So February is almost over, and we're wiped. We're working our asses off on Così fan tutte, which the Kons has decided to stage, like, right now, so we're cramming every day, trying to get the next scene memorized in time for staging. At the same time, we're preparing for a recital next Saturday, with a couple of dress rehearsals this week and next week leading up to it, where we have lots to sing as well (and lots to memorize). Insanity. We have about enough energy every evening to stare at our computers mindlessly until we realize it's late and we need to be asleep 30 minutes ago. And that, my friends, is what the end of February '08 looks like from out here.
We saw lots o' operas the week we got back: Aida, Così fan tutte and Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci. Aida gets a high draw score, since the women were good, and the tenor was *so bad* that he unfortunately doesn't allow Aida placing in the win category. Così fan tutte was excellent, with an excellent cast, an excellent conductor (Muti), no cuts, and an adequate staging. Really really great (and long!). Cavalleria was not so good, and Pagliacci was good, so I guess we'll give one point into the win category and one low-draw. So, that's 2 wins and 2 draws for the Wiener Staatsoper: 10-4-4.
I gonna get me a Tom Bihn backpack. I'm actually excited about buying a backpack. Nerd. On an unrelated note, you know when you wake up and your eyebrow or eyeball is spasming for no reason and it's really weird? You ever get that in the muscles of your lower lip? I used to be able to say me neither; it's been a weird day.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
The Last Few Weeks of February
People who look at this site
In creepy big-brother fashion, here's Google's site tracking info:
In the last month, of the people viewing the blog for more than a minute,
6 were from Pennsylvania, 2 were from New Jersey, 2 from California, 2 from Vienna (not me!), 2 from Granada, Spain, 1 from Serbia (?) and 1 from Denmark (?).
So, in case you were curious, I'M LOOKING AT YOU RIGHT NOW THROUGH YOUR COMPUTER SCREEN
Also, California, you're way behind. Time to get cracking.
Béchamel
I have just figured out how to make a mushroom sauce out of a Béchamel base. This is a special day indeed. I have sought long and hard for this sauce, and at 6:00pm, February the 28th, I now know that if you want an awesome, awesome mushroom sort of sauce, you do everything I used to do (Saute mushrooms in butter or olive oil, with onions and garlic and salt and pepper and stuff), and then,
In a separate pan, you make the magical béchamel base, which is a couple of tablespoons of butter, cooked till frothy, and then a couple of tablespoons of flour, cooked till golden, and then a couple of cups of milk and/or chicken stock, added slowly, then boiled for a while (during which you add the yummy mushroom goodness and maybe a bay leaf if you want it to taste a little more like gravy) until thickened and reduced.
Awesome
In the olden days of yore, I tried to make this sauce with chicken broth and lots and lots of cheese, which never came out right. But those olden days are behind me, and a new age begins today.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Espain: The End! Feb 10-11: Girona, lessons learned
On Feb 10th we got up at 5:30am to leave in time for our plane. After assorted busses and planes, we got to our Bed & Breakfast, Bells Oficis, run by Javier, a super-nice spaniard who speaks more English than he thinks he does.
Bells Oficis is a lower-end sort of hostal, in that the rooms share a bathroom and there's no heating, but Javi's made a really comfortable, pretty place with a good breakfast and smiles all around (and a good price :) ).
We left our bags there, and went into Girona, which is a *very* pretty, medieval town, where you can walk through pathways of archways that support the buildings above you. We made a poor lunch decision (yum! cold tapas!), went to the extensive Jewish museum, where Gabe ran out of energy entirely, went to the hotel, passed out, went out again for dinner to a great seafood place, La Riba, and then went back to bed and read books and such.
The next day was spent barely making our bus, then barely making our plane, then waiting a long time for the bus to Vienna, and then getting home. A great success.
