Macarena por la madrugada

Last nite we watched the Nazarenos of Macarena at the square of Alameda de Hercules for 3 hours. Macarena did not dance macarena-the-old-summer-hit but came from the district of Macarena instead. I have had enough of those hooded Nazarenos now. Thankfully today and tomorrow they have only some very few groups of them left. I missed El Silencio, the silent group, due to being way too old and tired at 3.30 am. Madrugada... Madrugada...

Arriba, abajo, al centro, al dentro!

Arriba, abajo, al centro, al dentro! Take a drink and raise your hand (arriba!), low your hand with the drink (abajo!), place your hand in the middle (al centro!) and finally, bottoms up (al dentro!).

Yesterday we enjoyed some tapas, beer and Tinto de Verano on the terrace of Taberna Canela at C/Mercedes de Velilla. Such a nice place, the prices were really reasonable even if it is Semana Santa now and the smily Columbian waiter let our ears to enjoy his slow and musical accent after all the Sevillan rush through the words and sentences.

Before tapas the Sevillan L took us to see one of the Easter Processions, La Lanzada, to leave their home church. It really takes a good while to get all out and organized - the heavy statues of the Crist and Maria, the so called pasos, are so tall and wide that the men under must crawl on their knees and follow very carefully the directions. After the procession marched away with the brotherhood of hundreds of hooded Nazarenos, the statue of the Christ, the statue of crying Maria looking for her son and finally, the orchestra L invited us to watch the next next procession, cofradía, from his roof top terrace near to Plaza de la Encarnacíon.

Roof top terrace of a 5 floor building, great. Ungratefull me was more concentrated on photographing the great panoramic views over all the Seville and his 3 sweet soft little dogs than the actual thing. Really cool, anyway. L:s flat is maybe the nicest I have seen in Spain so far. Mostly the Spanish flats seem to be somehow cold and I do not agree with the general Spanish taste of decoration of private homes, but this one was just lovely and so cozy... Maybe I could live there? Oh well I bet he does not let me to. Shame.

And by the way, people, I know already I am quite tall here in the South of Europe and that you might be unable to see the what-ever-thing you are eager to see if I happen to stand in front of you. Not my fault, though - this is how I was born and I am certainly not gonna cut my legs or stay home to please your midget self. In general I tend not to inform you if you are a bit dumb, fat or ugly so please keep your nice little mouth shut about my height. Deal? (At least 2 - 3 comments every single day so far, thank you very much.)

Nazarenos

I am soon going to see some more of the 60,000 brothers/nazarenos who are marching on the narrow streets of Seville during the Holy Week. 48,961 nazarenos which I have seen so far are just not quite enough.

Have almost found my local already. It is a cafe/bar called El Casereo and just around the corner from the Palacio de Lebrija. Cozy places, the hams silently hanging behind the bar and all the old photos on the wall catching my attention.

Yesterday I had the most strangest terrace experience so far at a bar called Casa Paco. We just wanted to quickly enjoy a drink and a little bit of tapas. The kitchen was opening in "10 minutes". Well, 10 minutes became a half an hour or more and finally we were served by alltogether 3 confused waiters and waitresses, one after another bringing wrong drinks, wrong dishes and wrong bills. Yep. Okay. Is it me being an obvious tourist or is this just the local habit?

A trabajar...

White shirts are from Hell. And remain clean white approximately 3 minutes. Which is a pity because in my new work placement in the museum of Palacio de Lebrija I am supposed to wear one every single day. Neither one Spanish abuela who thought I am the sales assistant when I popped into a shop after work nor the limited use of the washing machine made me any happier with my precious little shirts. This is going to be interesting. And dirty. Seems that they are hoping me to be cabable of giving tours both English and Spanish. Oh well wouldn't count on that too much. English, for sure, but Spanish? Have you ever heard me speaking? "Hello. Vases, statues, paintings, dining room - kettlery, plates, library - books... Thank you and good bye."

I am definetely too old or too tired or too boring person for the type of accommodation I am enjoying at the moment. Yesterday, as usual, my dear housemates where making loads of noise until 1.30 am and then started again around 7 am. If they want to make noise 24/7 at least they could get proper speakers to their laptops. And preferably shut up around 12 pm at schoolnites.

Please please please the Patron Saint of Old Dusty Laptops, please bring my laptop from Helsinki, okay? Please? I said please.

Yesterday night we got stuck into the jam of Spaniards. It's quite impressive how many people they are able to pack into one streets and how many into the next square and so on. The parades were thankfully a bit more interesting in the darkness of the night. So I am maybe going to see more today. Maybe. Just need to stop eating pizza afterwards.

Semana Santa

Semana Santa, the Easter Week, started today. One of the biggest Cristian festivals in all of the Europe, I guess. All the city centre is full on happy Spaniards in their best Sunday clothes and also full of kind of religious parades. In many places it is almost impossible to move. The people seem to think I am too tall and take too much space with my blonde definetely non-Spanish hair and with my long legs. And I am definetely an ungratefull little tourist as here I sit in the Internet instead of marvelling this precious fiesta.

Buddha eats Churros

The Italian guy was celebrating his birthday yesterday by providing pasta (surprise, surprise) with beer and wine at our place. Around 11 pm the landlady started to be a bit upset so we headed to one of the terraces surrounding Alameda de Hercules. After just one little caña it was suddenly around half past one and we marched to Plaza de Arma.

