For this orientation week we've been having a class that is a mixture of grammar and practical vocabulary (words that might be especially pertinent in homestays, such as common household chores) and cultural lessons. Pertaining to the latter, one big cultural difference we learned about was where Spanish people, as opposed to Americans, spend most of their time. For Americans it's the home; for Spaniards, the street. Apparently inviting friends over for dinner or socializing is less common in Spain, with eating out preferred; and it's a different idea of where you find comfort, in that in the U.S. you go out, you do your errands, and then the reward is getting to get back to your house and relax, whereas in Spain, the streets are home (and as our teacher laughingly told us, you can come up with all sorts of excuses to stay out).
Well, that being the case, Saturday I had a very Spanish day.
But first, Friday evening: our teacher (of our orientation class--a young, very lively, woman) met us at the statue of Isabel la Católica* at 5 PM to take us out exploring. (One other great thing about this class is there's also a focus on developing basic Granada savviness, with things like map exercises, where we had to locate on our maps different important places, like the health clinic, and lessons on food vocabulary, including common kinds of tapas. Very useful information.)
*[that's Isabella of Isabella and Ferdinand fame, of course. Her statue is huge, flanked by fountains, in a square, and is a landmark. The funny thing is, the statue actually depicts her blessing Colón (Columbus), who is partially kneeling, and a girl who has already been in Spain a semester warned me about a possible confusion: apparently some people call the statue "Isabel la Católica," while others call it "Colón"--by virtue of which, if you didn't know better, the two names would seem to refer to two completely different statues, when it's really the same one. And funnily enough, no one calls it "Isabel y Colón."]
Our teacher took us for an evening walk in the Albayzín, the historic Muslim quarter, with its characteristically narrow, winding streets and whitewashed walls. Many of the buildings' upper floor walls were decorated with items like the traditional green-and-blue pottery of Granada or even, as I saw once, a gilded picture of Jesus, and the terraces were overflowing with potted plants; our teacher told us there's a yearly competition in the neighborhood for most well-decorated balcony area.
We passed through several tucked-away plazas, beside many an ancient church (I noted one monastery's tour hours: during only one half-hour window each week! Someday.) There was one kind of park (not much greenery, but an open area), in a stepped brick style, that was at its peak of activity, with street performers, musicians, and many a toker. (Everywhere we went we would suddenly get overtaken by a cloud of marijuana.)
With the Mediterranean climate there are loads of lovely orange and lemon trees simply bursting with fruit that even make the air fragrant. Many of them were tucked inside the high-walled gardens (referred to, in a term unique to Granada, as "carmen"s), the majority of which I assume we passed unawares: according to our teacher, walling off one's wealth from public view by hiding one's opulent gardens was a Muslim tradition as a way of showing humility. I can't guess how much we couldn't see, but I loved peaking through the rare little openings in the walls, or seeing the occasional garden sealed by a wrought-iron gate, rather than a solid wall, and getting to see the indescribable beauty therein. The few places that come to mind had such things as the biggest trunk of a palm tree I've ever seen (the actual palm was unfortunately decapitated) and the biggest hydroponics-like archway of orange-and-lemon trees I could have never imagined beside a still green pool. Everything was so lush, and a perfect mixture of ancient, overgrown wildness tamed into luxury.
We stopped for a while at the Mirador de San Nicolás, which is the most famous lookout point for the Alhambra. We reached it by way of the garden of the mosque of Granada, which is gorgeous. The mirador was packed with people (again, the omnipresent marijuana cloud), but the view was great.
Our furthest point, which we reached just at sunset, was up on a copse at the Mirador de San Miguel (el?) Alto, which provided a vista of the city. I was most taken by what seemed to be a white cloud hovering over the high peaks in the distance: it was actually an even higher peak of the Sierra Nevadas (the highest, I later learned), entirely white with snow.
The church behind us, San Miguel, had some interesting graffiti on it: quite a bit of detailed, well-drawn Egyptian hieroglyphics in green paint. Graffiti in general is common throughout the city, especially semi- or overtly-political statements scrawled in all-caps. (A feminist sentiment near my residencia translates to "no action without response! you think you're free? you are just as oppressed as we are!" accompanied by a women's power symbol; there's one nearby that says "socialism or barbarity?" with a hammer-and-sickle design underneath; in Sacromonte, where many Gypsies live, "Vivan Gitanos!" ["long live the Gypsies!"], and my very favorite: in green ink, "we accept utopia because reality seems impossible," and then, in blue ink, the words 'utopia' and 'reality' have been crossed out and replaced with each other, so it reads instead "we accept reality because utopia seems impossible.")
In total, we were out on the move for two hours, and really covered a lot of distance. I was heartened by what our teacher told us: sure, you're bound to get lost in the Albayzín, but it's as simple as going up and down. You go up, you explore the maze, and then you go down, and all paths lead to one of two main roads, both of which are well-known to me. So, despite the example of difficult foot-travel I offered in an earlier blog post (the Albayzín without a map), it's actually quite easy after all!