So! Lessons learned:
-Whatever people say, Spain has great food (people mostly say that Spain has good food, but some people go and come back complaining). That doesn't mean there aren't crappy places, but as long as you're going on recommendations, you can find pretty consistently good food. Also, the bread is fantastic. I dont know why, but even mini-market bread products and processed grossness at bus stations are full of delicious, crispy, chewy, awesome bread.
-Spanish Busses are cheap and get you all over the country, but there is noone except for someone *working for the bus company* that actually knows the schedule accurately. We found inaccurate schedules from the bus company websites, from tourist offices, and even from schedules posted at bus stations. Also, if you get carsick, sit in the front. Bleh.
-If you're American, don't use Quick-Checkin with RyanAir. Quick Check-In is great, because the alternative costs €8 more and you get the last, worst seats on the plane, and you might get bumped off the plane if they oversell it and it sucks not to do quick check-in. So we were big fans of quick check-in when we left for our first flight to Girona. On our second flight (back to Girona from Granada), the gate attendants freaked out when we handed them an American passport.
"You cant do that! You can't use quick check in! Only for Europeans! If you were at another airport, they wouldn't even let you on the flight!" oops! Well, we already used quick check-in for our third flight, and we liked it, and we weren't really even sure that they were right, since we have European residence permits.
Well, folks, you can't. Our next flight, they saw our passports and told us we can't get on the flight, and we'd need to run downstairs and check in. We made it, sweaty and panting, but only barely. Nope, Americans are not allowed to use quick check-in.
-Pick your Sundays carefully. A small town like Girona is going to be mostly closed on Sunday. Oops (Though it's not like we had energy to go do things anyways).
-Flamenco concerts are an important part of a Spain trip, particularly if you're going to Seville or Granada. Book them in advance. In Seville, one was sold out and the other was closed for the month. In Granada, they only put on a show if they have enough reservations (and ours was basically sold out).
-The 'vacation from your vacation' part of a vacation is an important part, and it belongs in the middle. We were pretty wiped out by Feb 6th, and kind of over-museumed/architectured. If we did something like Barcelona Feb 1-4, Ronda 5-7, Granada 8-11, that would be been even better. Girona at the end was a little weird, because although it's a good place for a vacation from your vacation, by that point, an even better place for that would have been sleeping in our own bed at home.
-Go to Ronda and Barcelona at some point in your life. Perhaps repeatedly. Both deserve multiple days in a trip.
-Oh yeah, when you go somewhere and the food is good, remember to buy local spices. Im having a very hard time finding the Guindilla peppers that flavored some of my favorite dishes there, and it would have been a cinch to get them there. Lame. (Also, I could have bought a Paella pan cheap there, and didn't think of it.)
Thats all folks! I hope all this was somewhat entertaining :)
Espain, Feb 7-9, Nerja and Granada
We reluctantly left Ronda for the beaches of Nerja on the evening of the 7th. 3 hours of busses later, we arrived. The town is a relatively small beach town, but a beach town nonetheless; it felt a little bit sleazy somehow to me. Anyway, we arrived at our hotel, which was closed with no reception desk, and then, mistakenly thinking that I didn't already give them my credit card number (I did, they charged it. Oops), we went across the street to another hotel and stayed there.
We went to the beach for dinner, in search for the famous Paella place known as Ayo's, but found a huge line of closed restaurants, with the exception of an Irish pub, 2 places that were no longer serving food, and a chinese place called "Oriental".
"Oriental" was relatively packed. The waiter/owner asserted this was because it was the Chinese New Year, and because he has the best food in town. We sat down next to a group of elderly English people. We got a tray of dips and shrimp crackers to go with them, which were very good, and then we heard, from the table next to us, "You know, its always about you, Mary. Me! Me! Me! That's all it's ever about! ...", to which Mary replied "Well you, Susan, are a shit", and then things went downhill from there.
We got the impression that these people were lifelong friends who went to Spain together, and would no longer be lifelong friends after this evening. To this was added some of the worst food we've ever had, a table of Dutch people making fun of the waiter/owner's accent, and we ended that night by leaving a big tip for what was clearly not a good day as the owner of the "Oriental" restaurant, and went to bed.
