Teruel y Albarracín

Last weekend we made a trip to Teruel, where I lived in Spain before. I attempted to make contact with a few old friends, but we primarily hung out with Ana Belén and her new husband, Jorge. It was sad that I didn't get to spend some time with all of my old friends, but in a single weekend, it's nearly impossible to meet up with everyone. Ana and Jorge were amazing hosts, though. They got us a hostel room across the street from their apartment, just above a tavern. They bought us all kinds of food and took us around Teruel and even to Albarracín!

We ended up taking the bus to Teruel, which was every bit as long as I remembered. We somehow arrived thirty minutes ahead of schedule, despite it still taking nearly five hours to get there. I took Susan on a quick walk through part of the city center and the Plaza del Torico so she could get a glimpse of everything. Then we doubled back and met up with Ana at the bus station.

Although her life has changed quite a bit, she seemed mostly the same. She was noticeably happier with her life (she's headed to Kansas in July to teach Spanish for the foreseeable future) and she very recently got married to her boyfriend (mostly so he could accompany her to Kansas, though they seemed to be in love). The biggest difference I noticed was that I could now understand her much better. It's not that I didn't understand her before, but I could pick up on all the slang that she was using without nearly as much trouble. I believe I was automatically tuning out some of her slang before in order to pick up on the important bits of what she was saying. I was proud of my progress.

And so it ends...

My last week in Spain was spent teaching and going to goodbye dinners. There was little time for sleep, which, in conjunction with the intense heat outside, did little to help my mental and physical state. When I did try to squeeze in a siesta, I was interrupted by the sound of open windows being forced shut and open again by the wind. I couldn't lock them shut because then I'd be too hot to sleep. As a result, I was kind of zombie-like for a solid four days. I enjoyed the company of students and colleagues and friends, but by the end of the week, I was having extreme difficulty concentrating on half the things they were saying. And while I had absolutely nothing planned outside of a few relaxing hours of packing, I was convinced to go hiking on my last day in Teruel.

It was Friday and the weather was incredible. Unfortunately, it was incredibly hot too. I prepared by applying sunscreen to every exposed part of my skin except for the back of my neck. I would later regret that decision. I met up with my friends, Libby and Eva, and we went hiking to the ruins of a small Iberian village about two miles from Teruel. There were signs posted that informed interested passersby about the history of the site, but it was entirely too hot and I was too sleep deprived to focus on it. I did find various pieces of broken pottery and Eva lectured me on the differences between Iberian creations and Roman handiwork.

Belchite, Escucha, and Sarrión

Friday was my very last day in the primary school. The teachers all left for Turkey as part of their international project they're doing and won't be back until the day after I depart for home. It was depressing to have to say goodbye to them and then just kind of stick around. I don't feel nearly as integrated into the high school, and the teachers that I do feel more comfortable around are gone to Andalucia as part of a student project. I still have the language school, though, where my coworkers and students are always really friendly. Unfortunately, the last two weeks have been day after day of saying goodbye to each class of students, as each day is the last I'll be there with that particular group.

This weekend, I went to Zaragoza yet again and stayed with the other Italian teacher from the language school. I met her family, which was really entertaining, and we all set out on a busy day trip to Belchite and Escucha. She had been wanting to show me Belchite for quite some time, but due to various scheduling differences and whatnot, we hadn't been able to go. I'm glad that during my last weekend, I finally got to check it out.

Our first stop was seemingly in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in the countryside a decent distance from Belchite. There was a bunker of sorts and some trenches from the civil war. It was quite different from the other places I'd been to, so it was a welcome addition.

Protests in Teruel

Yesterday in Spain there were widespread strikes and protests against the recent cuts in education funding, which have been quite significant. So I was stuck with the director of the primary school I work at in Albarracín and one other teacher as a result of the rest of the teachers striking. We took fifty or so kids hiking in the countryside around Albarracín because we couldn't follow the regular schedule and classes, which require several more teachers at minimum.

As we were leaving the school to go hiking, we saw the students and teachers of the high school joining up with parents from the village, wearing green shirts in solidarity. I don't really know they chose green outside of having some color for everyone to wear and because they wanted to avoid other colors with potentially negative connotations (red, for example). The little preschoolers also marched, all tied together by a rope so they wouldn't run off all willy nilly. I wasn't sure how to feel about the little children being a part of it all because they obviously weren't conscious of what was going on with the protest, much less the political and economic atmosphere of Spain. But it is something that is going to affect them and is currently affecting their quality of education, so I guess they may eventually appreciate the opportunity to be there, if only retroactively.

