There was no time to rest post-Morocco. More plans for fun times were in store for me. Can you think of why, if we returned from the weekend on April 18? That’s right- I turned 21 April 20! We arrived home Sunday night, and then fortunately had Monday to recuperate, unpack, and sleep in a little before a big night of Birthday!
The big night started with dinner at a favorite tapas restaurant with a big group of friends before heading to Los Remedios (a neighborhood in Sevilla), where the extensive fairgrounds for FERIA are set up! ~~Feria is an enormous week-long festival every year in Spanish cities (the biggest and best of them in Sevilla) in which the city sets up hundreds of private and a few public tents called casetas, complete with bars, dancing and even an amusement park section! Women wear fabulous and ridiculously pricey flamenco dresses and men dress up in their sharpest suits- it’s one hell of a spectacle~~ Anyway, my friend Kayla and I were both to turn 21 at midnight Monday night/Tuesday morning, at the very moment when the light to start Feria is lit! So we scheduled an early dinner at Los Coloniales with about 14 friends where we wined and dined and then headed off to a bar to pre-game for Feria. (Okay, I’m officially 21 now and I was certainly of legal age to drink my whole time in Sevilla, so I’m not scoldable now for talking about drinking on my birthday. Well, we went to a bar famous for its quantity of shots. And since Kayla and I were the birthday girls, people bought us lots of them! We were in pretty good shape as we headed to Feria for the midnight lighting. It was such a fantastic and even cultural way to turn 21 in Spain! There was a little countdown and then a big celebration like New Year’s at the moment we turned 21! SO COOL!! Then we went into Feria and to the public casetas for an incredible 21st birthday night! SUCCESS.
April 20-
My parents came! Sure, I thought about the day-of feelings I would have after the nighttime birthday revelry, but my parents came to Sevilla to see me! So I sucked it up and woke up at 11 to go meet them and show them my city! It had been such a long time so I was thrilled to see them at last! They were a tad jet-lagged and starved, so we started slow with a cute outdoor café in the Santa Cruz district. Mom enjoyed a tinto de verano (very popular drink in Andalucia comprised of red wine and lemon soda), but I could only handle water and plain toast… We got to catch up and enjoy each other’s company, and then we walked through the city to my favorite place in Sevilla: the Alcazares. Los Reales Alcazares means the Royal Fortress, which is now a palace for the royal family of Spain when they come to Sevilla, as well as a museum. The buildings are fantastically decorated with lots of ornate Moorish influences and we got an audio-guided tour. My favorite part, however, is outside. The gardens of the Alcazares go on forever! There are mazes and fountains and paths and flowers and orange trees and even peacocks meandering around! It’s gorgeous! We refreshed ourselves after the heat and walking with some gelato before splitting to get cleaned up for the night.
I met my parents and three of my friends at La Isla for my big birthday dinner (round 2)! The place was lovely and my parents had fun meeting Abby, Maya and Rozina and getting to know the people I’ve been hanging with these past months! I had a birthday cheesecake and of course the table started singing to me. Then the whole room joined in to sing Feliz Cumpleanos, and then the Moroccan waiter even chimed in with the Arabic version! So I had Happy Birthday sung to me in three different languages and then had to stand up and curtsy to the room. I think because I’m 21 I will no longer be embarrassed by those kinds of shenanigans, and now I choose to enjoy them! So it was a blast! After dinner, my poor exhausted parents went back to get a good night’s rest, but since it was birthday, I was expected to go out. I was drained from the night before, but I rallied! We went back to Feria and met up with a group to celebrate once again! We made it over to the amusement park and went on a crazy-fast Ferris wheel and some other silly rides. And that, folks, is how I spent my 21st birthday. One for the record books.
The rest of the week my parents and I toured Sevilla and got to do some really cool things. Wednesday my parents came to my neighborhood Triana. I showed them some of my local haunts and then my señora Julia invited us for lunch. My roommate’s family was in Sevilla too, so we all sat down for a potentially conversation-stunted meal. Alas it went great! Christa and I translated really well (impressed the parents and let them know we were doing some work after all in Spain) and Julia was the center of it all! She didn’t feel awkward and even let me ask her about 792364 questions from my parents. We sat there for nearly three hours! I think it was a pretty special experience for our parents because they get to experience what a real Spanish señora, home and meal are like- nothing touristy or artificial, and they got to see how we have really been living these past months!
