Spain and Portugal: Highlight Reel

As will be standard from now on, I've found myself with very little time to write as I'm barely in Amstelveen anymore and when I am there are ridiculous things like "laundry" and "law school" and "feeding myself" to contend with. So this blog will be

a) a direction to my FLICKR PAGE of my trip to Spain and Portugal, and

b) a quick summary of some of the best parts about each city I visited.

Stop #1: Valencia

• Sunshine

• Arriving in Valencia to 25 degree sunshine was an amazing experience, having come from freezing, windy, sleet-y Holland. I spent literally my entire day there walking around in the sun and attracting glares for my sundress and sandals from all the Valencians walking around in sweaters, boots, and scarves. I'm sorry, I'm from Canada, I'm going to have bare legs and wear sandals when it gets above 20. Deal with it. At least I wasn't wearing flip-flops.

• Agua de Valencia. This is a traditional drink that the people of Valencia like to hand out coupons for to tourists. I met some girls who were studying in Barcelona and in for the weekend and we sampled the Agua at numerous places. No-one, not even the bartenders making the drinks and handing them to us could say precisely what was in them. The consensus seemed to be champagne and orange juice, with additions ranging from vodka to rum to kalhua to red wine to brandy. All I know it was delicious and tasted just like Sunny-D, only with more alcohol. Wikipedia describes the cocktail as including "cava or champagne (wine), orange juice, vodka and gin". It was also made for the first time in 1959, so there goes my theory of it being traditional. Oh well, it's an A+ drink and a recipe for a disastrous hangover.

• Radio City. Don't let the ridiculous WEBSITE throw you, this is one of the most fun clubbing experiences I've had in Europe. Granted, my other experiences have been in Holland where their idea of a fun night is to sway gently and listen politely to the music while sipping a single Heineken and scolding individuals who try to dance. But this place had a great atmosphere, cool Spanish people and music that was mostly a mix of 1920s big-band and dirty house beats. It made me exceptionally happy, though my clothes smelled like smoke for the rest of the trip and continue to do so after being washed. Worth it.

Stop # 2 - Madrid

• Museo Nacional de Prado. I think this was the most impressive art gallery I've ever been to, or at the very least contained the most moving collections of art I've seen. If any of you are EVER in Madrid, definitely check it out. I was considering giving it a pass, wanting my trip to be fairly lineup and admission-price free, but the Prado is free after 6pm on weeknights and well worth the lineup. One my my favourite paintings, "The Garden of Earthly Delights" by Hieronymus Bosch is housed there:

As well as all of Goya's "black paintings" which he painted on the walls of his home in the later years of his life and were extracted and moved to the Prado. The most famous of these is "Saturn Devouring His Son":

My favourite was "The Dog":

but the room itself was so impressive and haunting I felt like I could have stayed in there for hours. Just not alone, or after dark.

• Telekinesis.

• Telekinesis is a band from Seattle that I love but not a ton of people know, including the four friends I was travelling with who were absolute troopers for agreeing to trek out to a random jazz bar and pay 15 Euro for a band they'd never heard of. The show was really good, though super weird. Telekinesis is a rock band. Not hard rock or anything, but definitely not jazz musicians. The venue was super tiny, there were maybe 30 people in the audience and you could tell the band was slightly uncomfortable with the setup. The lead singer kept saying how he felt like he was playing on a cruise ship or something and had no idea if anyone in the audience was enjoying themselves as they couldn't really see or hear anything. They played a great show regardless and came out when the tiny audience demanded an encore and generally seemed to have a good time.

• The Best Indoor Food Market of All of Life

• I don't know the name of the food market where we went for hangover smoothies (or oysters, if you're Josh and you're crazy) our second morning and for dinner our second evening, but it might be my favourite place in the world. It's a giant market filled with gourmet food and wine stands and for about 1 - 3 Euro per item you can sample some amazing seafood, cheese, meats, pastries... anything you can think of really. Everyone there was classy and cool and just walked around sipping delicious wine and eating delicious things and it's basically what I think heaven should be like. The caviar and octopus crostini were winners in my book.