Granada was pretty cool. Our hotel, Casa Federico, was very hip, somewhat overpriced, and very poorly managed. They didn't provide breakfast even though our reservation confirmation said they would, the whole night was filled with the ringing doorbell that the night receptionist wasn't waking up to answer, and the next day, they *weren't there in the middle of the day* when we wanted to go to our room. Lame.
Anyway, Granada was pretty cool. We went to the Alhambra complex - a fortress, a muslim palace, and lots of gardens, which were all very neat. Large chunks of the Nasrid Palace were closed, but overall it was still very cool. We went back down to town, and went to the Arabic Baths. This is a place where you enter a dark, candle-lit room full of steam, mostly silence, 7 baths of different temperatures, and a load of masseuses, then you get a 15 minute massage and soak your troubles away for an hour and a half, taking breaks for sweet tea, candies and water. A+ gold star.
Our night was rounded off with some arabic tapas and a Flamenco concert, which was amazing/inspiring/great. The music and dancing are equally and insanely intense, and we just had a great time. If you have a chance to see some good Flamenco, take it. It's worth every penny. After the concert we walked back to town (the busses stop running by that time at night), went by some neat views of the Alhambra at night, and went to bed.
Espain, Feb 6-7, Arcos and Ronda
We got on the early bus to Arcos de la Frontera, one of RIck Steves' "Back Doors" of Spain. Its a beautiful medieval town, all white, with narrow, narrow streets, 2 churches, and a cliff-top view over a huge valley. We went to the convent, where they have a 1-way mirror and a lazy susan, and you ring the bell and say "Cookies? (Or "Patas??")", and they say "5 Euros", and you put 5 euros on the tray, and they rotate the tray 180° and on the other side is a box of delicious, blessed pine-nut nun-cookies. Mm. Down the street, there is a bakery that serves Sultanas, giant macaroons that so good, that people who dislike macaroons would find them one of the best things in the world (I tend to dislike macaroons). We went to the end of town, looked at the view, went to our restaurant for lunch.
This restaurant, apart from having really fantastic food (I will note that fine dining in Arcos is like 1/3 the price of fine dining in a big city, with the same quality of food), had the best menu translation we have yet seen. I need to go back to Arcos just to take pictures of the 2 pages of the menu I missed with my camera (I forgot to take pictures of the back of each page). I had some Rabbit in Sauce, which was delicious, but not nearly as amusing as the "Lomitos of deer to the from Cadiz one" under the Meets section that Melanie ordered. Next time I shall endeavor to order the "ATTACKED OF ELVERS!" or the "ATTACKED OF FANTASY OF MUSHROOMS WITH HAM IBERIAN!!". Those seemed more like meals for later in the day.
We took a bus to Ronda that afternoon, and met some nice Irish people who were heading to the same Hotel, so we shared a taxi. They've been travelling a lot for quite some time, and have been avid users of Homeexchange.com, where you stay in someone's house while they stay in yours. This is very neat.
Anyway, Ronda is the best city I've ever been to, and Hotel San Gabriel is fantastic. I could stay there for weeks. Ronda is a magical town in southern spain situated on top of a canyon, divided in half by a 120m deep chasm, through which a river flows and cascades down in a waterfall towards the valley 750m below. We got there in time for the sunset, which you can see from several beautiful viewing gazebos on the side of the cliff overlooking the valley, and at the moment the sun set, a flock of hundreds or thousands of birds flew up from the cliff face, and made no sound other than the flapping of hundreds or thousands of wings. Ronda is a magical place.
Hotel San Gabriel is a really pretty place, with comfy beds, hundreds of books in every language spread everywhere, a little movie theater with comfy seats and a dvd collection, and the best breakfast of home-baked breads and marmalades we'd had in Spain. We came into town with a local tapas bar suggestion (Bodega San Francisco), which was seconded by our hotel owner, and proceeded to feast on some of the best food we've ever had. After trying a couple ham sandwiches, chicken, pork and shrimp skewers and some butter-fried-shrimp-rice, we mistakenly ordered 2 raciones (raciones are main-course sized versions of tapas) and got a gigantic, 2-person salad and an unholy pile of battered shrimp. These too were consumed in a frenzy of deliciousness. The bill? €22. Awesome.
