"Weed Street"

I went to the Old City this morning. I love Casco Viejo. It's an old,
pedestrian city with cobblestone streets, cathedrals, buskers, bums,
the works.
In Bermuda, the "city" is Hamilton, which is nothing like what most
people think of when they hear the word "city". The main area where
people are is called "Reid Street". I won't describe it, it's too
different from anything that most people have as a reference. If I
find some pics, I'll link them. But anyway, when I think of hanging
out in "Tahn" in Bermuda, I think of Reid Street. In Casco Viejo, I
realise that my favourite place is a street which, until today, I have
never been able to find on the first try. It's a curved, weird street,
because it's not parallel to abything and doesn't seem to join up
where it should. It seems a lot like Diagon Alley in Harry Potter...
If you don't tap your wand on the exact brick and say the right words,
it isn't actually there. THis street is full of clothes that I like,
Indian cotton, loose comfortable stuff, the shoe stores have nice
looking comfy shoes, everything is just chill. So today I went there,
looking for a notebook, but I got there at 1:30 when everything was
closing for lunch (those that actually open in the morning, as I'm
finding that Casco Viejo doesn't really do mornings - and "afternoon"
doesn't actually start until 4:30 or 5 p.m.). So I was walking around,
looking in the store windows behind their locked gates, and I kid you
not, for the first time I realised that every other store on this
street sold paraphernalia for smoking marijuana, growing marijuana, or
covering up the scent of smoking marijuana. I honestly didn't notice
before! One store was posing as an agricultural supply store, but the
books in the window were actually about growing your own weed, there
were fluorescent bulbs, fertilizer, the works. Why didn't I notice
this before? Every store window had bongs in it, there were also
candle and incense stores (which I really liked, part of why I liked
that street), and of course the clothing stores that I like. So I am
now realizing that just as in Bermuda my favourite street was Reid
Street, here in Casco Viejo my favourite street happens to be "Weed
Street". I know that I won't be visiting any of the garden supply
stores there, and the candles and incense that I may buy will not be
for covering up the smell of smoke from anything else, and if I do buy
any clothes there, I will make sure that there's no grass in the
pockets (remind me to tell you about THAT story one day!)

Why is Everything in Spanish???

