Chanukah Too!

Another guest post from D. :)

While we have enjoyed the many regional celebrations of the winter seasons as noted in the recent postings, we did mark Chanukah, too!  Having it fall over the week from Dec 24 to Dec 31 was unusual, but reasonably convenient, as R. was in from USA, and A. and D. were off from school and work respectively.  We were fortunate to be able to buy candles at the Jewish Museum in Vienna, and A. and D. made the menorah borrowing some inspiration from an old Hebrew school project.  The first night looked like this:

Gelt, candles, menorah, etc.  It's Chanukah!

On the second day (Dec. 25) D. and A. went to walk around ports, beaches, and parks in Barcelona where they played Pokemon, and enjoyed the sun, the shore, and the architecture.  After the cold and snow in Vienna, it was a noticeable change!

A three-masted functioning tall ship used by the maritime museum for educational purposes.

We literally picked up a Chanukah present for J. from the sand, a broken piece of the flower tile, or Panot, so famous in Barcelona and mentioned in the November Under foot post.  After turning back inland, we got nice views of more of the public art in Barcelona.

Marc by Robert Llimós

This statue has a partner in Atlanta that connects the two Olympic cities.  You can read about it here.  Facing Marc from across the Plaça dels Voluntaris is this very large statue:

David and Goliath by Antoni Llena

You can read more about it at this site about free art in Barcelona

Then we walked back through the Parc de la Cuitadella, which has a really interesting back story. The area was originally the largest fortress in Europe built to suppress Catalonia by Spain, but now it is a fabulous park with Parliament, the Zoo, a Natural History Museum and much more.

The pond and fountain, Cascada 

There are several monuments and memorials in this park, including this one for all the people from Barcelona who died in Nazi concentration camps.

André Fauteux's Holocaust memorial 

Even though we were in the park on Christmas day, there were many people there.  The pond was filled with people messing about in boats.

Boats on the pond in Ciutadella

The next day was the third night of Chanukah, and we had our big party with my former student, E. who lives in Barcelona, and his friend from Ohio, S.  With their help D. made tons of crispy potato latkes, J. made delicious homemade applesauce and chocolate chip cookies, and we had a great dinner.  We lit candles and played with a new set of Dixit.  It was quite festive.  

R. expressed an interest in connecting with the Jewish community in Barcelona, which is a bit complicated, but we found that all the local Jewish organizations were having a joint Chanukah menorah lighting ceremony for the sixth night with a giant Chabad style menorah downtown by city hall in the Plaça de Jaume.  R. and I went down to join them for speeches, lighting, a live band, and sufganiot!  Earlier that day, D. and J. were busy turning in a new Hungarian wedding certificate with an Apostille and an official translation, so that hopefully D. will be able to complete his residency documents which is an entirely different cause for celebrating. 

The first LED decorated menorah topped with candles

A live band playing Jewish music

After the event R. and D. had yummy falafel and stopped in the Plaça Catalunya where the central fountains were putting on a show choreographed to music.  Here is a short video which tries to capture how sophisticated and dynamic this was.

  

We continued our tradition on only giving and not receiving on the 7th night of Chanukah, and then it was the last night of the last night.  While our menorah needed some mending (the hot glue we used to hold the nuts would soften as the candles burned down) we had no problem getting it ready each night, and here it was on the final night along with all our various paper menorahs in the background.

Happy Chanukah!