Tile Floors

Our flat here has tile floors everywhere with no rugs of any kind. I like them because they're easy to maintain. Sweeping, vacuuming and mopping are all pretty easy. As we move into winter, I'm starting to see a down side.

We don't wear shoes in the house. We didn't in Walla Walla and we continue that habit here. That means spending most of our time here in the apartment in socks. As the day goes on, I find my feet getting progressively colder and colder. The cool tile just leeches the heat right out. I'm not really a slipper guy, but it seemed the only solution.

Laura found a pair of slippers for me while out on her walk yesterday. They were cheap. I wore them today and they really do seem to do the trick. The heavy soles insulate my feet from the tile. As I write this, my feet are comfortably warm:

Not sure where I am on the tile vs. wood vs. carpeting question, but at least my feet are warm now. Thanks Laura!

***

I mostly finished writing a paper today. If all goes well, I'll get it submitted in the next day or two. Then, my OCD riddled mind can move on to other projects.

***

Happy election day tomorrow. I hope everyone votes. Since we're 6 hours ahead of the east coast, 9 hours ahead of the west coast, we probably won't hear anything definitive until Wed morning our time.

Soccer Loop

I walked out to one of the local soccer stadiums this morning. Here's the track I made as recorded by my phone:

It's called Estadio Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán and it's where the local pro team plays:

It was a cool and cloudy morning. Things were a lot quieter this morning than yesterday during the procession:

I also saw these old Roman ruins:

They're called Acueducto Romano Tramo. They date pretty far back, but have been rebuilt a couple of times, most recently at the end of the 14th century. The dark brown is an external support bar added relatively recently. Like the old Roman column, these ruins sit in a hole because in the time since their construction, the ground level has risen around it.

***

Generally quiet day around the house. We did a couple of loads of laundry hoping that we could get enough sun to dry them on the roof. We did manage it, but just barely. With the painters working on the building during the week, Sat and Sun are good days to take advantage of the rooftop. Otherwise, drying clothes on the indoor rack takes about 24 hours and that with a fan blowing on them the whole time.

Otherwise, I read a bit, worked on my paper a bit, watched some netflix, studied some Spanish.

Esperanza de Triana

It's been a big week for La Hermandad de la Esperanza de Triana. It's the 600th anniversary of the founding this Catholic organization. The peak of the commemoration has been the procession of Nuestra Señora de la Esperanza. On Thursday an 8 hour procession brought the statue to the Catedral in downtown Sevilla. The culmination of that procession is the entrance of her float into the Catedral. This video shows that event (not mine, I was sleeping).

Today, the procession taking her back home to Triana passed along our main street. We didn't have the best view, but from our balcony we probably saw more than if we'd been down on the street. Here's the view of our street, perpendicular to the main street, from our balcony.

You can see the leading edge of the paso (float) holding the statue. It's massive and carried by about 30 men in shifts throughout the procession.

There were tapestries and banners all along the procession route. We walked the Triana part of the route earlier today:

Crowds started building on the bridge:

This tall building on the left is the home of the statue and the brotherhood:

The hanging streamers mark the places where the procession will pass. The anchors hanging there represent the fact that this brotherhood was founded by mariners in the 15th century.

This is the main street about an hour prior to the arrival of the procession from across the river:

There was a full band accompanying the procession. They would stop and play at intervals. They were quite good. There were also professional level fireworks coming from the top of some nearby, but unidentified building. Crowds cheered. I set up my phone to do a timelapse of the crowd exodus after the procession passed:

And, this morning:

Here's a before and after of the main street, perpendicular to our street:

***

The rest of the day was relatively relaxed. We went grocery shopping. We also did a cursory shopping expedition for slippers. Turns out the tile floors in the apartment really start to suck the heat out of your feet in the cooler weather. I've taken to keeping my feet on a pillow when I'm sitting on the couch. It actually helps a lot.

