a group of students from my program and I took a trip to Girona. Girona is a town about an hour and 20 minutes north of Barcelona by train. It is an important city for a couple of reasons. It was inhabited by Romans then Moors, a medieval Muslim people from Northern Africa, and then finally Catalonian people. Also in 12^th century there was a large Jewish community. Therefore the city has the influence of all four cultures mixed into one. There is part of a well preserved Roman wall surrounding part of the old city, equally well preserved ruins of Arab bath houses, a beautiful Catholic Cathedral and the ruins of a Jewish quarter also known as the call. Luckily we got to see all of these things in one day.

To learn more about the Jewish influence a couple of the girls and I took our time in the small but very interesting Jewish museum in town. The most interesting thing I learned was the importance of Girona for Jewish people at the time. One Rabbi that lived in the city was instrumental in the spread of Kabbalah to Spain. From my understanding Kabbalah is a certain set of teachings adapted by this Rabbi and Judaism that is some sort of explanation of the universe. I just thought it was cool to learn that the Jewish community in Girona was that important before their expulsion because it is where this one idea emerged. Also in the museum were many large Jewish tombstones that were discovered in a cemetery outside of town. This cemetery was located on Montjuic. At first this name confused me because there is a Montjuic in Barcelona too but then I realized it translates to “Jewish Mountain” and is used in many places to describe just that. The very odd thing about this cemetery and mountain is its location had many odd religious criteria it had to meet to be suitable burying ground. Those criteria were outside city walls, in uncultivated land, on a slope and near a current of water. This meant the cemetery was a ways outside of the city and for every funeral there was a large procession in which the person and the large tomb were carried on foot to the cemetery. Unfortunately the cemetery was lost when the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, but the tombstones were later found and restored for display.

The ruins of the Arab baths were awesome as well. Basically in was five rooms. First the dressing room, then the cold room, then the warm room, and then the hot room and finally the room in which the oven and boiler were. Basically the water was kept over the burning oven and then ran through the other four rooms and progressively got colder as it got away from the oven. Its was a small a quick walk through but very pretty!

The cathedral was cool but they are starting to all look a little similar. The cool thing about this one was because we were there Sunday morning there was a service in process and the organ was playing. There were also elaborate tombs along the walls. Also there were small models that showed the progression of the church throughout the century which is always cool for me. To the side of the Cathedral there was a small courtyard and museum that had all kinds of religious artifacts. Lots of things for the alters, the hats and robes for the bishops, and lots of art. It was cool to look at but I wish we could have had a tour guide to explain the different things to us.

Lastly we took a stroll up around the Roman walls and got lots of cool views of the whole city. It was a beautiful day and they were awesome views. The wall it self was pretty cool to explore too.

Overall it was a lot of exploring small streets of the old town. It was a nice trip out of Barcelona because we kept saying to ourselves how quiet it was. I think I had not realized until then how loud the city really is all the time. It also helps that 80% of all places are closed on Sundays in Spain. Just a few restaurants open for the tourists. The break from the hustle and bustle of the city was nice and made the city feel a little more authentic.

It is a definite must see for anyone visiting the Catalonia region!

California ladies

California friends and a new German one!

So much standing on tables and singing!

I wanted to take a mug so bad but it was a 50 euro fine if you got caught!

Our tent and their menu!

A liter of beer!

Inside our “tent”. The tents are huge tho and really buildings with canvas roofs. Basically small town with stores and bathrooms and stages, just about everything!

Casually huge pretzel

We found this random small tent where people would pile on to this spinning thing and compete to stay on. When it got fast and there were only a few people left on it the workers were swing soft wrecking balls at them and throw ropes on to what was spinning to try to knock and yank people off balance. It sent a few people really flying and was quite entertaining!

more rides!

There were so many rides too!

Huge city hall looking building at one end of the festival area, littered with napping drunk people!

The tent we went to the next day!!

Scariest cops ever, and so rude! To keep peopel in line they would just walk up and push people before even asking them to step in closer. Crazy.

This was the most popular tent for American students abroad, but we decided to branch out a go somewhere different!

The entrance at night

Such a crazy weekend! Chris, some girl friends from my program in Barca and I all took the 20 hour bus trip to Munich and back. It was rough! On top of that we camped in Munich rather than stay in a hostel or hotel to save money. There was a company that provided a packaged deal with the bus ride, camping supplies and two meals a day for the whole trip. We saved some money but suffered by getting what we payed for. But what better of a time to do such a trip on the cheap than in your 20’s! Oktoberfest itself was quite the experience as well. It was in general SO much bigger than I expected. The site itself was basically a small city with in the city and the “tents” were HUGE! Chris and I got up very early and made it to the tents by 7:30 am to meet up with some friends from home and get a spot in line to beat the crowds. Glad we did that or else we would have never been able to sit down. So happy we went but also very happy to be back in Barcelona and back to the warm weather and sunshine. one weekend alone taught me I could never live there, I would freeze!
Now I want to travel more in Spain and get to all the cool sites in Barcelona. No more big trips planned yet except for one to Morocco!

