More Semana Santa

Practice session in Madrid: setting down the float for a break. Teamwork, people.

White Nazarenes in the street at dusk.

If it looks like I'm serious about this job, it's because I am.

Once a procession reaches the cathedral, everyone (including the float) goes into the church for a blessing.
Black Nazarenes crossing the High Altar.

"Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in."

Jesus enters the cathedral.

Semana Santa

Well, eventually, Anna had to go home. *frown* But then my friend Andrew came and we went down to Seville for Holy Week!

I really think that Holy Week (Semana Santa) in Seville deserves some gesture of speechlessness. But leaving out an explanation probably wouldn't work so well on the blog, so, anyway.
Starting on Palm Sunday, the different brotherhoods in Seville make processions through the streets to the cathedral...

Nazarenes in white robes.

There are a lot of Nazarenes walking with each procession (up to a couple thousand), including kids. It's a lot of walking. Each procession starts at the brotherhood's home church, goes to the cathedral, and then goes back to the home church. So, depending on where your home church is, this can be A Lot of walking. I think the longest procession that Andrew and I saw on the schedule was expected to last for 14 hours. The arduous walk is part of the point: the Nazarenes are supposed to be meditative. Their robes and hoods enable meditation and also have a dramatic visual affect on all the people watching in the streets. The hoods come off on Easter Sunday (or, if you're a kid, when the weather gets too hot).

Penitents bearing the cross.

The Penitents are fraternity members like the Nazarenes, and they participate in a physical act of penitence by carrying one (or sometimes two) wooden crosses in the procession. A lot of them go barefoot. We didn't see a lot of kids doing this one.

Paso with Jesus in a purple robe.

So the strange conglomeration of men carrying a wooden scaffold that Anna and I saw in Madrid was actually a fraternity practicing for Semana Santa. With each procession, there are usually two floats (pasos): one with a scene from Jesus' Passion, and one with a figure of Mary mourning her dead son. The floats are decorated with carved wooden figures, flowers, and candles. The Semana Santa tradition goes back to the 1500s, and a lot of the floats are almost that old. Also, some of the floats weigh up to a metric ton...so it takes a lot of coordination and raw muscle mass to haul them down the streets for 14 hours. Each float has about 20-30 guys underneath carrying it on their shoulders.

Drum Line

Each float is followed by a band that plays Fraternity Marches during the procession, and drummers who help keep the pace. The men carrying the floats walk/shuffle exactly in time with the drummers, so that Jesus' robe or Mary's canopy are aways swaying in time with the music. Kind of makes Jesus look like he's walking. Very hypnotic.

Trumpets

Costaleros, off duty.

Yeah, the costaleros are usually big guys. They always wear four things: headdress, hernia belt, espadrille shoes, and sweat. The roll of fabric in the headdress is where the crossbeam of the float sits on their shoulders. Once they get under the float, pretty much all you can see of them is their feet. They can't see anything either, so there are men that walk along side the float and tell them when to start/stop/turn a corner.

"One's destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things."

Henry Miller

Black robes, too (each fraternity has its own colors).

On a mission

Seville, Palm Sunday

Girls' trip through Spain: Scrapbook Part 2

After Madrid, Anna and I went to Toledo for two days, and then to Granada.
Toledo is a really cool smaller medieval city on a hill with a great cathedral right at the top. It used to be the capital and the city's history, as well as its architechture, has experienced Muslim, Christian, and Jewish influences.

The cathedral square, kids playing ball.

Toledo is a city on a hill. Here's a view from the top the hill.

Inside the cathedral: Crucifix over the High Altar.

Mary with her child(ren).

Granada

The highlight of Granada for us was visiting the Alahambra (although we also found a really good teahouse). The Alhambra is a kind of royal complex on a hill above Granada that consists of an old fort, a Moorish palace, a (Christian) Renaissance palace, and huge garden area. Granada itself is a cooly unique city. It was the last Moorish hold-out in Europe before the Christians took it in 1492 (I guess that was really a banner year for the Spanish Monarchs).

Sculpted trees and shrubs along the path to the Alhambra palace.

The Islamic architechture in Southern Spain is so beautiful. I think that part or what makes it so eye-catching is that it just looks really different from anything else in Europe (or the US for that matter). I don't know how well the details in these arches will come across on the blog, but really, it's incredible.

Uh oh, look what I found at the Alhambra...You know it's a quality place when there are orange and white cats around.

Chamber inside the palace (the second row of windows is actually just light coming in from the windows on the opposite wall.
Arches and columns in the Lions Courtyard at the palace.

Garden with orange trees near the Palace

Oh boy! Time to take the night train back to Barcelona! The Granada-Barcelona night train service is pretty posh. We got free toiletry bags and a sink in our compartment! Cool!

You wouldn't believe the people they let onboard the Spanish trains...

Girls' trip through Spain: Scrapbook Part 1

Well...