Final Stop - Lisbon

• Yes! Hostel Lisbon

• Before this semester I had never stayed at a hostel. Now, after Yes!, I don't think I can ever stay at another hostel again. Yes! is exactly what a hostel should be in my mind. It was in a great location, right by the ocean and a main square, the rooms were clean and secure and ours had a balcony, the staff were super friendly and helpful and there was a giant common room with tons of places to sit and hang out, a giant projector TV and a selection of DVDs, games, etc. More importantly, there was a bar with drink prices ranging from 1 - 2 Euro and free shots every night. Best of all, for 8 Euro a night you could opt-in to the hostel's 3-course dinner. The dinner was phenomenal. Cooked by the most adorable and lovely chef you could ever imagine, we got fresh bread, soup, a tasty main course and a desert, all hand-made, all different every night. The 8 Euro also included 3 drink vouchers that could be used for wine, beer or sangria to go with the meal. Amazing deal. We opted out only one of the nights we were there and I think we all slightly regretted it.

• Natas!

• A.k.a.: pasteis de nata, a.ka.: mooncakes, a.k.a.: the best tasting thing in the world. These little tarts are sweet, custardy goodness, and there's no describing how delicious they are until they're tasted. Like what god would taste like if he were a delicious Portuguese pastry. We made a pilgrimage out to Belem to try the "original" natas, which were warm and fresh but really when you're comparing perfection to perfection there's no real way of knowing if they were better than the ones we ate most days from our Sao Nicolao bakery. I will miss these desperately.

• General Beauty.

• There was a lot of it. Lisbon rules.

Next stop is Utrecht for a 4-day music festival! I've officially given up pretending I'm going to school while I'm here, this extended vacation has been amazing and while I still have about 6 assignments to hand in I'm not going to let those stand in the way of the real reason I'm here, which is food, apparently.

Dutch Christmas - Kruidnoten and Marzipan

One of my favourite things about Christmas growing up was the seasonal food. Specifically: eggnog. I remember the first time my mom would bring home a carton of eggnog in early December I would get super-excited and drink multiple glasses of it knowing the Christmas season had officially arrived. Now I think eggnog, if not available year-round, is at least on the shelves at Safeway from September to March, not surprising in a country where Santa's villiages go up in malls before the Halloween candy has left the shelves.

The Dutch, however, seem to have a variety of foods that are actually Christmas-themed and seasonal, or at least I never noticed them on the shelves until the last couple of weeks. Two such foods I have already sampled, fallen in love with, gorged myself and and become sick of, though I'm sure I'll come around on both again...

Kruidnoten

Literally, "herb nuts" (?), are delicious little ginger-snap like cookies that come in giant red bags. These were my first Dutch christmasfood addiction or, more specifically, their chocolate-covered counterparts were:

Come on, now. As if anyone could NOT eat an entire bag of those in one sitting.

Wikipedia funfact about Kruidnoten: apparently the Dutch throw kruidnoten "in handfuls through the room so children can look for them. Originally this is an ancient fertility symbol (like a farmer sowing seeds) not unlike throwing rice at a marriage." What's not to love about fertile children rummaging around on the floor for scattered cookies? All I know is I wouldn't be above picking up one of these bad boys off the floor and popping it into my mouth. And my floor is pretty disgusting.

Marzipan

Current bane of my existence, as will be explained below. Marzipan of all varieties seems to be pretty central to Dutch Christmas, especially if it's in the shape of a pig:

I noticed my first giant marzipan pig at the department store V&D in late October. I haven't been able to track down any info on the marzipan pig specifically as it relates to Holland, though this is apparently also a big thing in Germany and Denmark where piggies are symbols of good luck. I have yet to buy a marzi-pig yet because they are so freaking cute. As some of you might know I didn't eat pork from about 1996 (or whenever Babe came out) up until a year or so ago based entirely on the adroableness of pigs and not wanting to inflict pain on something so cuddly. Unfortunately pigs' deliciousness won out over their cuteness (damn you multi-talented swine!!) but I think I'm still a little ways away from eating a piggy that still has its face. And curly little tail.