With that in mind, Saturday morning I got up early and decided to do some exploring of my own. I guessed (rightly) that after a busy Friday night Saturday morning might be quieter. I decided to first go back to the Albayzín and follow the rule of up-and-down. Although I brought my map just to be safe, I didn't plan on using it whatsoever (and I'm not even sure if would have done me much good--most of the streets are so small, I bet they aren't even on there). So I had total freedom to go down any street I wanted to and just enjoy the sights and follow my impulses. To my amazement, I happened to hit every last place we'd been the night before, though in general I hadn't been aiming for any of them (except the big lookout of the Alhambra: nice to return there when I had the place all to myself).
It was also fun to note the differences that time of day/day of the week make: in the "Plaza Larga," that had been empty the day before, there was a bustling, mainly produce-filled, farmers market underway.
After about an hour and a half I was ready to move on, and found my way down. The highlight of the morning came, though, about halfway down my descent on the long road (towards el Paseo de los Tristes, the road that leads into the Albayzín--a bad, literal translation of the name would be something like 'the walk of the sad people'), when I saw a man who was obviously a tourist in front of me disappear into an enclosure. Like everything else, it was walled, but one wood-and-iron door was open, and the sign above the door declared it the public historical archives of the city. I peeked in, and there were several tourists taking pictures... so I went in too!
It was an immense series of landscaped gardens (with paths and fountains) and courtyards, exquisitely beautiful. It was actually somewhat eerie, with the dense hedges lining the walls serving to muffle the street outside and all the vibrant greens therein darkened under the overcast sky. I walked down a broad path lined by the biggest cypresses I'd ever seen, black and dense, and felt a sense of almost disturbing calm, with Maximus Decimus Meridius' warning ringing in my ears: "If you find yourself alone, riding in the green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled. For you are in Elysium, and you are already dead!"
The archives themselves were a huge, old building flanked by a series of flags in the shadow of the Alhambra. The heavy iron door was closed, and I didn't feel a need to go in.
Onwards, on the Paseo de los Tristes, I felt inexplicably spurred upwards, so I decided to follow a side street up to see where it would take me. To the Alhambra, undoubtedly, but plenty of charming neighborhoods at its foot as well, I assumed. Actually, I missed out on the latter: I wound up on a steep road that was a straight shot to the Alhambra. Well, why not? I was enjoying the exercise. It was a bit of a climb, though I was in no rush, and then there I was. I strolled through a few grand archways until I reached the ticketbooth for the complex, and then headed back down the way I'd come.
(Aside: there I saw the first two cats I'd seen in all of Spain! They looked well-fed and had a healthy sheen to their coats, but I still wasn't entirely sure that they weren't feral, so I let one sniff my hand but restrained myself from actually petting them. In contrast, dogs are everywhere. Everyone's out walking their dog. And a good deal of the dogs are medium-to-large-sized, with a tough, muscular, wild look to them. You often see a big, no-nonsense dog, maybe with a bit of shag to his coat and muddy legs, on the patrol: he's probably got a collar, but you might not know where his owner is. They're somewhere nearby, and he can mind himself.)
I still wasn't through with exploring. So I went to the Plaza de Isabel la Católica and took a right for the first time, into the Realejo, a neighborhood I hadn't yet visited. The Albayzín is the historical Muslim quarter, and the Realejo is the historic Jewish quarter. The first main street featured brightly-colored buildings and a cool, young/hip feel distinct from that of other areas I'd been to. There were several pleasant graffiti/paintings, very artistically done: apparently they're all by an artist who calls himself El Niño de las Pinturas (the boy of the paintings), although he's in his thirties now, and many of these are from a while back.
I went up a very steep, long granite staircase cut into the street to a higher tier of land where another network of narrow streets began, these whitewashed as in the Albayzín and with a similar, but still distinctly different, feel. It was pretty high up, with a good panoramic overview of the city from many vantage points. I walked as far as a huge building painted to stand out in a bright terracota color with green shuttered-windows (in contrast to the white all around) which I had thought from a distance must be the old synagogue, based off the design of the towers and the tiled dome on one side of it. Actually it was a four-star hotel. Maybe a converted synagogue? But that would be sad...
I had been out for three hours and had had my fill, so I went back to my residencia and rested a little before lunch.
Later that day, I met up with my friend Franchesca (a friend from Whitman on the same program) and we had a lovely walk around the Plaza de Congresos, which I hadn't been to before. It's a huge, open, flat area broken up by rows of palm trees and park benches, a playground, and, most strikingly, a giant building, very modern and beautiful, entirely tiled in green marble, with a hundred green marble steps leading up to it. I think it's an exposition/convention center, though someone told me that they hold arts and entertainment events there, too. The Plaza is next to the river (the larger one--there's a smaller one that runs at the base of the Alhambra) that to me demarcates the old-town from the newer, modern Granada.
Then, Franchesca had made plans to meet up with some other girls for a tapas dinner, and although I have dinners in the residencia (most people are in homestays, which don't provide dinner, so they eat out), I joined them for a bit before the comedor opened. We walked around for at least an hour, part of the time in an area of the city I'd never been to before, in the modern parts of town. This for me was a whole different dimension of how I thought of the city, and the modern was in its own way very appealing with so much to offer. This being Saturday, the later it got, the more the streets swelled. It was utterly jam-packed with people. (Noting that eight o'clock is still considered "the afternoon.") It was fun to see the city at its most alive (though I'm sure that wasn't until ten or eleven at least).
In total I was out walking and exploring for five hours. Pretty decent. I'm always up for more.
Much love to all.
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