Sorry it’s been so long since my last post but it has been a crazy couple of weeks! Since it’s been awhile I will just give you the highlights. I made it out of the city to this small beach town called Sitges (pronounced Siches) just a 30 min train ride south of Barcelona twice, once with all the girls from my program and once for a night with Chris. It is an adorable town with many cute shops and great places to eat and of course really nice beaches! Along the train ride there I saw many other small beach towns that I hope to get a chance to explore before it gets cold.

The other most important highlight was this past weekend was the festival of la mercé. This festival is celebrated just in Barcelona because it is a celebration of their patron saint. The weekend has two main cultural events, las castelleras or the human towers, and the correfoc, which basically means fire run. The human towers were awesome to see. Through out the whole weekend I probably saw at least 50 different towers made by different teams. Amazingly they were all a little bit different based on the number of levels, number of people in each level and general shape. There were also ones going solely for height and others making crazy pyramids. My internet is being a little slow tonight but I will upload pictures the next chance I get! Most of the towers were successful but some did fall. I saw only one that fell. Luckily the littlest girl at the top, who is at max 5 years old, got down safely but in the process of the rest of the tower coming down you could see it shaking and eventually fall. Everyone was ok and the crowd still cheered so it was not as dramatic as I expected the falls to be.

As cool as the human towers were it had nothing on the correfoc. We did a little bit of research before so that we could go prepared but we weren’t entirely sure what we were getting ourselves into. Turns out what we got ourselves into was the craziest experience I have ever had and definitely the thing to beat for my favorite thing about Barcelona. Basically what happens is there are tons and tons of certain people dressed as devils caring large sticks with twirling huge sparklers on the end. These people then run through the street chasing people and showering you in sparklers. There are also are huge dragons with even bigger sparklers attached to them spraying you down as well. It is a huge parade of people and dragons chasing people and spraying them with humungous sparklers. It is really hard to explain why it is such an experience but there is just something about running towards a person with a huge sparkler and dancing and screaming in both fear and excitement until it burns all the way through and ends in a huge bang and you run and scream in just plain fear because it sounds like you’re going to die every single time. I encourage you all to google a video of any year’s correfoc and turn your speakers up as loud as possible and then imagine that times 100 and you might understand a little bit how I felt. I did not bring my camera to this but I have friends who have videos of me running and screaming through it so I might try to post those if I can.

Besides those two things the weekend mostly consisted of a lot of firework shows and live music. Most locals say it is the best weekend of Barcelona so I encourage anyone who wants to travel to Barcelona try to do so on the weekend of this holiday!

When Im not traveling to beautiful beach towns and running through fireworks I am mostly doing school things, eating with classmates and exploring random barrios in the city. I am really enjoying getting to know the smaller areas of the city that are less touristy than others. And of course enjoying a delicious glass of sangria every once in awhile!

I am going to Munich tomorrow for Oktoberfest so I will have an update on that when I return!

In Barcelona and Catalunya September 11th is the day they celebrate their fight for independence from Spain. This year to celebrate people made a chain by holding hands that spread across the whole length of the Catalonian region, North to South which is about 250 miles. It was pretty cool to see. I saw the people live in Barcelona and there was also a large screen flipping between shots of other areas of the chain. It is clear the a desire to separate from spain is quite common here and is represented by the catalonian flag, just the red and yellow stripes, plus the blue triangle with white star. This flag is for the people who want to no longer be under Spanish rule. I don’t know a lot about the politics of it yet but will be learning it soon in class so I am excited to hear the explanation behind all the excitement and enthusiasm I saw yesterday. My professor for the sports class said the FC Barcelona is a representation on this desire to separate as well so I am super excited to learn about that connection as well. But I could tell it was true yesterday with almost 75% of the people at the rally and walking the streets were wearing jerseys in addition to all their Catalonian attire!
Overall it was a great experience and being able to witness such an important time in the Catalonian history is awesome!

This week is the first week of class! But obviously there is already a day off this week. Tomorrow September 11th is the National day of Catalonia, similar to our July 4th. However here in Barcelona the day is a political holiday in which the Catalonians who want to be independent of Spain have political demonstrations. For example tomorrow there is supposed to be a chain of people holding hands from the border of France all they way to the bottom of Catalonia. It should be super exciting to see. Most of the day the demonstrations will be peaceful but one professor warned us to not be in the downtown area in the evening because the people he referred to as “dickheads” always start riots that which the police break up with batons. According to our professor they don’t stop to ask if you are American or anything so just told us to avoid that area. It should be an interesting experience to witness.