Beth Anne comes to Spain (Part Two)

Following our day trip to Valencia, Beth and I returned to Albarracín for another day of work. Fortunately, I only had to work for the first bit of the day and we were able to explore a bit of Albarracín at the expense of our delicate skin. Summer in this part of Spain (at least from what I have seen) is devoid of clouds. There is the occasional wimpy fuzzball of a cloud here and there, but nothing to protect you from the sun. We were already a little burnt from Valencia, so getting burnt again was anything but pleasant.

Beth Anne comes to Spain...finally (Part 1)

Beth Anne came to visit a couple Sundays ago and brought with her incredibly warm and sunny weather. I made the long journey from Teruel to Madrid to pick her up. They have recently jacked up the prices of all of the public transportation in Madrid, making a trip to the airport by metro almost ten euros. The bus that goes from the airport to the city center used to be two euros and it ran us five each. It was definitely worth it all to finally see her again after about four months, though.

We stayed in a hotel in the Puerta del Sol in the city center. I arrived a day before and quickly determined that it was an excellent location from which to see the city, but a terrible place to try to sleep. There were people out all night, yelling in the streets. So I may have managed about three hours of sleep before I just got up and showered and jumped on the metro. I arrived at the airport over an hour earlier than when Beth's plane touched down. As a result, I was tired and half asleep by the time she came through the gate and found me.

Before I showed her some of the major sites in the city center, I had to feed her and get some caffeine in both our systems. One of the magical things about Spain is its coffee. I have tried all manner of coffee in the States and have yet to like it (at least not enough to drink it habitually). I think Beth has had a similar experience. For her first few coffees here, I had to order an extra packet of Nesquik for her. After a few days, she was drinking it normal. We are both going to have some serious caffeine withdrawals soon.

More research and a ceramic factory

I'm finally at a point where I feel comfortable enough with my Spanish that I want to talk to people in person about the civil war. I've been reading a lot of things and finding a lot of pictures and whatnot, but I've neglected to actually talk to people because, most likely, I wouldn't understand them to my liking. Though I have talked to random people about my interest in the civil war and why I want to research it, I haven't taken the time to meet with people who actually know what they're talking about.

Today I had the opportunity to meet a local lawyer named Alfonso, whose name I had heard long ago in relation to the topic. He's something of a local celebrity as far as The Battle of Teruel goes, and knows a lot about the war in general. He is a middle-aged, bearded man with a great voice for talking about just about anything. I followed nearly everything he said, but I was occasionally distracted by how nice his voice was. I didn't have anything specific prepared to ask him, so we just talked in general about the war and he gave me some book titles to look into. He helped me put a lot of things I had read previously into perspective and gave me some of the post-war story as well. 

I plan to meet up with him in a couple of weeks and he is going to show me his collection of civil war trinkets. He goes on walks through the countryside where the soldiers were positioned and searches for little things. He has all sorts of bullet shells and buttons and badges. He said he has three or four buttons from American soldiers there as well. I told him about the mortar shell that I was given as a gift and he told me there was little hope of me getting it back to the USA without being detained indefinitely or something. I kind of agree.

Castillo Peracense y Jota en Teruel

This past Monday was a holiday in celebration of San Jorge (Saint George), so we got the day off. There are a surprising number of holidays in April and May here. In fact, next weekend is a four day weekend. I'm having a lot of difficulty keeping up with why we're even celebrating, but I could get used to having all of these free days.

On Sunday, my roommate and I went to Peracense, which is a small village not too far from Teruel. I guess it would be more accurate to say we drove past Peracense, as we didn't even go through the town. Instead, we made a detour up a steep and winding hill to the real attraction, a castle. I've visited a few castles in Spain and Europe in general, but this one was quite unique by comparison. It's situated atop some giant rocks and, because of the color of the stones, blends into its foundation. From afar, I actually didn't notice it at first.

Note that when I say I didn't notice it, I saw it from another angle and from further away. I'm not that blind.

