Once upon a time, in a land far, far away there was a little boy and a little girl. He lived in building #15, she in #12. Just around the corner from the bottom of their street, they both went through all their years of school before entering university and when they would later have children they, too, would attend this school. A block from the top of the street was their church and a bit further down, their post office. The park he spent hours running around in and she not as many, surrounded them on all sides except the East because that’s where the department stores and other little shops resided. A few minute walk to within that metropolitan area was a passage to the rest of the world. The carcenería, panadería, pharmacy, caf’é, bar, and alimentation store were also quite near, but with a little bit longer than that 2 minute walk there were plenty more choices. With everything so close to home, oh what a perfect place to live.

This land, of course, is Madrid and the two children are my host-mom and -dad. They really do have everything they need and use within a two block radius of their houses, granted that’s not saying too much because it is city living. As always seems to happen, they didn’t meet each other until after living over 10 years just a few doors apart and then it was another few years until they started dating.

The funniest part is that we are currently living in #15 where he grew up with his 15 brothers and sisters, though half of the flat was walled off and sold as kids moved out. In Spain, a large portion of the population lives with their family until they get married at around 26-30 years old, so it is not entirely remarkable that we have the same place.

This ‘passageway’ is the most connected Metro stop in Madrid, Moncloa, which gets me to the airport with one transfer and I can get back to it from practically any other site in the city. If I wanted to opt for the bus, at the bottom of the street is a stop on the most popular line that they use so often that they call it their ‘taxi.’

Unfortunately, though, the household is not such a happy, fairytale place. The four of them have no respect for each other and can hardly talk for 30 seconds before starting some sort of yelling fit. They don’t listen to each other and constantly complain or order the others around. There is no such thing as a constructive conversation and it makes it incredibly uncomfortable for the three of us to be in the middle of it. He insists he is always right and will correct any one of us for faulting, even at times telling us we don’t speak English properly. There is no personal sacrifice to make things easier for everyone else, the perfect example being the broken dishwasher that he didn’t have time to fix until the end of the week, but still managed to get to bed plenty early with some late-night sitcoms to rock him to sleep, leaving the daughter and wife in the kitchen scrubbing dishes. These remnenants of machismo may be cultural and are only aggravated by having two teenage children, but I have certainly heard of and met other families here where this is not such a problem.

Despite having the best of intentions, nothing gets done in a timely manner and things are forgotten about and blamed on all the rest of us. I know everyone is entitled to disagreements and skirmishes, but this really is of a different, dysfunctional caliber. At least they have now taken two mini-vacations to el campo and their families’ pueblos leaving us in peace and quiet for a few days like this weekend.

I’ve been running into problems with having too high of expectations for events, so I was trying really hard to not get too excited about the Nigel Kennedy (my favorite violinist) concert–especially after the hassle I had to go through to get the tickets (let’s just say they were supposedly sold out before I knew they were even on sale and when I frantically tried to get a ticket, I was turned away for not having a Spanish credit card–the only means of paying). Plus, the ticket was quite expensive and for nearly a fraction of the price I have seen some excellent concerts abroad, so I was feeling a bit of buyer’s remorse. But–thank goodness–I was not let down.  I usually go to a concert for the acoustics, so I come with a book or blank paper to write because the live atmosphere is so stimulating. It might seem weird or even offensive to the players, but I can say that my old viola teacher (who plays for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra) told me that musicians consider it a complement when people fall asleep at their concerts–so I can’t be that bad. Though I was armed with my Spanish textbook, it stayed tucked away in my bag because tonight there was something to see.

The hall itself was interestingly designed with these pop-out risers on the stage and 360-seating. I took advantage of the unique opportunity and sat by the organ in one of the sections on the backwall behind the orchestra. Though it meant I got the back of his head for much of the time, I did get a good view of the orchestra’s open, strappy backs (including a giant shoulder/back tattoo of a second violinist) that in all its unconservative-ness would only be acceptable in Madrid.

Part of the reason I like Kennedy so much is for his unique interpretations of classical music, which tends to be a bit paradoxical because there is supposed to be a “right” and “wrong” in classical music, one way that everyone strives to perform and record. He ignores this tradition completely and makes the music his own creation, leaving his mark with every note. He added accents and swells, put in exuberant vibrato, cut notes off a hair early, and sprinkled little hesitations all around.

