Got some good stuff to share so here we go.
There was a free film festival being held all over the city of Granada during the week. There were around 8 locations where they were showing movies. Most documentaries but some were fiction. The locations were one of the coolest parts. Movies were being held in outdoor plaza’s, in front of church’s, inside 15th century courtyards, it made the experience.
We made it around to seeing two movies: one documentary and one fiction. The first one was a documentary based on the Warsaw Ghetto during the Nazi occupation. The footage was taken by Nazi cameramen to be used as a propaganda video but had never been shown. It was an unbelievable movie that really opens your eyes to the horror of those times. They actually found out who one of the cameramen was and had him discuss what they were doing there. The footage was being taken of affluent Jewish people as well as dying and poor Jewish in order to show how the Jewish race was well off but did not care about their poor. They found people from the film as well and had them give testimony to the filming. They talked about how they would organize people to have large dinners and afterwards film the affluent walk right past dead bodies or dying people in the streets. When people died (typically of starvation) the family members would bring them out and set them on the street. Every day people walked down the street they would walk around dead bodies. The next day they would ship the actors to camps. One of the women in the film cried while watching the movie. She talked about how happy she was that she could cry because during those times there was so much horror around that if she couldn’t function if she showed any emotion. She said she was a human now. Definitely more intense than the second movie experience.
The second movie was called “Running Turtle”. We watched it in front of a huge church in the middle of the city as we sat at a table and ate tapas. It was a really good South Korean film about a bad @ss fugitive and a cop that is tracking him. Both films were in subtitles.
Over the past week we have gotten to watch both of Spain’s World Cup games so far here in Granada. The first one a 1-0 loss to Switzerland was pretty shocking. We watched that with some local Spanish students at a bar, safe to say the streets were quiet that night. The next game was much better though. We went to a huge tent in the middle of a plaza that had been assembled and filled with flat screens and a huge TV in front. It was jam packed full of Spaniards that went absolutely insane during both of Spain’s two goals during their 2-0 win against Honduras. Match wasn’t even close.
On Friday we went to Gibraltar. We visited the Rock of Gibraltar as well as a local court. The rock of Gibraltar is amazing. To be honest I had no idea what it was until that day other than a huge rock in Gibraltar, complicated understanding I know. Well this thing is amazing. It essentially is Great Britain’s version of the Panama Canal. The area is owned and operated by Great Britain. This is not cool with the Spanish and from what our tour guide told us a military conflict is bound to happen very soon. Now the reason the British don’t want to give it up is just like the Panama Canal gives access from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean the strait of Gibraltar is the only access point from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. So in Gibraltar they use pounds and speak with British accents, was like being in a weird British fantasy land. Now the Rock is covered in diabetic monkeys. Yes the monkeys are diabetic. They refuse to eat vegetation and instead only steal ice cream and candy from the tourists. That being said they are really passive and friendly with humans as long as the humans didn’t have food. A monkey actually climbed on me and over my head in order to get to his buddy sitting on the rail. The Brit’s also built tunnels in the Rock and created their own little world in it with water reservoirs, a hospital, movie theater and much more. They could live there for 2 years without any outside help. Pretty sweet side trip that I had no idea we were taking, love that.
After Gibraltar we headed to Seville. After a couple of bus trips we got to Seville and found our hostal. Turns out we booked it for Saturday and Sunday night instead of Friday night and they were booked. So we spent most of the night finding another place to stay. For the record I did not book the hostal. We did see most of the city that night though.
The next day we get up and enjoy a true breakfast of champions: churro’s and chocolate. They gave us fried amazingness with a cup of warmed up chocolate sauce. We downed the churro’s and dumped the rest of the chocolate sauce in our café con leche’s, best food decision in years. We then head over their main Cathedral which is the largest in Spain and third largest in Europe behind St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s. This Cathedral is actually the burial location of Christopher Columbus, I thanked him for finding America.
We also went to the Alcazar which is very similar to the Alhambra but with better gardens in my opinion. They have huge peacocks running lose in their as well, turns out they chase you if you get too close, haha my friend found that out the hard way. The rest of the day was spent seeing other sites, eating and walking around. I highly recommend seeing Seville.
That night we get up the bright idea to do a pub crawl without eating dinner. No puking or sickness occurred but let’s just say it took us about an hour to figure out that the last club they brought us to was a gay bar. After that it was apparent that we all should go home. Next day was painful to say the least. I immediately missed the tapas/cana’s action that Granada offers where I never actually get a hangover. After some much needed breakfast we head over the Museo de Bellas Artes and culture ourselves. This museum specifically holds art from the south of Spain. The interesting thing I noticed was not that they had a boat load of paintings of Jesus (I expected that from a Catholic country) but more that the killers of Jesus (the Romans) in the paintings looked and dressed like Moors (aka Muslim’s that occupied the South of Spain before the Spanish Catholics conquered them). Talk about some propaganda. Pretty sure Romans didn’t wear turbans and have curved swords.
Sunday night a classmate and I stayed behind in order to see a Bullfight. I had never seen a bullfight but it was definitely on my list of things to do before kicking the bucket. This was the last bullfight until the fall so I couldn’t pass it up. We bought tickets out of the sun for 34 euro not bad. Sitting in the sun is much cheaper but luckily a friend told us that it is 1) ridiculously hot and 2) the bullfighters fight in the shade so you don’t get to see the fight as closely, well worth the extra money.
Now going into this bullfight I wouldn’t say I was a fan of bullfights but I definitely thought they were very cool. I have to say after seeing six bulls’ slain bullfights are not nearly as much fun as I thought they would be. It was a crazy experience. In my opinion bullfights are the modern version of Gladiators fighting, entertainment through blood and death, pretty intense. I am not going to say that they should be banned in Spain or Latin America but I am definitely not going to try and bring the tradition to the states. Two of the guys were hit by the bull and one didn’t return after getting hit in the leg so that was pretty crazy as well.
Instead of breaking the bullfights down I just uploaded videos showing each different part of the fight (beware it’s not pretty):
Opening Oley’s:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg4-qoqyodY
Picadore
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkMpbIQHJ00
Bandarilla
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tml8pnUAm-0
Kill Cycle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZryVaRQFWo
Matador gets bucked.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBpj8lKJGu4
We ended up catching a 11 pm bus and got back around 4 am. Started environmental law this week and are trying to determine how to save the world, fun exercise. Tonight we are going to the Arabic baths and getting massages and tomorrow we are going a la playa (to the beach) after class, tough life right?
Planning on heading to Alicante. There is a festival in Spain that some of you may have heard about. It is celebrated in Valencia the 19th of March: LAS FALLAS. Well, the same kind of festival is celebrated in a Spanish classmates city, Alicante (Next to south Valencia, in the Mediterranean Coast, South-East Spain). The difference is that they celebrate it in Summer and call it LAS HOGUERAS DE SAN JUAN. Google it, looks like a blast. They build wooden structures and burn them down in the middle of the streets and party on the beach. Should be fun.
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