Recovery Day

I walked Shelley and Scott across the bridge this morning where they caught an uber out to the airport. I thought it would be cheaper over on that side of the river since it's a much easier drive, but the ineffable uber pricing algorithm charged about the same as just picking them up here in Triana. Oh well, so much for trying to game uber. Regardless, even though uber is pretty new here, it worked out fine and they're in Bilbao this evening.

Scott kindly agreed to take a misbehaving computer back to the US and mail it to Rachel where she can manage the warranty exchange and bring it back to me in December. All of that avoids a costly international shipping charge.

***

I spent a relatively quiet day catching up on a lot of odds and ends, but avoiding serious brain work. I call it productive procrastination.

***

This afternoon I joined Laura's language school teacher on another cultural event. We went back to a gallery we'd visited earlier, but with a different exhibit. The exhibit was a collection of paintings that were finalists in a nationwide contest. My favorite was this one:

Up close, you can see that it's made of thousands of hand-drawn straight lines. It's like looking at a cloud, different shapes emerge as you look at it for a while. Laura's teacher, Lucia, after asking us what we thought, revealed that the winning canvas was this one:

I initially didn't really like this one, but after looking at if for a while, it grew on me. Now I really like it. Unfortunately, I didn't record either of the artists' names.

***

Coming into the building today, one of the painters working on the building started talking to me in Spanish. While I still can't speak the language with anything approaching proficiency, I was able to understand him when he said that next week they would be working in the smaller courtyard and since we lived on that courtyard, we should keep our windows closed. I was able to utter enough Spanish to convince him that I understood him. I guess that's progress.

***

Managed to talk to Emily for a while today. She sounds good and kindly pointed her camera at Benji for a while so I could enjoy some domesticated rabbit antics.

Supposed to warm up tomorrow and be sunny. Looking forward to that. It was a cold week.

Devour Sevilla

Another busy, tourist-y day with Scott and Shelley. The day was capped with a food tour by a company called "Devour Sevilla". Early in the day, since it was a national holiday and Laura didn't have language school, she led us around on her own personal tour--one that she's developed from scraps of cultural information she has cherry-picked from staff at the language school. Tucked deep in the city, in a nondescript block are these Roman columns that date back to about 100AD:

Most interesting about the columns, beside the fact that they have been preserved in this location for 2000 years while the city grew up around it, is the way the ground level surround the columns has risen during the passing millennia. The surrounding ground level was about 5 meters higher than the base of the columns. As such, the columns appeared to be in a hole.

This modern dance group of 4 dancers put on an amazing show behind the cathedral. We stopped and watched the whole production around noon. They wore street clothes and seems to have no problem spinning, falling, and moving on the rough cobblestone surface:

They finished a virtuoso performance, both physically and artistically, with this bit of acrobatics:

It was unusual because the larger dancers stood on the back of the smaller dancers for about 1 minute. The two on the bottom, were really strong!

Along the street, in front the cathedral we passed a nougat shop. Apparently, nougat is right up Scott's alley, haha, so we popped in and got some. Not a nougat aficionado myself, I did find it really good:

We grabbed a quick pizza near the cathedral. Not the best, but filling, and headed home to regroup in advance of our evening food tour.

***

Catholics in Sevilla are divided up into "brotherhoods". One of the brotherhoods is celebrating its 600th anniverary this year. As a "reward" for their lengthy existence and to celebrate the anniversary, they "process" and carry their "float", a massive, human carried conveyance that holds a large, ornate statue of the Virgin Mary. The float is made of silver and has lots of candle holders. Hundreds of lit candles light the float. It's carried by teams of around 30 men. They carry it from their home church in Triana, across the bridge (the best one), through the streets of Sevilla and into the Catedral. There it reposes for 2 days before an equally elaborate procession carries the float back to the home church. The float is preceded by a number of marchers carrying other holy artifacts and is led at the front by a marching band. Throngs of people line the streets to get a glimpse of the float. Before the procession crowds built in Triana:

The main street was crowded with people moving towards the procession route:

Even on the side of the bridge:

They lined up early. This little guy, decided to nap while waiting:

