Madrid, Spain!! (Part II)

On Saturday morning, Ali and I changed hostels to one that was dormitory-style and a bit cheaper than our friday night hostel.  After we found our way there, we decided to head out in search of breakfast.  Of course it took us a really long time to find anything, because that's the way it goes when you're hungry, but eventually we had our first (and only, really) actually-Spanish food encounter: churros con chocolate

When we ordered, it was done by a lot of pointing and gesturing and we weren't really sure that we'd gotten the right thing.  Ali wondered if maybe we had ordered churros and hot chocolate instead of churros and dipping chocolate.  When we got it though, it turned out that we got exactly what we wanted.  It was delicious! (I mean how can you beat fried bread dipped in chocolate, right?)  

After that, we decided to head over to the Museo del Prado which was the main draw to Madrid for me.  I was hoping to see some works that I'd learned about in my art history class.

Here I am imitating one of the statues outside of it:

It was really cool!  We saw artwork by Goya, Velasquez, El Greco, Rubens, Bosch, Raphael, Titian, and Tintoretto.  I was the most excited to see The Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosch and Las Meninas  by Valesquez.  Ali really liked the tables inlaid with different stones and the sculptures.  We had a hard time finding/ recognizing some of the works because the names were changed to Spanish so Bosch was known as El Bosco and Titain as Tiziano.  The wouldn't let us take pictures inside so I don't have any from it.

After the art museums we wandered around the Paseo del Prado, which the a cute little park-like area surrounding the Prado.  We saw the Plaza de Cibeles which has a famous fountain, but I'm not sure what it's famous for...

Standing up for hours on end in an art museum doesn't really sound that tiring but I was completely exhausted by the time we were done there.  

We headed back to the hostel and relaxed for a bit.  This hostel was very cool.  It used fancy watch-like devices to open the doors and luggage storage.  It had a kitchen and computer room with a TV.  There were also organized social events each night.

Ali and I got a room with a little wrought-iron balcony that looked out over the street:

For dinner that night, we headed back out towards the Paseo del Prado, which wasn't too far from the hostel.  We bought delicious corn on the cob off of a street vendor and then got some ice cream for dessert.  It was quite a beautiful and lively area at night.  We decided to just kind of wander and see what we could find.  Here is me with a pretty fountain in front of the Museo del Prado again.  We also saw a plant wall which was strange:

And, there was a giant elephant statue standing on its trunk. 

I thought it was really cool so I waited in line with all of the little kids to have Ali take my picture next to it.

When we were walking away, we found that it was a statue by Miquel Barcolo called "Gran elefante erguido" (large upright elephant).

After that, we decided that we really didn't have that much else to do and headed back to the hostel for the night.

Madrid, Spain!! (Part I)

As everyone probably knows, this past week my friend from home, Ali, came to visit me.  The first weekend she was here, we went to Madrid, Spain together.  It was very cool.  The weather was a bit cloudy but it was nothing that stopped us from getting around and the temperature was perfect, staying in the 60s for the most-part. 

I'm a little burnt-out on writing so I will probably try to keep the commentary to a minimum.
After we got to Madrid on Friday morning, spent several lost hours in the rain trying to find our hostel (all the while being just a block away from it), and ordered something we didn't know off a Spanish menu (I ended up with a tuna sandwich :-(  ), we finally got settled in and headed out in search of attractions.  
The first place we went was the Palacio Real (Royal Palace) which is the official residence of the Spanish royal family, but I don't think that anybody actually lives there.  Here's the view as we walked up to it:

Ali and I stopped to take pictures in front of it:

We wandered over to the visitor entrance to find that it was already closed for the day so we peered through the gates in an attempt to see what we could of the courtyard and view from it.  Here I am in front of it:

Across from the Palacio Real was a church called Santa María la Real de La Almudena.  It was pretty, but we didn't go inside:

After that, we wandered around for a bit and then headed to Plaza Mayor to see what was going on there.  I thought that Plaza Mayor was a really fun atmosphere.  The square is very cute and colorful and there are people and restaurants and street entertainers everywhere.

It should also be noted that there are statues of men on horseback everywhere in Madrid:

The sun finally came out and it made Ali and me very happy!

This is the start of my street entertainment section.  Street entertainment was huge in Madrid.  People did all sorts of crazy things and other people pay to watch:
This is a man posing as a statue, you can see that he moved between the two pictures; Ali even got a picture of him taking a water break.  People posing as statues was probably the most common form of street entertainment that we saw.  Imagine getting paid to sit very very still...

photo courtesy of Ali:

Pietà!

