Professor in Critical Condition After Being Pelted with Candy

That would be a good headline, no?  The part about being pelted with candy is true, but I made it out with only minor bruises.  Yesterday was the Festa de Sant Medir in Gracia, and my friend Julie tipped me off about it a few days ago.  I’m always up for a new cultural experience, so I told her we were in. 

I knew something special was going on when I saw a lot—A LOT—of horses on Avinguda Tibidabo when I drove the kids to school.  But it was also grey and rainy—a cold, wet, Barcelona day.  When I got home around 6:30, it was dark, still cold and drizzling steadily.  On my walk from the train to the house, I pretty much decided we should stay home.  It was nasty out, and the parade did not start until 8 pm, which would mean the kids would get to bed late. 

But then I walked in the door, and Alec was all charged up and ready to go.  Unbeknownst to me, Alec had made plans for us to meet up with a colleague who lives in Gracia and go.   Of course, I had planned for us to connect with Julie, but we couldn’t reach Josep Marie, the colleague, so we ended up going with him.  Veterans of the parade, Josep Marie and his wife, Joanna—and their son and his friend—led us through the streets of Gracia to a spot close to where the parade would start. 

And what is the Festa de Sant Medir, you ask?  According to oh-Barcelona.com, the festival has been celebrated since 1830.  The story says that a baker from Gracia became sick and prayed to Sant Medir for a cure.  The baker vowed that if the saint cured him, he would make a pilgrimage to the saint’s shrine every March 3.  The baker recovered, and began his pilgrimage, banging on a drum and giving out sweets as he walked.  As the years went by, other people joined them, and they became the first “colla” which is the Catalan word for group or club.

It’s kind of a funny parade—people riding horses, some small bands, and “floats” which are really open-sided trucks.  There are now more than 30 colles that organize and participate in the parade—each band, float or group of horses and beribboned riders constitutes a colla.  The horse riders, the musicians, and the people on the trucks all throw caramelos—candy—out to the people lining the parade route.  100 tons of sweets are thrown during the parade.  Got that? 100 TONS of sweets.

The kids went absolutely crazy.  They simply could not believe that people were throwing candy to them.  And that it went on and on and on.  Mostly, it’s pretty junky candy—small wrapped hard candies.  But the kids don’t care.  They dive into the street, hold their bags up and shout “Aqui! Aqui!” to get the throwers to throw to them.  At one point Milo turned to me and asked, “Why don’t they do this in New York, mama?” We were clearly rookies, and had not brought anything in which to put the candy.  Fortunately, Joana equipped the kids with shopping bags, which weighed about 10 pounds each by the time we left.

Joana told us that it always rains on Sant Medir day; fortunately, the drizzle had stopped by the time the parade started.  But many people had come with umbrellas—some opened them up to protect themselves from the candy barrage, while others up-ended them in order to catch the candy.  One woman with a second floor apartment stood on her balcony, tied a rope around her upside down umbrella, and lowered it down in order to collect the sweets without ever having to leave the comfort of her own home.  After getting beaned in the head with several fistsful of hard candies, I understood her strategy.

The saint (Sant Medir) is supposed to be at the end of the parade—kind of like Santa Clause in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.  The tradition is that the parade watchers throw candy at him.  Josep Marie told me that he normally travels the route in some kind of glass bubble.  But a couple of years ago, his bubble was shattered by the sweet projectiles, and this year he just didn’t show.

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Feeling Tall Again

I felt short in Amsterdam.  Or at least not tall.  I suppose that after six months in Barcelona, I have grown accustomed to towering over nearly everyone in my midst.  It felt strange to blend in so easily.  People spoke Dutch to me, assuming I was from there.  Now I’m a giant again. 

Lois—my mom—arrived on Sunday afternoon, after having spent a few days in Galicia with Myron and Raquel.  It’s good to have her here, and the kids jumped all over her as soon as she walked in the door.  She brought maple syrup and jeans, foot cream (I swear Neutrogena cracked heel is the only kind that works) and drugstore mascara—I can only find the expensive kind here.  For 70 plus, she did pretty well as a mule.

We walked around the Barri Gotic and the Born yesterday, had a yummy lunch at Cuines Santa Caterina,--artichokes are in season—and picked the kids up from school.  She’s already chipping in with laundry-hanging, but she doesn’t like leaning out of the 4^th storey window to do it, so she does it on her knees (see below).  I’m concerned that my neighbor, Francesca, with whom we share our clotheslines, will look out and think my mother is a dwarf.

Today we went to yoga, and Lois did pretty well hanging in there with an all-Spanish class.  We ate fabulous tuna burgers at a restaurant across from the yoga studio called Meatpacking.  The restaurant’s menu says, “In New York City, near the Hudson River, is a neighborhood where trucks bring the best meat from all over the country.  The meatpacking district is the best meat market on the east coast.” Which is kind of funny, since I can walk to that neck of the woods from my office at 13^th and 5^th.  C.C.’s teacher needed help with getting the kids to type up the fairy tales they had written, so I drafted my mom and we spent an hour helping 20 kids with 20 laptops type, save their documents, and quit.  I’d say that they got an average of two sentences typed.  C.C.’s story is 6 pages, so publication will not be any time soon.  I needed vanilla, which you cannot get at just any grocery store, so we took the kids to the Fabulous Baking Company after school for a cupcake treat and to get us a bottle.