It’s the same black notes and scribbles everyone else plays but he does his decorations and techniques slightly–but not too subtly–differently so you know it was stylistically intentional. (At this concert, though, I am pretty sure there were times when he improvised in his own harmonies and may even have wrote ahead of time extra cadenza accompaniment for the orchestra. I swear that was not in the recordings. Can he be playing the same music?)

But how can someone who doesn’t play this canonized way in such a strict field be so revered, you ask? It’s all in the personality, that’s how.

For him, music is fun. When the melody was in the next bar, he might stop for a half-second and put on this mischievous little boy face–the one you wear when you should be getting in trouble for something but know you are going to get away with it–before proceeding. If you are familiar with the song, you will hear the notes going in your head, but the orchestra is silent as if the record player slipped and you are left naked with your mental shower-singing voice. But even if you didn’t know the piece, you would know that something was up and to listen well because music doesn’t just come to a screeching, semi-four truck halt like that. As I see it, he is essentially making classical music more accessible and for today’s people (especially youngin’s like myself who may be turned off to the stuff, though there were hardly any of us in the audience).

It makes sense with all his play in his musical interpretations that he would have a similar personality and it shines through in his gestures. After each piece he shook his fist in the air and rooted for the audience as if we had done all the work. When he played, he gestured and cued with such intimacy it was as if he was with a 100-member quartet. Even without seeing a rehearsal, you could tell that he was like a mentor to the orchestra instead of a dictator. He joked with them (and the audience) so everyone was with high anticipation of what will happen next and he gave lots of enthusiastic thumbs-up. When he walked off the stage while we were applauding, he reached over to unsuspecting orchestra members he passed by to give them knuckle-knocking high fives and would wait until they embarrassingly complied. After the timpanist played his solo opening notes of the second piece, Nigel made a fist and hit his chest to show that the timpanist had just captured his heart. There was something about the principal cellist, too, as he kissed her hand a few times and gave his bouquet to her, too.

He did everything he wasn’t supposed to do. Since it was a concerto concert, he wasn’t supposed to conduct the orchestra at the same time, but he schooched around the would-have-been podium area motioning to the sections and managed to play the first violin parts when he would otherwise have been resting. He wasn’t supposed to wear what looked like black silk PJs and combat boots (one pant leg tucked in) with spiked hair, reminiscent of the punk rock 20-something that he certainly is not. There was no microphone setup on stage because he wasn’t supposed to say anything, but he spoke loudly and slowly to the Spanish audience in his British-English, telling jokes about mind reading (”I bet I can pick three people in the audience and tell you all whether they washed their hair today.”–one was bald). He was supposed to play 2 pieces–not 5–but acknowledged to us before a note was played he knew our tickets were expensive so he didn’t want to “cheat” us.

It was outside the programmed pieces that the “real” music came, though. Conducted like a Jam Session complete with the yelling out of numbers and wandering around the audience and entire stage, he played the gypsy piece Czardas and “the only song written by the famous composer James Marshall Hendrix–it was for the better” Purple Haze for encore pieces. Keeping in line with his humor, he played a romantic little duet with the harpsichordist, had a duel with the concert master while both were playing nearly-screeching high harmonic notes, and sneaked up on a day-dreaming first violinist to dedicate a few juicy notes to her as she jumped in her chair. Though the clarinetist didn’t speak English and had rests for nearly the entire piece, Kennedy asked him while his hands were up to start the song if he was “going to play–there’s some music on your stand there, right?” The poor guy, realizing he was on the spotlight, gave a confused look and rustled around his music while Kennedy grinned and started the piece. To finish off the show, while still shaking their bows on the last chord the entire orchestra just stood up and started walking off stage–cellos included.

With this jolly, cute-old man personality he is enchanting and 100% contagious. So much so that I would want to start drinking just so I could go out and have a drink with him. He made a performance out of the night that was beyond my artificially suppressed expectations. I really don’t know who else would get away with such silly behavior in the un-silly world of classical music.

If you are interested, my favorite CD of his is Classic Kennedy. Unfortunately, I do not think he tours much in the US or else I would highly recommend seeing him. So much for paying tribute to the country that gave him his Juilliard training.

