Madrid

It’s fairly reasonable to say that Catalonia is not “typically” Spanish. Of course, a lot of people around here would contest that it isn’t even Spanish at all. So it was interesting to go to Madrid, a place which certainly can be considered culturally Spanish. It has all the typical food and drink, it has the bullfighting, it has many monuments of the most famous cultural and historical figures of Spain, and Castilian reigns uncontested as the main language. It was certainly interesting to see the differences between Madrid and Barcelona, the former being the centre of Spain (both geographically and politically) and the latter being the cultural and political centre of Catalonia (both as a comunidad autónoma within Spain and as a potential country of its own).

I left the school in Prats this Thursday and went to Manresa and from there to Barcelona to catch my night train. I’ve travelled on such trains before, but this time it seemed even worse than I had remembered them being. I had to share a cramped compartment with seven other people with hardly any leg room and a fairly uncomfortable seat. The result was that I got hardly any sleep, and arrived at Madrid at 7:30am in the morning without feeling well-rested at all. Alas, this lack of sleep was to continue over the entire weekend due to some horrendous snoring by a group of Puerto Ricans in my hostel room and another uncomfortable night train back to Catalonia on the Sunday.



Despite this, I had a very enjoyable weekend in the city. After checking in to the hostel I was staying at (which was very reasonably priced and well-located), I headed for the Puerta del Sol (“Gate of the Sun”), perhaps the most famous part of the city. It is a bustling square with quite a few different notable monuments, including the building that houses the President of Madrid and the local government of the city, a statue of King Carlos III, the (apparently famous) Tio Pepe sign, a statue of a bear with a tree (the heraldic symbol of Madrid), and a plaque marking the centre (kilómetro cero) of the Spanish network of roads.





I had wanted to take a day out of my time in Madrid and visit Toledo, but there were so many things to do in the capital that I decided not to. Plus, I’d like to visit Toledo properly and book accommodation there rather than trying to squeeze everything into a day trip from Madrid. The city has many pleasant parks (the Parque del Retiro being the most noteworthy) and a plethora of interesting plazas and monuments. There is also a large number of impressive museums, such as the art museums of El Prado (with works by artists such as El Greco, Rafael and Botticelli) and the Reina Sofia (with more modern artists such as Dali and Picasso, which I found more interesting), and an impressive archaeological museum as well. The Palacio Real (Royal Palace) was also definitely worth a visit, as was the ancient Egyptian temple that has somehow ended up in Spain. I saw many other sights, but there really are too many things to list.





I also made sure I sampled some of the local cuisine. As well as taking the opportunity to enjoy a bit of sangria, I tried “churros” for the first time, with some melted chocolate to dip them in. Very tasty indeed!



As I said, I enjoyed my time in Madrid. It’s a place with many interesting things to see and do, and it is also a very enjoyable place to just walk around, whether it be through the parks or the vibrant main commercial street that runs through the city (the Gran Via). Nonetheless, the city seemed to lack a certain something which I can’t quite put my finger on. One of the problems is that although it has many great sights, it doesn’t really have a monument that stands out from the rest in terms of reputation and impact, such as, for example, the Eiffel Tower in Paris or the Alhambra in Granada. And it just seems to lack the atmosphere and character of Barcelona. I think part of the reason is that Madrid was picked as the capital city of Spain in the 16th century by the Spanish monarchy and it was then expanded and developed very quickly, so lacks the character that you might get from a more historical city which developed in a more “organic” way. Instead, many areas of the city are filled with grand and ornate buildings whose charms are somewhat artificial.

Nonetheless, I intend to return sometime next year. There are still a few things in the city that I didn’t get a chance to see, and as I mentioned I’d love to travel to Toledo, which is only about half an hour away. And although I’ve visited more impressive European capitals (and would say Barcelona, which very much feels like a capital city itself, is a nicer place), it’s certainly worth a visit.

But of course...

When the Spanish Ministerio de Educación said that they would pay us last week, what they really meant was that they weren't going to pay us last week at all...

(Will write a longer post on my trip to Madrid later on!)

Update

I haven't updated this in over a week. In part that is because I just haven't gotten around to it, but it is also because apart from work I haven't been doing much that would warrant a blog post! I am now working extra hours on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays doing private classes, which means a bit of extra money.

Speaking of which, I have been told by the Catalan Departament d'Educació that the the Ministerio de Educación in Madrid is finally going to pay me this week, and that I will get my grant for both October and November in one go. Great!

Anyway, I thought I might as well do a quick blog post now because I will be away all weekend. After finishing at the school tomorrow I will be going to Barcelona and then catching a night train to Madrid. I'll arrive nice and early (7.30am) and won't be leaving until Sunday night, so I'll have three full days there.

Depending on how much time I have, I'd like to go to Toledo, which is steeped in history and by all acounts a great place to visit. But I imagine Madrid has enough to keep me occupied for the whole time, so I might have to go to Madrid again after Christmas so I can visit anything I miss this weekend and fit in a trip to Toledo.