Then after lunch we went to Feria to experience it in the daytime. I’m putting up an entire photo blog post next because the images I have can explain what everything’s like so much better than my words, particularly for Feria. The dresses, the tents (called casetas), the horses, the music- it’s an amazing sight. According to Julia, on any given day there might be as many as one million people there! And all the women and girls dress up in elaborate flamenco dresses with flowers and combs in their hair, color-coordinated jewelry, woven shawls, and bright flamenco shoes or espadrilles. I’m not kidding- they really go all out. It’s a stunning spectacle. The men have it easier, but they do look rather dapper in their sharp suits. Some special Sevillanos ride in horse-driven carriages decorated with bells and pom poms. We weren’t of the partying crew that day, but it was still thrilling to wander and people watch. We even saw a rainbow over Feria (rainbows are following me)! That night my friend Noah who was visiting Sevilla from Montpelier joined my parents and me for a delicious Spanish dinner at a cute restaurant on the river.
The next day we toured more of Sevilla. I showed them my university building, my usual routes to and from class, my gym, and, towering over all of the above, Sevilla’s Cathedral. There we ran into Noah, so he joined us for a few other adventures that day. The Cathedral is gorgeous, Moorish-influenced, and utterly massive- definitely not like walking into any other old church. Chapels upon chapels, a massively massive organ, rooms full of precious jewel and crowns, and the famous high point of Sevilla, the tall Giralda Tower. Dad, Noah and I climbed the tower and got to see all of my beautiful Sevilla from a fantastic spot. Then I took the three of them on a little tour of my Sevilla hot spots and we wound up at a tasty outdoor pizza place!
After lunch, the ‘rents and I had tickets to the bullfight! Some friends of mine had already been to one and told me they found it an incredibly sad and depressing experience. Each show consists of three matadors (with many skilled sidekicks) killing two bulls each- so the audience watches as six bulls are slowly butchered. The concept is a sad one, yes, but millions of Spaniards adore this “art,” and have for thousands of years, so I had to experience it for myself to judge.
We sat in an upper shaded area, which was a nice respite from the early searing sun. After muttering countless questions among ourselves (“Why is the bull already bleeding when it comes out?” “What’s the music for?” “Which one is the matador?”), I asked the couple sitting next to me to explain a thing or three (“They tag the bull to identify its owner so it bleeds a little,” “The band plays three times in each corrida to separate the jobs of the types of toreros,” “The matador comes out last with the red cape”), and they were our references for the remainder of the corrida.
First, all three matadors come out in their fine “trajes de luz” (literally “light suits” - they are the traditional, highly decorated, tight suits the matadors wear). Only the matadors have the right to wear white- some like the color for its stark contrast to the bull’s blood that will rub off on the matador if he is daring enough to get so close. The matadors prance around to applause and then return to safety outside the ring to let the first bull and a team of banderilleros out.
Banderilleros tease and tire the bull out by making him run from one pink bandera to another. Then three banderilleros stick the bull between the shoulder blades with two short blades with paper-covered poles that show the blood dripping out. Next, the picador comes out on a horse covered in heavy metal armor. For some reason the horse drives the bull crazy and he repeatedly spears the bull in its underbelly. Only decades ago the horse wasn’t covered at all and most died. The picador is the torero sitting on the horse with a super-long spear that he digs into the bull’s back. With this and the banderilleros’ hits, the bull gets weaker and weaker and finally the matador, the most experienced torero, enters the bullring.
In my opinion, the matador does much less than the other guys, but I suppose it takes plenty of experience to get to his level. The matador arrives with his red cape and some serious swagger. (Truth- they are the biggest celebrities in Spain- on par with Cristiano Ronaldo and Javier Bardem- these guys get all the ladies.) This is the artistic part: the matador heralds his red cape and teases the bull, coaxing him into a close blow, and then swirling out of the way of the bull’s deadly horns just at the last second. The closer the matador gets, the more swirling he does, and the more he has his back toward the bull, the more the crowd loves him. Some matadors were more impressive than others, and the crowd would shout and stand and yell for the band to play for the better moves they saw. Then, after much dancing around the bleeding, exhausted and humiliated bull, the matador pulls his sword out from behind the red cape and spears the beast through the heart. It’s obvious the moment it dies, crumbling to the ground, and then falling sideways and rigid. For its final humiliation, a team of donkeys arrives and drags the bull around the ring, drawing a victorious trail of blood out of the arena.
So this is the process of the bullfight. I try to tell it as artistically as I saw it. It’s such a practiced and appreciated art that it was easy to get drawn into the performance of it all. Still, I was one of few who did not clap. While I’m told the bulls are butchered and every part of the corpse is used after its death, and although I eat a cheeseburger without hesitation, I couldn’t help feeling that the slow, public murder of these animals wasn’t something to applaud. Still, I’m glad I went to see the historical and cultural event.
Where to begin again after the bullfight? Well let’s just start anew with Portugal for the next post. This one’s pretty darn long already!
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