Our next day involved the aforementioned breakfast @ San Gabriel and a hike through the cliffside trails. If you have the chance to go to Ronda, take it. It's just great.
Ehhhspain: Feb 4-5 Seville
With Barcelona thoroughly unfinished, we headed off to the airport to get to our ClickAir flight (which was maybe cheaper than RyanAir, offers direct Vienna to Barcelona flights, and has preassigned seating, though seats have not so much legroom. Hm!) We flew into Malaga, a town that reminds me of Orange County during rush hour (both times we encountered Malaga, it was during rush hour), visited a huge supermarket for food, and got on a train to Seville.
We arrived pretty late (around 11pm), and were greeted at the bus stop into town by a trumpet + drum band, playing slightly out of tune but intensely spanish music. The bus into town came, we got up, and it left. Without us. In Seville, we learned, the busses will only stop for you if you wave and yell and jump in front of them. So we got to our hotel somewhat later. It was somewhat quaint, somewhat far from the center of town, and had somewhat less hot water available than required for one person to shower in the morning.
Seville gave a first impression that was not quite as neat as Barcelona's. Our area of town was pretty dead at night, which is a little weird for Spain (at least compared to Barcelona). We woke the next morning to get to our (maybe) guided tour with Concepcion Delgado, who by all accounts is the best walking tour guide ever. I'd agree, except we didn't get to take a guided tour with her because noone else showed up for it. She spent a half hour with us, advising us on how best to spend our short time in Seville, gave us her phone number should we need anything, and tried to book us for a flamenco concert, but it was already sold out.
Our breakfast was a pastry and "hot chocolate" at this hot chocolate place. We had been looking for hot chocolate, and every café we went to, they'd say "No hot chocolate, only ColaCao". (ColaCao is a powdered hot chocolate that tastes like, well, exactly what you'd expect from hot chocolate). Then we found out why. Spanish hot chocolate is a cup of chocolate. Bars. Melted. It would be a cool dessert at a restaurant, served in an expresso cup with a tiny spoon, but when faced with a big steaming cup of thick, viscous, dark chocolate, one doesn't quite know what to do. Eventually I just took a big breath and started drinking, because if you just sipped it, you'd be there all day. Weird.
So we went to Seville's cathedral, whose builders' creed, "let those who come after us take us for madmen" came through loud and clear. It's really very big. But it doesn't produce the feeling of awe that the Sagrada Familia or Eglesia del Santa Maria produce; it's almost too big; you can't really see all of it at once, so you break it into boxes of relatively normal cathedral size. We took the entire audiotour - every painting, statue, side-chapel, everything. We figured that just once, we should do the entire audioguide of some cathedral. It was both cool and exhausting. Columbus is buried there, in a huge bronze coffin on the shoulders of four giant statues representing the kingdoms of Spain. At the end of the exhausting audio tour, you get to walk up 45 stories to the top of the Giralda tower they incorporated into the Cathedral from the old mosque that was there. The views were really neat, and at the top are huge bells, which we decided wouldn't possibly go off when there were tourists up there, and then, of course, the bells went off, which we discovered were really very loud and headache inducing.
Off to lunch and to the Alcazaba, a beautiful Arabic palace that unfortunately blends way too much in with the memories of Granada's Alhambra to really remember it distinctly, except to say that it was very beautiful. Theres a nice photo tour(not ours) over here: http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/spain/seville/alcazar/alcazarindex.html
We stayed till closing time, met one of the cats of the palace, who gets petted by probably thousands of people a day, and I think lives in cat heaven currently (for those cats that enjoy getting pet, at least), lost our guide book, ran back in and discovered that somehow security is so on top of things that they had our guide book right there, took a too-long Siesta [at ~1 hour you get *way* more tired than you were when you started], headed off to the bus station to get tomorrow's schedule, walked back past some huge building, and Carmen's cigarette factory(now the Seville University), and went to the tapas section of town, where we bar hopped until we got to the place that served us 4 plates consisting entirely of mayonnaise ("Tropical Cocktail": Mayonnaise stew with lettuce and shrimp in it. Yum), at which point we were no longer desirous of more tapas.