OK, so I'm in Spain, of course everything is in Spanish. I just logged
on to Blogger to do some editing and adding, and the whole site came
up in Spanish. This is agreat option for those of us in Spain who
speak Spanish and not English, and it's really thoughtful of the sites
that have the multilanguage option to do this.... but what about those
of us here who, once we've found all the characters on this jacked-up
spanish keyboard, try to go to our favourite sites, and find them
speaking a different language? I haven't checked my Hotmail for
months. MSN looks like it has interesting stuff here and there, but it
all being in Spanish, and no way to change, I lose interest. Google is
smart. At the bottom of the page there's Google.com in English. Always
in the same place (this being Spain, they also have Google.com in
Galego, Google.com in Euskara, and Google.com in Catalan). What's up
with that? I found out when I got here, that Spanish people don't
speak Spanish, they speak Castillian - I think the only difference
between this and the Spanish spoken in south and central america, is
the lisp on the Cs and Zs and the use of the informal 2nd person.
There's also a bunch of slang, but that's to be expected. Spain also
has some regional languages, hence, gallego, euskera and catalan.
Euskera is Basque. I'm in Pais Vasco (Basque country). Bilbao is the
capital of the province of Vizcaya, one of the Spanish Basque
provinces. There are lots of Basque people here, so the signs are all
in Euskera and in Castillian. But from what I understand, everyone,
including the Baasque people, speaks Castillian, so the Euskera on the
signs is more of a cultural thing, which I think is nice.
Last night I went to a concert. Yesterday afternoon I saw on a notice
board that there was a cello concert at the "Catedral de Bilbao". It
seemed simple enough, I had 2 hours to get ready, so I headed home,
showered, changed, packed my capoeira stuff, and headed back into town
to find the Cathedral. On the way home, I asked a lady at the bus stop
where the "Catedral de Bilbao" was. She started pointing and
gesticulating and speaking very quickly in Spanish (Castillian
actually!) and a few times mentioned the Catedral de Begoña. Now, I
knew I had said Catedral de Bilbao, and if it was supposed to be the
one in Begoña, wouldn't they have said that? So I stopped her and
said, no not Begoña, BIlbao. Well, she gave me a look that transcends
language barriers, as if to say "you stupid idiot" and then told me
that there was no Catedral de Bilbao. Hmmmm.... I went back to the
message board, which was in the doorway of a store about 3 doors down
from the bus stop, and sure enough there it was, Catedral de Bilbao.
So I'm thinking, even if there isn't something actually called that,
maybe it's just commonly known as that and when people in Bilbao say
"It's at the Cathedral" they know what they are talking about. This is
my Bermuda mentality kicking in. In Bermuda, if something is at "The
Cathedral" everyone knows that whatever it is is taking place at St.
Theresa's Cathedral in Hamilton, despite the fact that Bermuda has
over 300 churches on its 22 square miles. I got home and as I arrived,
Pejman was leaving home. He's the father of the house I'm staying in.
I asked him where the Catedral de Bilbao was. He said "there is a
cathedral in Begoña" so I'm thinking, hmmm.... shouldn't the place
wrongly referred to as CAtedral de Bilbao, actually be in Bilbao? So I
asked, "is there a cathedral in Bilbao?" he answered that yes, there
is one in the old city. The Catedral de Santiago. I knew the place, I
had seen it a few days before with Mark and Mara, and in fact every
time I go to the old city. There are actually 2 churches there. When I
got inside I asked Neisan the same question. He told me Begoña first
then Santiago. Since I only had half an hour to get there, and Begoña
was way out of the way and I had no idea where to start looking for
the catedral there, I decided to check out Santiago, and if I didn't
find the cathedral, I could have a cup of coffee somewhere and hang
out for an hour or so before my capoeira class.
I arrived at the Catedral de Santiago at exactly 8 p.m., and thank
goodness I didn't go to Begoña, because it was there. I got a seat in
front (the place was full but being alone, I managed to get the other
people in the pew to squeeze over and make space). The concert was
being performed by 4 cellists, all Basque. Their names were all Basque
(I've figured it out... Basque names seem to contain more than the
normal number of Xs or Zs) Actually I have the program... they were
Kepa de Diego Cortazár, Diego Gil Arbizu, Aritz Goméz Uranga, and Jon
Larraz Mozo.
The first piece was a cello solo. It lasted half an hour. It was
painful. I had trouble distinguishing it as music. It had no timing,
no rhythm, no key, and the guy turned the page at least 6 times (I
started counting after the boredom had set in, so it could have been
as many as 10 times). The little girl at the other end of the pew, she
was about 9 or 10 years old, obviously felt the same way about the
piece that I did. Wheenver the cellist made a particularly unique
sound with his instrument, we would look at each other and raise an
eyebrow or smile behind a hand. I decided that coffee in a nearby cafe
was not such a bad idea despite having found the concert. However, the
piece finally ended (after 5 or 6 false endings that felt like the
piece was over but turned out to be wishful thinking). I figured this
was the musical equivalent to some art I saw at the Guggenheim.
Sometimes you look at a painting and see that there is canvas and
paint and colours, all the elements are there, however, the way they
are brought together makes you wonder what it was all for. The
difference was that at the Guggenheim, when you see these, you can
keep walking. Here it was like being made to stare at it for half an
hour with my eyes taped open. UGH. However, after this interesting
start, there was a duet for 2 cellos, which was absolutely wonderful.
The next piece, which all 4 cellists played in (as well as all the
pieces thereafter) was, what I now realise, my favourite piece of
classical music. It's Adagio by Albinoni. It's usually performed by a
string quartet, but of course the cellos played all the parts, and it
was exquisite. It more than made up for the 30 minutes of torture at
the beginning. In fact, it moved me to tears. I've been listening to
and performing classical music all my life, and my father's love for
it got transferred to me from an early age. I didn't realise how much
I loved this piece of music though, until last night.
The rest of the concert was also excellent, and finished just in time
for me to make it to my 10 p.m. capoeira class.
But that piece of music, played by Basque people, in Spain, spoke to
me directly, in a language I could understand.