Inside the shopping mall there is a 3 floor disco/bar which is called maybe Buddha del Mar or Kudeka, not quite sure about that. At least they had a pretty buddha statue on the entrance. In the entrance there were also 4 (!) bouncers and the Italian had to use a little bit of his gifts of speech to get in one English guy who was unfortunately wearing dusty sneakers. We others lingered straight in with our leather shoes, oh well, such a luck did not have MY sneakers on that time. The disco would have been open until 6 am but I was awfully knackered already around 4 o'clock. And not a big fan of discos, anyway.

Today I wake up nicely around 1.30 pm and made the mistake of my life by eating greasy churros with thick chocolate in the sunshine. Yack yack yack.

Sussi conhelada

At the nite I got deep frozen. The days are getting warmer but the nites seem to get colder and colder which does not make much of the sense to me... The infamous Spanish logics I guess? Was shivering in my bed under 2 light blankets - wearing a very stylish costume including woollen socks, pyjama pants, pyjama shirt, long sleaved t-shirt, fleece jacket and training trousers. Brrrrrr. On the next room the new French guy kept repeating some Spanish tenses all over and all over again and all I wanted was just to be back in Helsinki in my warm, silent bed-sit with my good auld laptop. And with my own bathroom.

The landlady who lives upstairs by the way locked the other bathroom for some mysterious reason so now we got only one toilet and shower for 8 people which is clearly not enough. Soon gonna be really dirty and apart from that will start peeing on the flowers in the garden-ish glasscube in the middle of the house? I've got kinda mixed feelings with all this - maybe getting too old for new strange experiences and should stay home knitting and drinking tea in front of the telly instead of rushing around the Sevillan streets, getting lost twice a day, listening Flamenco and gulping down cheap beer with delicious tapas.

About tapas, yesterday we popped for a caña in the bar Central at Alameda de Hercules and after that got really lost. Found back to our neighbourhood after some desperate circling and had some tapas in one of the bars nearby: goat cheese with honey, fresh bread and potatoes with Rockefort sauce. Nice.

Barrio de Santa Cruz

I love the scents of apple trees and all the flowers and all these narrow alleys and the sun and and and... And my allergy is getting worse, I keep sneezing and sneezing. Yesterday evening I participated a walking tour around the lovely quarters of Barrio de Santa Cruz and it's surroundings which are full narrow alleys and hidden plazas. Quite a many alleys are so narrow the roofs of the houses are almost touching each other and you can touch the house on the both sides of the streets just by stretching your arms a little bit further from your body.

Nowadays the infamous habit of botellon has been prohibited in Spain. No more huge amounts of drunken chicos with their bottles of beer or wine drinking and smoking and shouting in the parks and squares. The only group of that kind we saw yesterday were foreigners, surprise surprise. Couple of happy Dutch teenagers were sitting on the fragile looking statue which I concidered a bit arrogant. Drinking is fine, drinking is nice, I like drinking, but doing things which could potentially damage really old historical remainings is totally another thing. There is enough benches and staircases to sit on, isnt't there? You do not necessary have to place your precious yesterday-born bottom part on top of something which was created at least 500 years ago.

The walking tour ended into the tiniest bar ever, it was only about 4 square metres of space. We tasted the "Orange Wine" which was really thick and sweet. Good to try once but I wouldn't carry a barrell to home. Better to head to yet another bar to enjoy some pints of lager €2.80 each and share 4 delicious tapas among 4 people - €3.30 per tapa which was quite a bargain as they were really delicious and quite big, didn't need to look for any other kinda dinner afterwards.

Sevilla!

Aqui estoy! Greetings from Seville. I'm sitting on the 2nd floor of one of the many language schools here in the City Centre of Seville, surrounded by hundreds of tiny winy alleyways leading me to lose my sense of orientation in minutes. It¡s quite nice and sunny now but the nights are still very chilly, brrrrr, need to wear my thick pajama and woollen socks and a fleece jacket. Yes, I am very sentivive to cold.

On Sunday afternoon we arrived at Malaga airport. The weather was fantastic and even Malaga was looking pretty as what. But as soon as the train started the 2,5 hours climb towards Seville the weather changed into rain and coldness - our little faces went apart from sleepy also to mildly upset. The marvellously green Teletubbie-styled hills disappeared and the endless tunnels and flat fields started or at least that was what we guessed to see through the thig fog.

We spent the first night in Spain in a flat of a Spanish lady in Triana quarter but that was not too nice place for a longer stay in my opinion. I prefer a little bit more privacy and a little less scarily waving bunk beds so yesterday we changed into a student flat just 10 minutes walk away from here.

I have already enjoyed a granizado in a floating terrace on the banks of the river Quadalquivivir (not sure about the spelling), couple of nice cold Cruz Campo beers, the best pizza in Spain ever and some tasty tortilla. The thing I am deeply missing is my poor old laptop - in the last minute I decided to leave it in Helsinki, God knows why, and now I am coming to notice the Cyber Cafes are starting to be as rare and vanishing commodity in Europe as are the Tall Ships, horse carriages and 10 kids families. #%%** how could I be so stupid. Oh well. I can. I can.

It's raining Leprechauns!

Wishes all the ex-Dubs and the rest of human population a nice Lá ’le Pádraig, colloquially Paddy's Day. Sláinte! Later probably heading to Molly Malone's to have a pint of Guinness.
[x] I have seen St. Patrick's Day Parade in Dublin.
[x] I have climbed Croagh Patrick .
[x] I have been to Downpatrick, Northern Ireland.
[x] I know at least one Irish man called "Paddy".