Besides that this week so far has been pretty relaxed. I have three classes all of which are 5 students or less. It is a great opportunity to get one on one instruction especially in Spanish. I am in a Spanish language class, a Spain culture and history class, and a Spain sports and society class. So far they are all awesome!

After classes on Monday, Chris and I went on a little excursion through the Parc de Montjuic. It was all pretty amazing and beautiful. The most interesting thing to me was the huge Olympic stadium and surrounding buildings. These buildings seem basically unused now but they are huge and massive. It was like being at a Roman ruin site but it was modern buildings. It was a little surreal to me. On our way out of the park we went by the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. That is another really impressive building. I cant wait to actually go to the museum inside! We are waiting for the tourism season to die down before visiting all of the museums.

After we got back for our trip to Tarragona on Friday the group decided to do their first big night out!! We all got together first at some of the girl’s apartment which had air conditioning. Then we went and took over a small bar in the neighborhood, the 21 of us filled the place completely. Im sure the owners found our Spanglish hilarious but they seemed happy for the business. After a awhile we made our way out to the clubs that line the beach and went into one of the biggest ones, Opium. It was a fun night but played mostly american club music so we want to find smaller places in the future with hopefully some more interesting music.

After an nice nights sleep till 2 pm the next day, I got up and met up with Chris and some of his friends. We got caught in the rain on the way there but when it let up thought we should head down to the beach. It was  a great idea until it started to pour again and we were far from a metro! So we stopped at a mall and watched some pick pocketers scan the tourists purses to wait out the rain. Eventually we got to the beach and strolled along it for awhile before all heading home. After dinner we met up at a bar called Chupitos which means shots. They had at least 150 different kinds of shots to choose from. Half of them were lit on fire or covered in whip cream or full of crazy flavors. It was crazy to watch the bartenders work! And the place was tiny and packed with people it was a lot of fun. We also stopped by a place called Dow Jones in which the price of the drinks changes based on what people are buying and is supposed to be like the stock market. It’s an awesome idea but Chris and his friends think they could take it to another level of awesomeness so watch out you might see a bar just like in the states soon!

Sunday was a relaxed day. I really want to go to Park Guell so I rounded up some classmates and convinced them to go! Gaudi’s architecture is absolutely amazing I am so excited to go to Sagrada Familia and all his other awesome buildings. After the park we all had a casual lunch in the Gracia barrio and then headed home to relax before our first day of classes tomorrow!

Park Guell view

Park Guell

Park Guell

Park Guell

Ladies at Park Guell

Boys at Park Guell

Everyone!

Park Guell

Park Guell

Park Guell

Park Guell

Park Guell

Park Guell

Park Guell

Park Guell

Park Guell

Park Guell

On my second day I got up early and went to school to catch up on some of the orientation that I missed. Then everyone else joined my to to the next part of orientation in which we got our class schedules. My spanish class will be me and one other guy and the teacher. It will be like personal tutoring for 3 months it should be awesome! Then when orientation was done we had 4 hours until the larger group was going to meet up again. So my smaller group of classmates sat for quite awhile at a local kebab restaurant just chatting. It wasn’t traditional spanish food but it was delicious and different than the greek food at home! then we all walked to the apartment of three of my classmates. Their apartment is very close to the Palau Nacional which is basically a huge art museum but in itself is quite the sight. Also close to there is a old bull fighting ring that has been turned into a mall. Interestingly several people have said that there homestay senoras have expressed a lot of disgust with bull fighting so its clear the sport has lost support by the local catalonians. After hanging out for a awhile and a quick siesta we went to meet the larger group for the tour of the gothic quarter. We started at the Cathedral of Barcelona and then went through all the small streets to many other buildings that started as part of the roman colony then were added to in the medieval times and so on all the way to current times. Some of the more memorable places was the kings palace in which Ferdinand and Isabella met with Columbus after he discovered the Americas, a small church that was an evacuation site for children during the Spanish civil war but was bombed  and has the scars to prove it, and finally the current city hall and state building in a square that was surrounded by riot police because demonstrations are currently happening there everyday due to the economic crisis. It was a great taste of all the Spanish and Barcelona history that I will learn in my Spanish Heritage and Culture class this quarter! After the tour we all decided to go home get and get some rest because early in the morning we will be going on a day trip to Tarragona, another beach town about an hour south of Barcelona.

The spanish know how to sell a frame!

My question was are you supposed to have your own photo like this?

This church is dedicated a girl named Eulalia, whom at the age of 13 stood up to the Romans and was subsequently tortured 13 times before her death. The church therefore has the theme of 13 throughout the interior.

The gothic face that you see was added much later than the original church was built and is actually neo-gothic. It was added because the Sagrada Familia was being built and the Cathedral needed to be less out shined because technically it is higher in the hierarchy of the Church

This is where Ferdinand and Isabella met with Columbus

These are 100% completely preserved Roman columns

Look appetizing?

Frutas y Verduras!