Even though I found a good flight and couldn’t spend another climbing-the-wall, wasting away weekend in Madrid, the real reason I went to Munich was to be mistaken as a German, to be confused as someone in the foreign culture instead of always on the outside (as I so obviously am in Spain). With my typical American mutt status, I would say that I am around 25% German, which was apparently enough to fool at least three people when my big old camera was stowed away. One just walked up to me, speaking German and another older lady on the train took the opportunity to tell me (based on her giggle) a silly little side comment. My last name as a dead give away at the place I stayed, so the receptionist first asked if I spoke German instead of proceeding immediately with English.

I try to determine what language the person likely speaks from the origination clues in their face and I am sure the same is happening to me when others want to talk to me. In Spain, I have just made a point of starting the conversation out in Spanish to indicate that I know the language, but in France, Italy, and now Germany, too, I walk in kind of timidly and hope the other person will realize my inability to communicate and forgive me ahead of time for the potentially tricky conversation to follow. Despite the difficulty I had reading a menu (didn’t eat at a single restaurant) or asking simple questions, many of the Germans do know English through their multilingual education (unlike the stress in the US) so I got some help on the streets.

I remember hearing a comment once that English has a lot of ties to German, but since languages are constantly adapting and picking up new words from every culture (especially so in the immigrant-filled US–aren’t we all immigrants?) I didn’t think too hard about it. Visiting, though, proved this generalization. Here, let me show you. Below is a list of German words. Read them aloud and listen to the hard sounds, only sometimes paying close attention to the spelling.

• Garten
• Schokolade
• Reis
• Morgen
• Willkommen
• Parkplatz
• Vorsicht
• Fett
• Nine

Any sound familiar? If not, they will be even more so when I give you the answers:

• Garden, as in Biergarten and the origin (in fact, exact same word) of that crazy word we use to describe our first year in school Kindergarten
• Chocolate (vanilla was too easy, Vanille)
• Rice
• Morning
• Welcome
• Parking lot/Space (exact phrase I saw was an advertisement on the train Parkplatzprobleme?)
• Watch it (I am stretching the translation a bit to make it work. Saw it on a neighborhood sign with little children playing on it. Most likely means Caution, but I like my version better.)
• Fat
• No (fooled you, doesn’t mean 9)

Now I am not advocating that I could go out and read a book in German or pick up the language tomorrow, but it was fun playing the word games and noticing the similarities.

My overall impression of Munich was, at first, confusion but once I orientated myself from walking around for a few hours and riding the S-bahn/U-bahn (public transportation), I was able to enjoy the environment much more. Perhaps owing to my semi-German looking appearance or perhaps not, many Germans actually smiled at me if I caught their eye. In the market, the vendors grinned even if they knew I wasn’t looking to buy and when I was in the park outside a former palace of Maximilian Sunday morning this one man strolling with his dog gave me some of the most welcoming grins I have gotten as of all of my travels. And, no, it wasn’t one of those you’re-American-seduction grins–I can sense those.

Amidst all the beer, brautworst, hot dogs, and soft pretzels, there was still an acknowledgment of healthier foods and lifestyles. At the convenience stores and even in the train station where healthy food choices are generally difficult to come by, I was surprised to see a number of places selling pieces of fresh fruit for a reasonable price of .55€ with a sink mounted next to the bowl to wash the fruit. Impressive.

The city itself was full of bikers (special lanes for them alongside the walking parts; I nearly got run over a number of times for not paying close attention to the terrain) and in the parks I found a lot of people walking with those poles, as if they were going to confront a mountain sometime soon.

Munich, if you recall, was the host of the 1972 Summer Olympics and instead of keeping the buildings as a monument to the honor of hosting the event (as I felt in Barcelona), the entire park was still in use by the locals. Youth soccer practice was in session, trophies and pictures of ice skating events decorated the display case in the arena, and for a few euros or a yearly membership you could use the pool.

They took complete advantage of their space and the architectural feats of even the airport, as I was shocked to see a kids’ marathon-like event for a humanitarian cause going on in the plaza between the two terminals. Inflatable moon walks and dance-like music are the last thing you would expect to see among the last-minute shops and over-priced restaurants.