If nothing else this trip will be a chance to spend a few days speaking Spanish instead of Catalan! My Catalan has been improving since I got here, but my Spanish obviously hasn't improved as much since I get fewer chances to use it. On the other hand youth hostels tend to be full of people from England, Australia, America, etc who all speak English...which is even worse for my Spanish than only speaking Catalan! We shall see.

Busy few weeks ahead. Madrid this weekend, of course. Then I am going back to England the weekend after to visit the lovely folk in Durham, and then the weekend after my parents will be coming to Barcelona for my 21st birthday. All good fun, and then there will only be a couple of weeks left before I head home for Christmas and New Year!

La Fira Mediterrània

This weekend I went to the "Fira Mediterrània", a festival held in the nearby city of Manresa (the capital of the comarca - basically a county - where I am living) which consisted of music, dance and theatre from all across the Mediterranean. It was a great experience, and I got to watch and listen to some really good artists.

Although the events didn't start until 11am, I was in Manresa by about 9.20am due to the rather poor provision of public transport here on the weekends. Whereas during the week buses run between Artés and Manresa every half an hour or so until quite late, on Saturday this is reduced to a mere three buses going each way over the entire day! So my choices were either to arrive early or to arrive half way through all the events. Despite being on the verge of changing my mind when it was time to get up I dragged myself to the bus stop to get there before the start.

To be fair it was worth it. The main street of the city was lined with various stalls, ranging from local arts and crafts to various foodstuffs, and once things got going there were lots of people about, which combined with the several musical acts that played in the streets made for a great atmosphere.

I started the day off by going to a concert by "Grollers de Sa Factoria", a group from the Balearic Islands who played a mixture of funk, rock and folk music, followed by another group from the Balearic Islands called "Xaloc Música", who played a more traditional-sounding set. After these two concerts I strolled around the city listening to the aforementioned bands playing in various plazas, including a brass band listed as being from "Occitania" and another group comprised of musicians from France and the Maghreb. In a small plaza slightly out of the centre there was a concert which was described in the programme as "improvised song", which turned out to be five Catalans sitting around a table on a stage playing simple music and making up pretty nonsensical lyrics as they went.

As I was watching this (and considering whether or not I should queue for the free paella that was being offered) it began to rain heavily. This was probably only the third time it has rained since I arrived, so I can't really complain, but since it was on a day when I was outside and enjoying a festival it was a bit of a pain! I left the concert and found a sheltered place to have some lunch until the rain stopped.

The afternoon events started with a performance by "PerkImBa", a group of mainly young people whose name comes from the mixture of the words "Percussion", "Improvisation" and "Ballet". The name pretty much explains it all - the show consisted of an elaborate dance involving the use of drums and a few other instruments. I wasn't expecting much (I went as it was the only event on at the time), but it was actually a mesmerising and impressive performance. By the end there was a large crowd of spectators, and the applause lasted for a fair while.

After this I went to a really good concert called "Mar Mur", which was put on by a group of musicians from Italy and the Paisos Catalans. It had a unifying theme of immigration and the exchange of cultures across the Mediterranean, and lyrics in both Catalan and Occitan. I finished the day off with a concert by a Valencian singer who goes by the stage name of "Botifarra", and who is supposedly very well known here. It was another good concert, even if I couldn't understand the stories and jokes he was telling between songs (apart from the one joke he decided to tell in Spanish instead of Catalan). I returned today for a couple of hours with the family I'm living with to watch a couple more concerts by two Catalan folk groups, "21 BOuTONS" and "Randalleries".

It was all good fun, and very interesting to see different artists from the various cultures that surround the Mediterranean.

Incidentally, for those of you who have expressed jealousy at one point or another at the fact I am in a warm country, you can stop now. Winter has arrived in Catalonia, and it feels bloody freezing. Some areas have even had snow.

Oysters! (The Problem With Online Translators)

When I was in secondary school the language teachers always warned us about the general unreliability of online translators, and the fact that it was usually immediately obvious if one had been used.

They can be of use if you are translating a word or relatively simple phrases, but anything more complicated and it all tends to go wrong. Although some are better than others, all online translators struggle to deal with complex sentence structures and have little ability to take context into account, which is absolutely crucial if you are looking for an accurate translation. They also tend to have problems with colloquial language and sayings.

A group of my students who are taking a special module about cinema had been tasked with writing a script for a movie, which I was given today to look over and correct mistakes in the English (the language the module is taught in). It quickly became apparent that they had written it in Catalan, and then pasted it into an online translator. I could just about make out the general plot (a sordid affair involving drugs and prostitution), but large parts of the script were completely unintelligible.

My favourite parts were:

"She goes to scroll her body to the disco sweet." (When I read this I burst out laughing.)

"Oysters! If in nothing do I have between the legs...Matches you shit it, where I have the head? Has gone for me of a hair!" (Impossible to understand, but it sounds almost like the kind of language you'd find in a Shakespeare play!)

The phrase "Oysters!" confused me particularly. I asked one of the English teachers, and it is a direct translation of "ostres", which is both the Catalan word for oysters but also an exclamation that roughly translates as "damn".

Why the word for oysters is used as an exclamation, I have no idea...

VIDEOS: "Castells" (Girona)

I've now uploaded the videos I took in Girona of the "castellers". Enjoy!