Oh, and in case you missed Frans’s comment on a recent blog, she informed me that a group of wild knitters is responsible for covering up the city of Amsterdam to keep it warm in winter.  You’ve got to check out their website:

http://wildbreien.nl./

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There's no such thing as bad weather

When we travel, we’re all off our routine, which has its advantages and disadvantages.  Anyway, I find it harder to sit down and write.  So now we are back in Barcelona, and it feels like home.  The kids ran to their rooms to play, Alec put on the Barça game, I took a very hot bath.  The apartment we stayed in in Amsterdam had only a shower; I could not live in a damp, chilly place like Amsterdam without a bathtub. 

We spent Thursday at the Tropenmuseum, which is dedicated to the understanding of other cultures.  There is a fabulous children’s museum within the larger museum, and the current exhibition is all about storytelling.  Very interactive—the kids loved it.  They made “wishing vases” of clay and inserted tiny pieces of paper with their wishes written on them.  C.C.’s:  “to get a pet dragon.”  Milo wanted his to be a secret, but since he can’t write yet, he had to tell me:  “for Blanca to come to Barcelona.”  I’m afraid neither of their wishes will come true.  The museum also has a fantastic music section, where you can learn about different instruments, and get quick lessons on how to yodel, sing opera, or sing like they do in India.  Then you get to record yourself.  Of course, there are advantages to not having a recording of yourself yodeling in a public place.  Then again, I decided long ago never to run for public office.  If you click on this link, I think you will be able to see our footage.  I do think I could develop into a pretty good yodeler if I worked at it.  But I’ve got other fish to fry.

http://www.tropenmuseum.nl/smartsite.shtml?id=41583&ch=FAB&mid=Mjg3MD%3D%3D

The one thing we had not yet done, food-wise, was eat at an Indonesian rice table restaurant.  So that was the plan for Thursday night.  We went to Cilubang, which is located in the “9 Streets” area.  It was very quiet when we entered—it’s a small place, and ours were the only children present but I have to say that they have gotten much better in terms of their restaurant behavior.  They don’t spend nearly as much time underneath the tables or shouting as they used to.  We learned, quite by accident, on a trip to Portland, Oregon (at Pok Pok, which is an amazing Thai place) that Milo likes curry noodle soup.  C.C. will always eat plain noodles and chicken.  Ever since that trip to Portland, we’ve been able to eat at almost any Thai place.  We just have to negotiate up front with the wait staff.  The lovely elderly man who greeted us and waited on all of the tables at once consulted with the chef and told us that yes, they could accommodate us.  Milo spent half the meal in the kitchen with the chef, C.C. was well into her fourth “How to Train Your Dragon” book of the trip, and Alec and I worked our way through the 17 odd small dished that come with a rice table meal.  We had ordered the “medium” one—I’d hate to see the large.

Friday was grey, misty and chilly, but we had been told by Frans that in Amsterdam, people say “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad gear.”  Meaning that weather does not get in the way of riding your bike—70% of trips in the city are made by bike—or other plans.  With this in mind, we set off for the zoo, along with a gazillion other Amsterdammers with kids on winter break.  Artis is a terrific zoo and deserves an entire day to explore it—it includes an aquarium and a planetarium.  Most of the buildings are 19^th century historic edifices originally set around formal gardens.  We barely scratched the surface.  I especially loved that the whole zoo was wrapped up in bright woolens for winter.  At least they acknowledged the cold.  What I want to know is who knitted all that stuff?

Alec and the kids went home for a rest in the afternoon while I did a little shopping—a Marimekko dress and a new hot water battle at a shop that sells only Finnish design products (I am a big fan of hot water bottles).  Beautiful Ikat napkins and a cotton Indian top for C.C. at Capsicum.  And some 1950s Nagel candlesticks at Wonder Wood.  They’re very cool. 

We had tickets for the Anne Frank house at the end of the day.  C.C. and I had been in Waterstone’s, a British bookstore, earlier in the week to buy the aforementioned dragon books for C.C.  I found a children’s version of the Anne Frank story and picked it up to help prepare them for the visit to the house museum.  C.C. asked me who Anne Frank was and when I began to explain, she said—very loudly--
“Oh, come on!  Give the Jews a break already!”  Heads turned in the store.  She was so earnest and angry. 

It’s an incredible thing to try and teach children about prejudice, to explain it in terms they can understand.  It simply does not make sense to them.  Not that it makes sense to me, but even just talking about it with a child makes me realize the extent to which I’ve come to accept it as a part of life.  We were all moved by the secret annex—it feels like sacred space.  Seeing the actual diary, the photos of Anne, the tapes of her father, who was the only survivor.  We are now reading A Family Secret, a graphic novella about the Holocaust.  It seems a bit advanced for Milo, but he requests it every night.

So now we are back, and the sun is shining in Barcelona.  We’ll lay low today, unpack, pick up Grandma Lois at the airport.  It was a good trip.

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