I wasn’t intending to visit the concentration camp just outside the city because I have learned a fair amount about the Holocaust over the years–enough to know that I didn’t want to see it again and open myself up to the horrors once more. But, for those exact reasons, I felt I had to visit. I was quite somber walking around and only a few of the scenes and details highlighted in the memorial were shocking to me because they were new information to me, but the majority of the people were not nearly as pensive and reflective. It was still a tourist place where groups would wait outside the heavily symbolic entrance gate for people to stop streaming through to snap The Picture. In front of a placard-like sign that read “Never Again” in five or six languages, two American girls were taking a picture and the one posing goes, “Like, uh, what do you do in front of something like this?” she says as she does a Vanna White stance. Just as appalling to me was the fact that people now live directly butted-up to the fence surrounding the camp. Of course, I was expecting the town to continue to be its charming, quaint self as the years go by, but I cannot imagine who (and there were a lot of whos) would choose to be reminded everyday of this, especially with the tourists souring the atmosphere a bit.

After all of that adventure, my weekend didn’t stop as I went to the Real Madrid-Atletico Bilbao game a few hours after I landed on Sunday. Tickets were expensive because, had the current second place team Villareal lost, the win would have clinched Real Madrid’s spot in La Liga championship game, sending all the fans to Plaza de Cibeles for a celebratory night-long party. My friend was all ready to go–even though he was in Greece that morning (we kept talking about how we needed to pinch each other because it still doesn’t seem real that we are here)–but now has a motivator to study for finals next Sunday in Real Madrid wins again. The few pictures I took are here.

It was quite a joyful reunion this weekend, visiting my mom in London while she was attending classes at the management school, Ashridge, for her PhD program. It was almost as if we were in the US again, attending some sort of intellectual gathering at a luxurious retreat. But after heading back into the city from the infinite shades of green in the countryside for some museums and a bit of site-seeing, it was quite a shock separating again from her. My teary eyes caught even me by surprise and I somehow still feel a bit sentimental thinking about the moment again. The light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter as the days countdown. I have pictures from both London and Ashridge but not too many from either because the Mom was distracting me and my poor little laptop’s hard drive is getting mighty full.

Out of the 80 or so photos from 20 students who submitted in the school’s first annual photo contest, I found some beginner’s luck and took home a second-place cash prize (waiting for the exchange rate to be really bad to get some good Dollars out of it)!  Just as everyone liked the Garlic Merchant, so did the judges.  The first-place prize went to a sunset shot by a body of water with the face of a girl lit-up in the shadows of the right-hand corner of the frame.

Since my five submissions were all digital, the school printed and framed them all for a mini-exhibition of the entrants.  Never before had I seen one of my shots developed, so it was exciting to see the cross-over from digital to print.  They looked pretty good at their large size, especially compared with the resolution and clarity of the other photos.  Though I have surrendered any rights to the photos, I was told that I will be able to take home my five framed images at the end of the semester.

My life is a 24-7 game of Taboo. Taboo, if you are not familiar, is a game where you have to describe the word on a card to your team without saying a list of commonly associated words, an act which earns you an obnoxious buzz from this special remote. I go to say something and buzz I don’t know that word. buzz That one won’t work either. buzz buzz I don’t know what conjugation to use. Mental buzz censorship is everywhere I look.

After my first week of extreme buzzing, I finally adapted. One strategy is to use circumlocution and describe the word I want with the vocabulary I know; talk your way out of the problem. For example, needle would be ‘the thing you use to sew.’ It’s usually a poetry technique so as to not directly state the word, but works perfectly well here.

You have to be a flexible, creative thinker as if you are doing the Sunday crossword or some other word game. I like that it’s hard to say clichés (simply because I don’t know them) because, as much as I use them, I think they are too much of a crutch, an excuse to not express yourself fully. One of my housemates needs to learn this skill because she tries to do strict English-Spanish translation and always resorts to using one of us as human dictionaries, assuming there is only one way to express what she wants. I do run into problems, though, when I try to be creative to describe something only to find out that it doesn’t translate well into Spanish.

When reading signs, menus, and the texts for my Spanish classes I tend to have good luck using the roots of words and then guess its meaning. For a while, I would go through the pain-staking process of looking up every unknown word, but now I just aim for getting the overall point (which is a better strategy anyway, even for English texts).