Sidenote, on looking at YouTube videos about how to make marzipan pigs I stumbled on this monstrosity:

Click here only if you're not scared of terrifying things

WHO WOULD EVER MAKE THOSE???? OR EAT THOSE???? Some people shouldn't be allowed near the internet.

Anyway, while I haven't had a pig yet I've reached a crisis-point with my love for marzipankartoffeln or "marzipan potatoes":

These little gems are balls of marzipan, dusted in cocoa powder and cinnamon. So simple, so beautiful. Like the noble potato itself. It was my realization that I have eaten over 300g or a whopping 1257 calories-worth of these bad boys in the past 36 hours (in addition, begrudgingly, to regular food) that inspired me to write this post.

Again, I was unable to find any information about why tiny, fake potatoes are synonymous with Christmas here, but I'm not complaining. Another bonus is they seem like something that would be extremely easy (if expensive) to make at home. Basically, buy a bunch of marzipan, roll it into little balls and roll the balls around in cocoa and cinnamon. Repeat millions of times.

So so far those have been my only two Dutch Christmas addictions. There is apparently a large market going up in Museumplein in a few weeks, so I'll be sure to write about any treasures I find there. Between the two treats listed above and Stroopwaffels I have so far found three Dutch sweets that have caused me to lose all rationality and eat so many that I literally make myself sick. Well-played Holland, well-played.

"hitchhiking" to Berlin

As some of you may have heard from me or seen via my facebook status last week, on November 5, 2010, I had planned to participate in an ESN (Erasmus Student Network)-organized hitchhiking contest to Berlin. It seemed like a really good idea in September. A bunch of my friends had responded "Attending" on Facebook which, as we all know, is a foolproof method of gauging who will actually be physically present at an event, it was all going to be organized for us, and it would be a fun adventurous way to get to Berlin!

Friends Josh, Ross and Ally were also into the idea, so much so that we decided to extend the trip to include a day in Hamburg to see Frightened Rabbit perform on November 7th. A few weeks ago, ESN sent out an email with the details of the hitch, stating it would cost 90 Euro to enroll but that that included accommodation at a hostel, free entrance and drinks on a pubcrawl and a bus home on the 7th. Since we had all already booked our Frightened Rabbit tickets we decided it would be a bit silly to pay the 90 as that was mostly for the bus home, so we instead booked our own hostel in Berlin and busses from Berlin to Hamburg and Hamburg back to Amsterdam.

As the hitchhike day grew closer the four of us all started getting a bit apprehensive. Without enrolling with ESN it did feel a lot more like we were all just hitchhiking. To Berlin. And when one of us finally bothered to actually look up where Berlin is we realized it wasn't close. On the map it looked slightly closer than Munich, which dedicated blog-readers will recall took my friends and I over 15 hours each way, basically without stopping, let alone standing in the rain and hoping some kindly German will take you in his van when you hassle him at a gas station.

But the day arrived, we had everything booked except a way to get to Berlin, so we all had to bite the bullet and try to hitch. My friends Ally and Ross, the troopers, decided it was a good plan to not sleep the night before and just power through until 6am when we were all meeting, so needless to say we were a chipper, happy crew (well, I actually was, which I think might have annoyed the others).

We had looked up tips online for how to travel from Amsterdam to Berlin by hitchhiking, and the website suggested beginning at the designated "Liftplaats" near Amstel station where it's legal for drivers to pull over and pick you up. Excellent, except this was where the ESN hitchhikers were all meeting. At the exact same time. So there were about 50 people, standing on a small stretch of road in the pouring rain sticking their thumbs out at rush-hour traffic. When someone did take pity on the large group of wet, cold, misguided 20-somethings and decided to pull over, it was basically luck of the draw/a mad dash for the car where as many people as possible piled in and those who didn't make it were left shaking their fists and moving a couple feet down the road hoping that would change their luck.