Dinosaurs and Mortar Shells

This Thursday, instead of having one of my normal English lessons, I got to go to the local dinosaur museum/theme park in Teruel. By theme park, I don't mean giant roller coasters or anything. The small attractions are mainly aimed at children. It's still quite impressive, considering Teruel doesn't really have anything else that's comparable in terms of being so technologically advanced. One of the students gave us a tour of the main museum, which houses several large skeletal reproductions and even some real fossils and fossilized footprints. I commend the student for attempting to give a presentation in English, given the number of really specific vocabulary words he had to use and the typical shyness Spanish people seem to have about speaking in English. It was a nice change of pace in comparison to being in class and I didn't really have to do anything besides help with pronunciation and a few unknown vocabulary words. I'm also glad dinosaurs still manage to retain their strange allure and weren't just a passing childhood fad propagated by Jurassic Park.

Today, I headed with some students to Monterde de Albarracín to take part in an English-speaking activity. One of the students, Santi, owns an old country house in the small village of Monterde, which is located in La Comarca de Albarracín (kind of like a county that contains several small villages, including Albarracín, where I work). We had originally intended to have a weekend-long retreat, but due to insufficient numbers, we limited it to

Semana Santa III: Teruel

I spent most of last Friday resting up from my travels, but I decided to go out with David and his lady to the city center to watch the Easter processions. I knew, to some extent, what to expect, which is the main reason I agreed to go. It's such a strange ritual from an American perspective, given the outfit was kind of driven out of style long ago for us by bigots:

Semana Santa II: San Sebastian

This is part 2 of my doings during Semana Santa. Part 1 is here.

I planned to use the midnight bus ride to San Sebastian as a moving hotel of sorts. As it normally takes around seven hours, I would ideally be able to get a full night's sleep and wake up in my destination. The reality was that the entire night was full of sleep-depriving terror as we sped through Spain. I would occasionally doze off momentarily, only to have my head slammed against the window, awakening me to the terrible shrill sounds of the brakes. Every time I woke up, I had to convince myself that I wasn't in a terrible plane crash about to happen. We ended up arriving about an hour early, as refreshed as you might imagine I would have been. Any other time, I may have been ecstatic to arrive early, but showing up in a strange city in near-total darkness, at least an hour before anything will be open, is not quite ideal. I suppose I was happy to have survived the bus ride, though.

I spent my first hour in San Sebastian wandering through the dark streets, trying to find a cafe or something that was open. A little after seven, I found one and had some breakfast and a coffee. I noticed that the newspapers on the bar were in both Spanish and Basque. Basque is not a language I can interpret based on similarities to Spanish or whatever, so I was thankful that most signs and museum information were displayed in Spanish as well. 

Semana Santa I: Barcelona

The past week, Spain has been celebrating the Holy Week. Spanish Catholics apparently take Easter more seriously than anyone I've ever seen. Or at least their rituals and celebrations would imply that. I'll get to that later. The important part is that I've had the entire week off to travel. I chose to visit two cities that I've been wanting to visit for some time - Barcelona and San Sebastian. I'm breaking the week up into segments because there are lots of pictures to show and writing to do.

I found a Couchsurfing host named Victor who was willing to let me sleep on his couch for a few days in Barcelona, so Saturday I hopped on the 7:30 bus and headed that way. Along the way, I kept dozing off for lack of sleep. Eventually, I woke up and realized I couldn't read any of the signs. They were all in Catalan. We stopped at a little bus station and I went inside the bar to get something to eat. The bartender asked where I was from and I told him. He then proceeded to announce via microphone that we had an important American in the bar. He showed me his tongue-in-cheek "how to smoke in Spanish restaurants" device of which he seemed super proud. It was quite clever. In fact, here is a video someone took of the guy:

Valencia with David

I went to Valencia with my roommate, David, last Sunday. He had a short race to run in the park, so I tagged along to get a better look at the city than just the airport (which is all I had seen previously). We left early Sunday morning and made the hour and a half-long journey, listening to Mike Oldfield and conversing in the surprisingly effective way that we do (I speak in Spanish and my roommate speaks some kind of Spanglish). I probably drove him mad asking about just about every road sign or interesting-looking city between Teruel and Valencia.

Los Medievales

Here's me in an outfit again.