My classes in Spanish are not nearly as hard as I was expecting (especially the listening part–it’s so much easier to understand than to respond or create) because there is a natural thought progression and you usually know where the professor is going with an idea. There are also a lot of cognates like information is información, privileges is privilegios. Just from knowing English things in Spanish can be easier to understand. I can’t imagine trying to go from a non-Latin based language. In contrast, I still run into a lot of trouble at the dinner table because conversations jump all the time and the topics are quite specific, often full of slang or idioms I don’t know and matters that I would never before have encountered.

Since the present tense is the easiest structure to use, I will use dialog when recounting stories to repeat exactly what I heard someone else say and try to engage the listener so as to mask my mistakes and still get the idea across. Infinitive forms of verbs are also easy to use, so I construct sentences in the same basic forms so as to just insert the infinitive and avoid sounding too ignorant. With “I need to___” or “I am going to___” you can actually say pretty much everything.

Of course, context clues are the best tool. The physical situation, facial expressions, and gestures all help more than you realize when speaking your native tongue. I have avoided phone conversations for this reason, but when I had a problem with an airline ticket with Spanair, I surprised myself at my ability to understand and communicate with the operator, though I was very nervous and blushing the entire conversation.

And the easiest strategy of all is the cop-out method, where you completely change your thought and not mention anything to do with the difficult term. In the more extreme case when none of the above strategies works, you just give up entirely or cave-in to dictionary use. You can’t call me a wimp for having to look up the word tacky or to use the whiteboard in the kitchen to draw a safety pin.

I get by with my broken Spanish, though I wish it was better, of course. Sometimes I catch myself saying really stupid things, like using the regular rules for a word instead of the irregular that I know it is. I can only laugh when I translate what just came out of mouth because even I know it’s absolute garbage, let alone to a native speaker. On the other hand, I am both proud and excited to say that over the past few weeks clear Spanish has been just falling out of my mouth without having to think about it. Be it Spanish or even English, I think there is no hiding from the buzz.

Barcelona must breed crazy people, as Picasso, Dahli, Joan Miró, and Gaudi are all from the city. Ohhh, Gaudi. I love Gaudi. It’s as simple as that. Well, not quite, actually. It’s more like I love Gaudi’s ingenuity. I found his style to be so fun, colorful, and expressive within its oddness. It may come as shock, but the twisted wrought-iron, mosaics, architectural structures, and eccentric chimneys and other roof decorations all take direct inspiration from nature. Waves, palm trees, pine cones, corncobs, tree branches, flowers, berries, animals–they’re all there.

His works are scattered throughout the city (mostly buildings and a big park), but his overall influence is seen in the city facilities and mentality. Most Americans haven’t heard of him (myself included), but I have been hearing about him in my classes so it only seemed appropriate to plan (er, book a flight and place to stay…”planning” happens on the plane ride over) my last trip within Spain to his hometown, Barcelona.

Since the Summer Olympics in 1992, Barcelona has become a European and even worldwide destination. Hosting the Games forced them to develop and spruce-up the city to be tourist friendly. Tourists and deluxe shops abound (though I missed the main stretch on Avinguda Diagonal because I was so engrossed in Gaudi). At the heart of the city is La Rambla, what is supposed to be the world’s perfect street, but I was not impressed by the people-statues or pets for sale. Just off the street was Mercat Boqueria, also bursting with tourists, but I was intrigued as usual by the presentation and preparation of fresh fare.

Despite being such a hotspot, there exists a tension between Cataluña and the rest of Spain. The Catalans speak their own language (mix of French and Spanish) among themselves and use it on all the signs, but also know Spanish to communicate with the rest of Spain. Madridleños have the most difficult time getting along with Catalans, as my host-mom claims that if a Catalan finds out this fact, they will only speak with you in the Catalan that you can’t understand and insist that they don’t know Spanish. There is also a strong separatist movement in the region, with the belief that they are more European and better off without the Spain they don’t think particularly highly of. Though, I might add, this is not a unique thought in Spain as many other regions are fighting for their independence and constantly stirring up trouble (e.g. ETA and País Vasco).