A big spiderman guy who was kind of creepy but amused me:

A guy who was making giant bubbles:

After a bit, we ventured out of Plaza Mayor back towards our hostel in order to find dinner.  On the way there, we found ourselves at the Puerta del Sol:

As you can see in some of our pictures, the sun really draws people out.  All of a sudden, there were people everywhere:

On the way back to our hostel, we saw even more street entertainment:

As I said, this was all on our way to find dinner.  It should be noted, and I alluded to it earlier, that being in Madrid and not knowing any Spanish (except hola, uno, dos, and tres) is somewhat problematic, especially when it comes to ordering food.  Surprisingly, there are not many people that speak English, not even in areas that could be considered more touristy.  The other important note about food on our trip:  When you are hungry, there is no good food to be found, whereas after you've just eaten, delicious, well-priced food is everywhere; that is the way it seemed for the entirety of our trip unfortunately.

Well that is the end of our first day in Madrid.  Check back later for more posts.

Also, for another perspective on these events check out Ali's blog at http://aliontheloose.blogspot.com/ I don't think she has anything much posted yet but keep checking back and you'll find something :)

Tour du Monde

A few weeks ago, I participated in an event called Tour du Monde.  I originally wasn't sure if I wanted to do it or not (back in January when the meetings first started) but I tagged along with Hal, Alex, Aino, and Ella to the first meeting and it sounded like fun.  The Tour du Monde (meaning tour of the world) is a yearly exposition at the town expo center (like a very very miniature version of the Alliant Energy Center for those of you familiar with Madison).  People from all over the world, residing in Chambéry, present their home countries to whoever wants to come.  The theme this year was Recto-verso which basically meant that we were supposed to focus on the perceptions of our countries versus the realitites of it.  It was a two-day exposition and at the end of it, based on popular interest, a country was dubbed the country of honor for the following year's Tour du Monde.  Based on last year, this year's coutnry of honor was South Korea.

Anyway, for our project we tried to think of the perceptions that foreigners have of America.  In the end, we realized that most people think that America is one giant country with one unique identity, composed of New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.  We wanted to show them that each part of the country has its own identifying features and things that make it unique, and also that there is a lot more than just those major cities.  We figured the best representation of this would be to draw each state and outline them all individually and then put a visual representation of something interesting or identifying about a particular state.  Here is our poster:

It was A LOT of work.  We printed out a map and traced it onto a plastic bag which we then put on an overhead projector to trace onto this poster.  Then Hal and I outlined every state individually in different colors.  We then split up the states giving each person ten states to find facts and pictures for.  We only had black and white printing so we printed out outlines of pictures and colored them in ourselves.  Then I put the title on and numbered all the states, putting the names in a key at the bottom right.  I also prepared a powerpoint presentation of slides showing the beauty that can be found in each state.  Anna, a woman from the New England area, thought it would be fun if we gave away some popcorn at our stand because popcorn is very American and can be dated back to Native Americans.  We also bought a gigantic road map of the US with our stipend.

This is our stand.  The main people that worked on it were Hal, Anna (the person on the right in the above picture), Alex (the boy from Illinois/ Missouri, not the girl from Canada) and me.  Claire (in the hat), Lauren (sitting on the left) and Megan (not shown) also came by for a bit to help out.  The boy on the left is Peter.  He's from England and was hanging out around our stand because nobody from the UK made a stand.

I really enjoyed the experience of presenting the country.  It was probably the best practice with native French speakers that I've had since I've been here.  The older couples are especially fun because they like to ask more questions.  The questions we got were actually quite interesting too.  Most people asked us where we were from.  I got a lot of people saying something like "Oh! There's cheese where you come from?  It must not be too different for you here then!"  That made me laugh.  One person asked us if we identified ourselves more as American or as citizens of whatever state we are from.  That was an interesting question.  I said that I firstly identified myself with being an American but that I also strongly identify with my state(s).  Another guy asked about our legal system.  He didn't understand how it worked if someone was born in California but went to Texas to commit a crime, were they under California law or Texas law?  Some people were also confused by the fact that I had numbered them on the map to refer to the key.  A girl from the Netherlands asked me what if we got a new state, what number would it be?  At first, I had no clue what she was talking about but then I figured out that she thought that each state had a number permanently assigned to them.  It was kind of funny and I got quite a few more questions about that...  

Anyway, I thought it was a lot of fun!

After I got done with my shift I was able to wander around and look at other people's stands.  It was really interesting.  Almost every stand had some sort of free food at it.  I was amazed by what some stands were able to accomplish.  The stand from Morocco had a whole set of ornate living room furniture set up and South Korea had a video projector that played music videos the whole time.  Also, I got my name written in Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and Arabic.  It was a lot of fun.  I especially liked the food at the Finland stand.  It was some sort of bread that I wasn't sure about and some cinnamon swirl bread.  Here is me visiting Ella at the Finland stand:

The other food I thought was good was the Romanian food and Dutch food.  I also liked the chocolate from the Belgium stand, of course.  Even though it was a lot of work, I'm really glad that I got involved in this!