This weekend, Teruel was decorated like a giant Medieval festival and people came from all around to dress up like Lord of the Rings extras and get ridiculously drunk in the streets. I've been to a Renaissance festival in Ohio several times, beginning in high school. I like the Medieval setting and the garb and the atmosphere in general. But Teruel apparently makes Ohio look like child's play. Here, there were vendors lined up from the city center to the park, over half a mile away.

In the city center, there were all kinds of haymas, which are private tents and campsites that represent a group of Medieval characters. To get one of these tents, you have to pay a fee, write a research paper justifying your group's historical relevance to the time period, and then decorate the tent in such a way that it represents some aspect of your group's purpose. There were tents for the catapult launchers, the monks, the blacksmiths, etc. Outside the tents, they were cooking out and drinking; inside the tents, there were microwaves, mini-fridges, couches, and so on. They stayed out there day in and day out, all weekend, drinking and eating to their hearts' content.

Haymas from afar.

There were also a lot of interesting food vendors. Most of them were the usual Aragonese staples of cheese and ham, but there was also the occasional squid. A lot of people had desserts as well. And then others blatantly disregarded the Medieval theme and had rows and rows of processed candies. However, I was most interested in the herbal stands that offered all sorts of herbs to cure whatever may ail you. They had something for headaches, back pains, and even one for eliminating fat. I suspect that you were supposed to smoke whatever it was and you'd just not worry about being fat anymore or having a headache.

Assorted meats.

Cutting some squid.

Walking through the streets, you could find all sorts of people dressed up as knights and peasants, but my favorite were a group of wandering, crazy fishermen who "accidentally" slapped people with fish as they walked by. They had the fish hanging on their poles over their shoulders and would swing around and smack people as they walked by. They showed up everywhere, harassing children and old people alike.

Crazy fisherman clan.

As the festival lasted for three days, I got to enjoy having a Medieval-themed birthday as well. I decided to go early in the day Saturday to have a look around. It turned out that the crowd from the night before had somehow mutated into an unmanageable size, making it near-impossible to get around. I ended up buying some chocolate desserts and heading back to the apartment. I did snap a few pictures of the crowd before I left, though:

The viaduct, packed to capacity.

My roommate made me an awesome birthday lunch. I'm not sure what the first course was, aside from delicious, but it contained potatoes, bacon, hard-boiled eggs, tuna, and some sauce. It was kind of like a big salad of sorts. We also had freshly baked bread from the bakery on the side. For the main course, we had lamb. And the finale was a tiramasu cake, topped with sliced strawberries and candles in the shape of a two and a three:

Later, my roommate and I returned to the city center to enjoy the festivities. We split up so he could go meet one of his friends and I could have another look around. I ended up in the Plaza del Torico (the place with the little bull on top of a column), where I found hundreds of people staring apprehensively in one direction. I was confused until people started scattering and yelling and a bull ran through the square. I was quite dumbfounded but I decided to take a few pictures. I was convinced I was going to get my first shot of someone being impaled, but that didn't happen. 

I made sure to keep several layers of squishy people in between myself and the bull, so as to ensure my survival. There was little to worry about, though, because there were plenty of idiots willing to dance in front of the bull and annoy it enough that it had no interest in me. I took a few pictures and then ran away to find my roommate before I got trampled by the bull or all of the crazy people standing around.

I met up with my roommate and his entourage of teacher friends with lots of babies and we went to a Medieval tournament in the Plaza del Toros. Normally, it's a bullfighting ring (though usually only during the summer). This weekend, it was filled with knights and horses and drama. There were six knights in total, three on each team. Our section was represented by the White Knight, who was on the good guy team along with the Green and Brown knights. The other team had the Blue, Grey, and Black knights. The Black Knight was the villain and he was just really mean to everyone. Thankfully, he died in the end. Unfortunately, he was the last knight to die, leaving the Green Knight the victor. My original prediction was that the White Knight would defeat the Black Knight and satisfy the classic good over evil story. I guess this group was trying to push some kind of New Age, environmentalist agenda.

Score one for Mother Nature, Greeny.

Overall, it has been a very enjoyable birthday weekend. I need to have more Medieval themed birthdays in my future (that aren't just Dungeons and Dragons games). 