As with every other weekend trip I have been on, rain and cool weather was overwhelmingly predicted–the best way to crush the atmosphere of the city and force everyone into museum hibernation. Somehow, though, the stars were aligned for me because there was only sprinkling on my first evening when I stumbled upon the musical fountain at the Montjuïc palace turned art museum. The 60% storm predictions for Saturday turned out to be sun and cotton ball clouds so I was able to keep exploring Gaudi’s pieces without fear of misery or ruining my camera. Thanks to this fabulous weather and my fascination with Gaudi I was not too annoyed with the swarms of tourists playing in Europe’s playground. If I had my way, I would go back for a day trip because it’s an easy, 1-hour flight but I just don’t think the bank account nor my sanity will allow that to happen.

Time sure does fly. Doesn’t seem like that long ago that I was posting my One Month Anniversary. Even though I have been traveling, studying, eating, observing, and experiencing Europe and Spain for three months (97 days, to be exact), I am excited to get back to the States. There are certainly times where I want more than anything to be back in the world that I understand, away from the excitement and adventures I find myself in out here.

But I trudge on, keeping in mind that “you don’t know the next time you will be in Europe” voice. Still planned are a trip Thursday to London (to see my mom!), Munich for a weekend, a bullfight, Real Madrid-Atletico Bilbao fútbol game, Nigel Kennedy concert, final exams, and a last hurrah to Sweden (to visit my only European kin) with a pit stop in London again (cheaper flight). Keep the reading going. It’s gonna be juicy.

I saw quite an interesting show Sunday evening. Check out my Concerts Abroad section for more information and be sure to watch the clip here or in the other page to get a taste of the group’s dancing style.  It definitely was not an event for the whole family, but my host-family (including middle school-aged son) decided to tag along (pardon the Girl Scout Cookie reference; I am sad to not have any right now) not knowing what exactly we were getting ourselves into.

I take pictures as if you were standing next to me and I wanted to point something out to you.  A tap on the shoulder and “hey, look at that!” moment.   If something makes me smile or catches me in the moment, snap, there goes another shot.  Maybe it’s a texture or represents something I learned that day.  And, of course, to remember what I’ve seen to share with the rest of the world that wasn’t there at that precise moment in time when I experienced something wonderful.

I am still quite timid about taking photos because there is this intrusive, mind-your-own- business aspect to it. In a creative writing class I took about telling stories out of photographs, I learned that it used to be a superstition that the camera would steal part of your soul and I, unfortunately for my photography attempts, tend to agree.

But I do love the challenge of trying to capture the scene and finding things that may have been overlooked by others, maybe even putting my own spin on a typical scene.  Since I am new to photography there is always something new to be learned from getting the settings right on the camera to a new technique.  My camera has been a great companion in all of my travels and adventures.  It gives me a purpose for being wherever I am, and makes me keep my friends and family in mind when they all are so far away–which can sometimes be a source of homesickness.

I first got semi-seriously interested in Photography last fall through our university’s newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian.  I was there Web Editor-In-Chief for a year and met some really interesting people in the Photo Department, so I was always jealous of their assignments and their expertise.   It was very easy to get involved because we always need bodies to put the paper out five days a week, especially with the over-scheduled lifestyle of Penn students.  They shoved an extremely fancy camera into our hands with the simple task of “take pictures of this event” and we were off.  I obviously have learned a lot since those first days of training, but I am still a toddler in the world of photography.

And in its own special realm of photography is photojournalism.  It is a different mindset than studio or artistic photographic because you must constantly be active; no posing or waiting.  Luck plays a huge role in success, as you have to be looking at the right spot at the right moment with your camera ready to get some of the most remarkable shots.  Thank goodness for digital photography to allow extremely fast, high quality practically unlimited images.  You need to be sentimental and able to capture raw emotion, but respectful so as to not make the subject uncomfortable or put yourself in danger.  You cannot be afraid of anything and the more daring, often the better.  Your mind should be open and your eyes always darting around, taking in the scene and both its trivial and important moments.  So there;s the mental peptalk of being a photog, as many call themselves.  Do that with some sweet gear and you are on your way!

With that said, I now feel justified for taking over 200 pictures the past 36 hours in Barcelona!  Watch out for those coming soon in a blog post at a computer near you.