Finally, after loud boom-type fireworks were launched above the home church to signal the start of the procession, the band reached our location, somewhere around the middle of the bridge:

Here's what it sounded like:


They march for a few minutes and pause. March and pause, all the way to the Catedral. This is around 4:30pm. When we passed by the Catedral later that evening at around 10:30pm, they just reaching the Catedral. That's 6+ hours!  The total length of the procession is about 1 mile. According to the published schedule, the procession wasn't due to conclude until 1am. Because we had the food tour from 5-10pm, we thought we might not get to see the main attraction, the float! However, in a weird (not saying miraculous) coincidence, on the way home from the food tour, failing to get down this street:


Turning back and going the long way around, we paused, looked down this long, narrow alleyway and saw the float:

Even the alley spontaneously filled as the float passed by. This is a poorly lit photo, so it's hard to see what all the hype is about. For me, mostly it was strange to think that during the 5 hours that we were on the food tour, eating and drinking and watching a flamenco show, the procession was going. That's some serious dedication to the cause on the part of the marchers.

***

Speaking of the food tour. We met our guide, Elena, at Plaza Nueva at around 5pm. There was one other person with the four of us--an older gentleman from Budapest, Hungary named Peter. Peter's backstory was interesting. He left Hungary during/after the 1956 uprising and emigrated to the UK. There he had a full career at the BBC Hungary division. After the USSR broke up in around 1990, he was asked to come back to Hungary to help develop free speech policies for the emerging democratic government. We lamented the fact that the current, right-wing, prime minister, Viktor Orban, has now essentially eliminated all of the media and free speech policies that he and his colleagues so carefully developed in the 90's. Together we lamented the rise of nationalism and fascism throughout Europe (UK, Germany, Italy, etc), in the US (Trumpism), and even in South America (Venezuela, Brazil). All of this was during introductions and the walk over to the first eatery. Subsequently, we happily avoided politics. Elena, our guide, mentioned later that now, often her tours become uncomfortable because people start arguing over politics. Fortunately, we were all like-minded in that regard.

On our tour, we visited two well-regarded tapas bars. First stop was Maestro Marcelino. We had a sampling of various tapas meats. Next stop was Las Teresas. This place has been continuously operated for well over a hundred years. If you look closely at this photo, you can see layers of dust on the bottles along the back wall:

Another interesting feature of this photo is the collection of "recently" retired knives that are used to slice ham. They have worn away to almost nothing after years of repeated use and sharpening. Here is the slicing in action for our tapas:

Next stop was a flamenco performance at La Casa del Flamenco. Two dancers, a singer and a guitarist. They were fantastic. No photos were allowed during the hour-long performance, but they did a mini-encore where photography was permitted:

Here is some video of the mini-encore:


Elena, who is somewhat of a scholar of flamenco, explained the history of the art form. While not the definitive origin story, the idea is that people from India slowly migrated westward, into north Africa and then southern Spain. They were sort of "gypsies", kept apart from mainstream Sevillan/Spanish society. They were poor and worked difficult jobs. Because they were segregated, they lived across the river from Sevilla, in Triana. Flamenco song, dance, and guitar developed in these communities in Triana. The music is somber, emotional, sad. Elena compared it to the development of the blues in black communities of the southern US. There is a tremendous amount of improvisation in the art--similar to jazz. Armed with that information, I found the concert really compelling and expressive.

After the flamenco concert, we finished up our tour with dinner at Vineria San Telmo. We shared a sequence of small courses, prawns, oxtail burritos, pork. Elena also explained which wines worked best with each dish. (I don't drink wine, but found the discussion interesting.) At the end, Elena surprised Peter with a "birthday cake" (actually a piece of lemon merengue pie with a lighted candle on top). Turns out Peter's 81st birthday was yesterday and somehow Elena figured that out. We happily sang happy birthday to him (in English). It was very thoughtful:

***

Shelley and Scott leave tomorrow. We had a great time hanging out with them these past two days. They're on to Bilbao and then back home to Atlanta on Sunday.