To the trenches

I went with one of my students from the language school Saturday to Sarrión, a small town about half an hour from Teruel. His name's Ricardo, an older guy that smells strangely similar to my grandpa despite being significantly younger and sporting much less hair. I'm not exactly sure what he does for a living, but he knows quite a bit about bird watching and botany. He also has a really difficult time walking and talking at the same time. It may have been a sort of pause for effect, but every time he needed to explain why something was historically relevant or why a plant was interesting, we had to come to a dead stop and ponder it for a moment before we could move on. We had to do the same when he stopped to pee.

Unfortunately, we never made it to our intended destination. We had planned to hike around a civil war site a few miles away from the town. We only made it a mile or two down the country road before we found a hill covered in a blanket of ice a few inches thick. We decided not to test our luck in his 2-wheel drive hatchback. Thankfully, Ricardo had a backup plan in mind. He took me to a fish hatchery.

The fish hatchery turned out to be quite small and unimpressive, but the trails that followed along the riverbank and through the hills behind it were enjoyable. Ricardo taught me quite a bit about the fauna of Aragón and some of its feudal and modern history. Apparently a great deal of the pine trees in this region were planted by Franco because no one would trade him any lumber. There are other plants that have stuck around since the Mediterranean was significantly more tropical due to their ability to resist extreme heat and cold, dry spells. And the little run-down buildings we kept running into while we were hiking around in the countryside were remnants of old farmer's houses that were vacated when Franco was paranoid about rebel soldiers living in the mountains (see: Maquis). I also got to see what he claimed to be an eagle, using his bird-watching binoculars. He probably could have claimed it was any larger, predatory bird and I'd have believed him.

We hiked two or three miles through the hills until we came upon a main road. We decided to look around on the other side of the road and found a big steep hill to climb. We stumbled across some smaller trenches in what was probably a good lookout spot during the civil war. I was excited. I cut myself up on wild brush more than I intended, but I got to see some trenches, so I was okay with it. We ended up having to walk back to the car in the dark because we budgeted our time poorly. The sun sets entirely too early in February.

After walking around in the cold for a few hours, Ricardo and I returned to Teruel and grabbed some coffee in a little bar near the hotel I stayed in my first few nights here. We got there just in time to watch the drunk patrons yell at the soccer game on television. The window of opportunity for that sort of spectacle is quite wide in Spain. I met one of Ricardo's friends, a gruff old man that reminded me of one of my college history professors. It may have just been the beard, the swearing, and the forwardness because he lacked any insightful rants about American history theories. I'm fairly certain this guy started smoking as a fetus. He came close to coughing up a lung on occasion and it was nigh impossible to understand him. It turns out he is a police officer. He had an ID card and everything. And just when I thought there was no way I could like him any more than that, he paid for our coffees.

Ricardo and I made plans to meet up at a bar called Casa Andalucia to listen to live flamenco. Someone screwed up when they made the advertisements or the band is going through some kind of identity crisis because it was certainly not flamenco. It turned out to be some kind of modern, South American-influenced music. There was an electric guitar that played a similar mellow solo 17 times too many every song. We decided to go to another bar for a rock concert instead. The rock band played the same upbeat guitar solo just as frequently and unnecessarily but at least it was exciting. I may never be able to hear some of those frequencies of sound ever again, though.

This week I don't have to work on Friday because Teruel is celebrating it's Medieval heritage this weekend with a giant festival that transforms the town into a Middle Age fantasy land. From what I've heard, it's like the Renaissance Fair I used to go to, except everyone thinks it's cool. I'm going to try to find a costume to wear. I'm sure it will be just as great as the last one I tried on.

Enjoying a few nights off and my debut in a local newspaper.

Until this Wednesday, I had been enjoying a relaxing week and a half of free evenings. The students at the language school were taking their exams, so I got a nice little break from teaching at night. To some extent, it has spoiled me. I was reluctant to return to spending twelve hours a day in schools, as you might imagine. During that week of liberation, I spent some quality time with my roommate. I found a brochure advertising the "Ruta de Perolicos," an excellent economic initiative for local businesses. Basically, for one week a bunch of the local bars in Teruel make their own soup and they sell you a serving size for a euro. The idea is that you will go around trying all of the soups, buying a little bit at each place. It worked well for us because we went out three nights in a row and ate for next to nothing. There were soups with seafood, cheese, chorizo, beans, and vegetables. Each one had its own special recipe. They were all delicious. I'm sure my opinion was in part influenced by the fact that it was below freezing outside. 

