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!

Guest Post - Science Museum

Outside view of part of the museum, from its park.

Recently, we had the chance to visit the CosmoCaixa science museum in Barcelona. This museum is located on a hill, with a lovely view of the city. This also, of course, means that the walk to it from the train station is uphill, but it does go along a street with very famous mansions. (Be warned: The train station has a very long staircase to go to the surface. Take the elevator.)

This museum has a stronger focus on biology than other museums, featuring an interactive exhibit about biotechnology and, unusually for a science museum, a large rainforest exhibit with live animals such as a capybara, fish of many sizes, snakes, cockroaches, and ducks. 

A portion of the rainforest exhibit. Note the fish at the bottom.

Live capybara!

It also has large slices of several types of rock (very pretty), and a somewhat optics-centric physics exhibit. The vast majority of the exhibits are on the -5 floor. (Yes, that hyphen-minus is intentional. The entry floor of the museum is floor 0, and all other floors are below it. Because the museum is on a hill, this doesn't prevent the other floors from getting natural light.)

The -5th floor, viewed from above.

Exhibits not on the fifth floor include several paid activities (a crafts room, a planetarium), a physics-themed park featuring (among other things) an Archimedes screw, a Triceratops skull, and a long spiral ramp from the 0th to -5th floor that's a timeline of Earth's history.

The museum includes both a cafeteria and a restaurant. We visited the cafeteria, where I got to try an "omelet sandwich", apparently a classic food here. It's very good.

On balance, I would recommend this museum to visitors who like other science museums.
______
Edited to add one of D.'s favorite signs in the museum.

Celebration

Those clever people online know I am here and know I speak English.

The kids wrote their letters, which are mailed or delivered directly before, during, and after the parade the night before.  I did not hear squeals of excitement from other apartments this morning, but I did see at least one kid with a new bicycle!

Photo from this video.

Some people use their own stationery, but plenty of places provide blank forms.

This is from the local magazine.

This is from Tiger.

These letters opened my eyes! All those years of singing, "We Three Kings of Orient Are, Bearing Gifts..." never once made me think about the words.  These letters are mailed to the Orient!!  It is not a word used so often anymore, but when the song was written in 1857 it was appropriate for the kings, who are Arabian, Persian, and Indian.

There have been ads for cake.

And we see them in the bakery windows.

Or in the grocery store.

They are filled with cream or marzipan or something else that can hide a little token (sometimes a baby).  Whoever gets the token in their piece gets to wear the crown.

Good thing we ordered ours ahead of time!

Look who gets to wear the crown!

So cute!

I now know that there used to be a fava bean instead of a token, but I had
no idea there would be both.  Good thing no teeth were broken!

Edited to add that A. learned from a friend that whoever finds the bean has to pay for the cake!

Parade

Tonight is the big night, the night the Three Kings come and leave presents for kids.  Before that happens they arrive in town and have a parade, which I did not realize would bring such crowds.

The route is set.

The signs are up.

The field where the helicopter arrives is set, too.
In some towns the kings arrive by train or by carriage.

After their arrival they give a speech about the parade and collecting letters.

 A big part of the parade consisted of very energetic musicians, like a walking taiko performance. Some of them had bags filled with candy to toss to the kids and some had people following with decorated grocery carts filled with cardboard boxes of candy.

Like the 4th of July in Claremont, there were lots of floats with kids' groups - art groups, sport groups, and I don't know what else.  They had great fun tossing candy, too.

 Last up were the kings and I am sorry I don't have better pictures!  They sat up high tossing candy and had their helpers tossing more and also collecting the children's letters (more next post).  I asked a family and they said their kids had their favorite king and would give their letter to him.

Even though we gave away a lot of candy we picked up, we still kept some.  Plus by the time the last float came there was so much candy even the kids weren't picking it up!  I did think a lot of it was cute with the camels and crowns.

With all the candy and excitement I hope the kids of Sant Cugat can sleep tonight!

Edited to add video and to point out that we did not go the end of the parade where the kings presented their gifts Jesus.

Tiger

Most things we saw sold in Denmark were well-made, long-lasting, and expensive.  I could see the benefit of having fewer things of higher quality, but we were there for just a year and needed a few things that were just good enough.  Tiger, the Danish version of a dollar store, filled that need.  Some people complained that these things were poorly made and too disposable, but it had things we needed, plus it was fun to shop there.

This is the first Tiger I went to, although there was in the indoor mall in Roskilde, too.

I had read that a store had opened in New York City, but I have yet to visit it.  I have now been to Tiger in Austria, Belgium, Italy, The Netherlands, and Spain.

This store is on the way to the Hungarian Consulate so I have been to it several times.

I did not buy a deer head magnet.

I did not buy a carrot sharpener.

I like the porcelain measuring spoons that have metric and imperial measurements.
I like the colorful measuring spoons that are in the background, too.

I am often tempted by candles and napkins.

I am also tempted by yarn, felted trivets, and blank cards.  I am less tempted by the cute seasonal items, like a elf pens and a Santa-riding-a-reindeer costume.  I did find some paper for making woven hearts and I love to check the DIYTiger hashtag to see what creative things people have done with their products.

Sorry this post was really just an advertisement.  If you visit I will take you here only if you want to go.

added in June 2017

This was seen at the Tiger in Valencia. I wonder how many people from
Denmark, Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Norway visit to buy Æ they sell there!

New Year

We adopted a few local traditions this year and joined in the Sant Silvestre run (named for the saint who died on 31 December).

This video gives you a little feel for the run.

Or you can see pictures here.

We made sure we had our twelve grapes, one for each month of 2017, as described here on NPR.

"Contains 4-5 portions of twelve grapes."

It is also tradition to wear red underwear, which has been on sale everywhere.  I wore a red running bra for the race and I am hoping that counts!

I was running when the queen of Denmark was giving her speech, but I enjoyed watching it later.

You can watch it here.

If you set your watch for 24 hours it looks good at midnight, which I had noticed before.

My only disappointment was that I forgot to celebrate at 9am this morning when it was midnight in California.