After a few hours, shit was looking dire. My friends and I hadn't been picked up or seen anyone picked up in a long time, we'd been scolded by a cop when we moved off of the liftplaats and tried our luck at a gas station, and the rain was absolutely pouring down. About 4 hours in, Ross and Ally got picked up and the number of teams left by the side of the road was dwindling. By this point it was about 11am, we'd been outside (mostly) for 4 hours, and while people in cars where good at waving, giving us the "thumbs-up" or occasionally pretending to pull over or fingering us (jerks), there was no sign we were getting picked up any time soon. Beyond that, even if we did get picked up, there was no way a driver would be going to Berlin, and wherever we got dumped next we'd have to go through the motions all over again. Getting to Berlin before dark was now impossible and getting there before the next morning or at all seemed super unlikely.

So, I threw in the towel. Cracked. Hitchhiking was over for me before it had begun and I booked a lovely, leisurely train ride that got me to Berlin in 7 hours. Josh took the night bus and joined me the next morning. As for Ally and Ross, they somehow ended up in Nuremburg around midnight and took a series of trains the next day to meet us in Berlin around 3pm. For those of you who aren't familiar with geography, on the map below Amsterdam is represented by the red pin, Berlin by the blue pin, and Nuremburg, i.e. Ally and Ross, are represented by the little man:

Still not quite sure how it happened. That being said, they did manage to hitchhike successfully for a very long distance, so I think in many ways they win.

The trip ended up being a ton of fun despite the hitchhiking fail, and I've uploaded pictures:

Germany Pictures

I'm not sure if my ego could take the rejection inherent in hitchhiking again, but if I were to give it another shot, talking with Ally, Ross and others has made it clear that it would be best:

• having no destination in mind. Ally and Ross made it all the way to Nurenburg in a day without it costing a penny. Deciding on a general direction to travel then not giving a shit where you actually end up could make it really fun.

• booking nothing in advance. I shelled out for the train because we had a hostel booked in Berlin that night. None of us could throw in the towel completely because of our Frightened Rabbit tickets and pre-paid bus back home from Hamburg. Hitchhiking is definitely better-suited for the kind of travelling with no itinerary or plans whatsoever.

• going in the summer. If it had been a beautiful, warm, day I could have stuck it out much longer. The freezing rain and 9 hours of daylight in November are really not the best hitchhiking, as your chances of dying alone in the dark on the side of the road from exposure increase greatly.

• not standing with 50 other people trying to hitch to the exact same place as you. Doing it alone might make you appear a bit sketchier to potential drivers, but the mad-scramble method for car allocation didn't really work out so well. I'm not cutthroat enough.

So now I'm back in Amsterdam desperately (OK, not too desperately since I've been uploading pictures and blogging all morning) trying to make a dent in the 7 papers I have due by the end of term. I'm leaving for Spain & Portugal on Saturday until November 22nd, and then it will be less than a month until I'm home. Craziness! Two months ago I was just arriving in Amsterdam, getting used to the squalor of living in the "Guesthouse" and wrapping my head around Chipkaarts and cycling. Two months from now I will be crashing with my parents/on couches in Vancouver trying not to spend a penny waiting for PLTC to begin while all my friends are hard at work at their grown-up jobs. Life's weird right now but I love it, and I'm going to try to make the absolute most of my last month and a bit here even if it means living off catfood, rice wine and the charity of my more successful friends and relatives when I get back to Vancouver.

Until next time!

Oh, Holland....

So I come home tonight to an email from the Exchange student coordinator here at VU, advertising "International Students Theatre and Music Week":

Click for a full-size image. It's worth it. I don't know what I want to see the least, the apparently pornographic puppetshow "The Writer"? The asexual African/European/Middleastern influenced love-ballad-belting humourist? Or maybe the group described as "Samuel Beckett meets the Tokyo Shockboys in a silent movie that goes on where Jackass stopped".

Get. me. outofhere.