My friend Anna came to see me in Spain! Here we are at the Sagrada Familia Cathedral, doing a little tour of Barcelona before heading off to Madrid.

Ocean wave arch at Parc Guel in Barcelona (designed by Gaudi, the same guy who designed Sagrada Familia).

Madrid!

Um, yes. Well, we conducted some in-depth research into the Urgent Care facilities in Madrid. The official, press-release explanation for this photo is that Anna had a little mis-step during an encore Flamenco performance...

Fortunately, the doctors said that she could walk through the Prado Museum the next day...and that her ankle sprain wasn't serious enough to end her career in Spanish Dance.

Prado Are Museum. Lovely Place.

When we were walking back to the hotel from the Prado, we ran into this strange sight on the street:

We spent quite a bit of time trying to figure what was going on here, so I'm not going to explain it right now. Are they prisoners, it is some sort of military exercise,...a Masonic initiation? Ha ha.

We had a favorite Tapas bar in Madrid that had really excellent grilled asparagus...and sangria. Girls' night out!

Action shot: Anna. Sangria.

As always, the picture of refinement and decorum.

Stuttgart, noch einmal

Enroute from Berlin to Spain, I paid another visit to Stuttgart and the "Hotel for Americans named Morey in Southern Germany," also known as Claudia's House. In addition to catching up on some sleep (looking back, I was suffering from a bit of fatigue), and seeing some familiar faces, I arrived just in time for Stuttgart's Lange Nacht der Museen. "Long night of the museums" is a special night where the approximately 10 frillion museums in Stuttgart stay open unitl 2 AM. You buy one ticket and can visit as many museums as you want plus there are free buses and trains to get you from place to place. Pretty cool. Claudia and I went to the Wurttemberg State Museum, a couple art museums, and the Mercedes-Benz museum. All in all, a very enlightening evening.

Another day, Claudia and Uli took me to the Ritter Sport chocolate factory and university town of Tuebingen (Half-timbered houses, narrow streets, a church, and a castle. On the Neckar River. Beautiful)

I have really nice friends.

The woods in Leinfelden, in front of Claudia's house.

Midnight at the Mercedes Benz museum with a couple thousand Germans (Claudia in foreground)

Tuebingen, view from the church tower.

PS Yeah, the Mercedes museum is pretty amazing.

Berlin 2

OK, I know in the whole scheme of the world, the East/West Berlin setup shouldn't seem so crazy to me. You've got a few large powers dividing up a major city at the end of a war; it turns out said powers don't all get along so well, and the city becomes literally divided. But then you've got West Berlin, walled-in, just sitting in the middle of East Germany during the Cold War...crazy.


Another great thing about Berlin is the museums. Scores of the! Plus, on certain nights after 6PM, many of the museums are free. So I had myself a little after-dark romp through the Egyptian museum and the Pergamon museum. Yep, wild and crazy times in Berlin.

Nefertiti: the original "look"













21st Century A.D. woman inspects 14th Century B.C. woman















The New Synagogue, from behind a tree.

The Reichstag with German flags and Germans. (And tourists)









The Reichstag is Germany's Parliment building. The German Republic was proclaimed here in 1918. It almost burned down in 1933. The Nazis blamed it on Communist conspirators, but there seems to be some skepticism about that one...
The Nazis made their last stand here in April 1945, when it fell to the Allies.
The building didn't see much action until 1995, when it was wrapped in silver cloth for its 101st birthday (I bet that felt nice). Then it was rebuilt to be back in action. You can actually walk all the way up the glass dome at the top (very cool view). From the dome, you can look down into the legislative chamber and watch the government at work. Nice touch.

All together now: the Brandenburg Gate

Berlin Memorials

Portion of the Wall near the old Luftwaffe building. The Luftwaffe building was so close to the Wall (on the Eastern side) that one day, after hours, an office worker strung a zip line from one of the windows, tossed it to a friend across the Wall, and glided himself, and his wife and son into West Berlin. Yeah, the windows were bricked up after that.

Neue Wache ("New Guardhouse"-it was new in 1816). After WWII it was a memorial to the victims of fascism, now it's a memorial to the "victims of war and tyranny." It houses the tombs of an unknown German soldier and an unknown concentration camp victim. The statue is a copy of the Kathe Kollwitz statue, Mother with Her Dead Son

Holocaust Memorial

Unter den Linden is one of my favorite places in Berlin. I like to walk up and down it while eating donuts and drinking coffee. Unter den Linden means "under the linden trees" and it has been a main drag since at least the 15th Century. Hitler, apparently deliriously over-confident in the beauty of the swastika, cut down the trees and replaced them with Nazi flags. The Germans were not happy about that one, and he actually replanted the trees. Ooo, ouch! Pride comes before the fall, Hit. I hear the Hellespont hasn't been whipped in a while.


Unter den Linden, Frederick the Great Statue, looking East
















Unter den Linden, a few minutes and about 100 meters later, looking West.