The last night we went out was last Thursday. We decided to end our trek with a stop at a basement bar that has jam sessions on Thursday nights. The guys who played were impressive. They played a lot of rock music with flamenco influence, which I really enjoyed. Ana, her friend, and my roommate's friend joined us. Ana decided to convince the owner of the bar that I should play bass with the band. My roommate's friend and I joined them and messed around for a bit. It is awkward doing improvisation when you don't know much about musical scales or styles outside of what you normally play. I had a lot of fun, though. Pictures were taken but I don't have them at the moment. I'll add those when they're sent to me.

Last weekend a cold front moved into Spain. The news footage of Barcelona and San Sebastian's beaches being covered in snow deterred me from traveling north. I decided to stay in my apartment and study Spanish instead. It's nice to sit inside and watch it snow from the comfort of my desk. I started reading a book on the history of anarchism in Spain. I'm improving quite a bit because I don't have to crack open the Spanish-English dictionary seventeen times per page at this point. I have made quite the vocabulary list from the words I want to be more familiar with and especially the ones I had no idea of when I was reading.

My study time has been cut short by my class load once again, however. I did make the decision to stop my private lessons indefinitely, though. So while I do spend entirely too much time teaching English, I now allot several more hours per week to practicing Spanish. This weekend I plan to watch a film or two about the civil war and to visit some trenches in the mountains with one of my students who prefers to speak in Spanish, so I'm excited about that. 

This week I received some prime scrapbook material from my colleagues at the language school. I now have a program of the events that took place during the week I gave my presentation and a newspaper clipping that explains my lecture and has a picture of me. I'm going to be famous.

Indie Films, volleyball, and a tiny bull with a scarf.

This weekend I didn't manage to go to the north of Spain due to insufficient planning on my part. I did find other things to do, though. Friday I spent all night studying Spanish in my room. It was kind of exciting. I managed to roughly translate a recipe for cream candy for the cooks at the primary school. It's difficult enough to explain how to make that stuff in English, much less in broken Spanish.

Saturday night I watched three short films made by Teruel natives in one of the old, single-screen cinemas in the city center. They were surprisingly good, as I was expecting much more amateur-level production quality. They were all a bit eccentric and "indie", which I found refreshing compared to the movies I've been watching with my roommate in the cinema. I'm getting better at understanding dialogue (or at least I think I am), but I struggled with one of these films because it was almost entirely dependent on understanding a voice-over by one old mumbling man. The whole experience of leaving the mini film festival was similar to leaving after a church service. Everyone had to greet everyone else with the same meaningless small talk as they slowly dispersed into the streets in search of dinner or their houses. I think there's something meaningful amidst all of the tired greetings, though. There was a sense of community and welcomeness there that even I felt I was becoming a part o f. Teruel can be an inviting place at times. If nothing else, being surrounded by a ton of warm people in the streets while it was snowing was a plus.

Sunday I went to La Copa del Rey (King's Cup), the championship volleyball game between Teruel and another team from Spain. I was strangely excited about volleyball for some reason. It's not the most invigorating thing to watch but it's interesting nonetheless. Teruel won three straight sets and won the big, shiny cup. The crowd shot streamers and glittery paper all over the place in celebration. One of the security guards was covered in shiny paper. It was cute.

There was a post-game celebration in the Plaza del Torico, home of the city's iconic little bull statue. The players showed up to shout a lot about winning. The most entertaining part was one player scaling the statue and dressing Torico in an orange scarf. Here is a play-by-play from my phone to assist your imagination:

Torico was still decked out in his orange scarf this afternoon:

This week at the language school, where I normally work in the evenings, the students are taking their exams. This means I get a week of free evenings to run around Teruel. I decided to go for a long walk around the city and take a few pictures. 

I also bought a nice copy of Don Quijote de la Mancha in one of the local bookstores this evening. I'm not sure if I'll even read it anytime soon (or that I'm even capable of doing so yet), but it is a decent little souvenir to keep from Spain. It came with a free bookmark that serves as an advertisement for another book entitled, "I also had a bisexual girlfriend." I like to think that this was a recommendation from the bookstore owner based on my purchase of the Spanish classic.