P.S. I still have not found out who received country of honor this year.  I think I voted for Japan.

Around Town - catch up

Ok, so I know that I haven't written in awhile but before I get to my pics from Ali's visit, I've got some catching up to do on pictures from different times up until the trip to Spain.
The first set of pictures are of a local park that is close to my dorm.  Shortly before I left for Greece in February, there was a really nice sunny day, so I decided to go exploring.

There was a cute little stream that ran all the way through it.

And a pretty pink house.  I asked someone if it was an important building.  They said that they weren't sure but thought it was probably there because it was pretty and people could rent it out for weddings or something like that.

photo courtesy of Ali

I also, as I tend to do, found the horse stable.  The horse stable is right in the park.  It looks kind of fancy (architecturally) for a horse stable and mismatched with the typical riding arena that was attached to it.  They leave the doors open and people can just wander in and out to pet the horses.

the front of the horse stable

zoomed in to see the pillars and arched ceiling

Then, shortly after I got back from Greece, Chambéry had a festival, which as far as I could tell, consisted mostly of a parade. Above is a picture of people gathering to watch.  It was to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the department of Savoie (of which Chambéry is the historic capital) being part of France.  Before that, it was a disputed territory that was at the time part of Italy.  Anyway, the parade was a lot of fun.  There were bands and schoolchildren and just really random things but almost all of the floats had to do with the history or culture of this region.  The picture above, although it is difficult to tell, is of people dressed up as elephants wearing shirts with the flag of Savoie on them (the red background with white cross).  Below is the picture of skiers because skiing is a huge tourism industry in this part of the country and draws people from all over to Chambéry.

Here, instead of throwing candy from parade floats, the people on the floats have all sorts of streamers and confetti and silly string that they throw everywhere.  Here is a picture of some stringy confetti that got stuck in a tree and below that is the paper confetti on the ground after the parade.  Not only did the people on the floats have the paper confetti, but so did the people watching the parade because it was available from street vendors.  It was everywhere!  Most people ended up sufficiently covered in confetti.

Greece Part IV: The End

Saturday was my last full day in Greece and I had already gotten many of the major sights out of the way so I had to decide what was left that I was interested in seeing. The first thing that came to mind was the ruins from the Temple of Zeus. I had passed by them everyday, walking towards the sights but never stopped in. All that was left of the temple were 16 columns (only 15 of which are standing because the 16th was blown over by a heavy storm in the 1800s). It was pretty to see but there wasn't much more that was interesting in the surrounding area.

After that, I checked out the National Gardens behind the Parliament building with its beautiful fountain out front.

The National Garden was very large and peaceful. I liked wandering around in it. There were statues and little lakes and ponds and even a "zoo" (it was called a zoo but it was mostly just a bunch of fenced in farm animals, especially chickens). Anyway, I decided to sit down and relax there a bit so as not to get overtired.

After the garden, I went to go check out the Byzantine Museum. I took an art history class a few semesters ago and found it really interesting and since we talked about some byzantine art I wanted to go see what was at this museum. When I got there, there was a sign saying that all the exhibits but one were closed. I figured I might as well go see what it was. When I walked in, I could kind of see into all the dark rooms where there was actual Byzantine art, but when I got to the open exhibit it was strange. It was like a modern perspective on Byzantine art (like people from the 1990's who did Byzantine-style artwork). This is just a guess though seeing as everything was in Greek. All I could make out were the years of the pieces. That was a disappointment. Afterwards, I decided to head to Syntagma Square to get some lunch. Syntagma Square is the center of the Athens. I got a circular piece of bread with sesame seeds all over it. They sold them all over so I decided to try one. I kind of thought there'd be something more to it but it really was just bread and sesame seeds. I liked it though.

After that, I headed over to the National Archaeological Museum. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go but I saw online that it was one of the great museums of the world so I decided to check it out. It was interesting to see all of the stuff there.

After that, I wasn't feeling so well so I went home and took a nap (yeah, I know that's pretty lame for the only time I'm in Greece). The next day, my flight didn't leave until around 2pm so I decided to wake up early and climb Levitakos Hill which is said to have the best view of Athens. It was quite the climb and very very windy, but it was a beautiful view.

I flew out to Vienna with no problems and then had a really long layover and a slight flight delay. That delay put me into Geneva kind of late and I couldn't get to my hostel. I ended up spending the night in the airport. It was a horrible night but I got back home nice and early the next morning!

Overall, I'm very glad that I went to Greece. It was so beautiful and warm!