That night concluded with getting lost looking for the Flamenco bar, getting stopped by a Spaniard on a bike: "
We got there eventually, spent an hour or so nursing a beer and getting smoked at, and left; there was no flamenco that would happen, it seemed. Thus ended Seville.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Spain! Feb 1-4 (Barcelona)
Spain!
We got back from Spain yesterday, and since there are an awful lot of pictures, I guess we'll break these posts up into chunks. This shall be the first chunk, covering our adventures through Barcelona. The moral of the story shall be put in the last post (but to summarize, Spain was really great!)
February the First:
Our day began with an only slightly reduced amount of sleep (we did pretty good, for us!), and then bus 59A to bus 13A to a bus to Bratislava airport to our flight to Girona to our bus to Barcelona to a train to the central tourism office to a train to our hotel.
Highlights and observations from the day:
-SlovakLines busses to Bratislava provide you with Slovakian crossword(maybe?) puzzles. These you can't even guess what to do with.
-On the way from Vienna to Bratislava, there are all these trees with some sort of *bright green* parasite balls or vine or something. These are weird.
-There are also a couple of cute, very old Austrian cities on the way with old city walls and stuff.
-RyanAir is a crazy, crazy airline. Seating is done by who can squish their way ahead in line, and anyone who does web-check-in automatically gets to the head of the line. We did web check-in. Worked like a charm. We got exit-row. This time. (There were 3 RyanAir flights on this trip)
-Spanish busses are slightly more cramped than RyanAir
-A lot of spanish girls look very much alike.
-Our hotel concierge lady gave us a dinner recommendation to a place down the street. This place was really very fantastic. I had Noodles with Baby Eels, because I was feeling adventurous. Noodles with Baby Eels means that you get noodles, and mixed in with the yellow noodles are white and grey noodles, except those noodles are little baby eels. Surprisingly, as soon as you get over the fact that eating baby eels as if they were noodles is kind of gross, the dish was really great. I am on the hunt for the elusive red Guindilla chili, which I realize only now that I am an idiot not to have purchased it in Spain.
February the Second: Old Barcelona Day
We spent the day touring the old parts of Barcelona - the old town, the cathedral (which has a neat courtyard full of ducks, who apparently were (and are) used as an alarm. Our guidebook waxes poetic at this point: "They honk to this very day"), a tapas bar (the spanish use really yummy wine vinegars instead of balsamic vinegar + olive oil. This is, well, really yummy. Also, creme brulée crepes are yummy). We went to a concert of medieval spanish music. There was one musician who played a one-handed flute and a drum at the same time, beating out ridiculously complicated, fast rhythms in changing meeters while playing also complicated, fast melodies on her flute. Very neat.
February the Third/Fourth: New(ish) Barcelona Day
We spent this day touring Modernist architecture, starting with a tour of the Palace of Catalan Music (which is just beautiful inside, but doesn't allow pictures, except for the couple not-great ones I snapped secretly), moving down La Rambla, the 3rd-street-promenade of Barcelona except with live rooster shops instead of ice cream shops, going to home of "The Best Sandwich in the Entire World" according to the New York Times (unfortunately expectations were a little too high), the Opera house (pretty), and then...Gaudi!
Gaudi is the neatest architect ever. We saw 2 Gaudi sites on the third and one on the fourth. On the third it was pouring, pouring rain, but that was ok because Gaudi is the best architect ever. We went to La Sagrada Familia, his famous unfinished church (Will be done around 2030; Spain trip is planned for whenever it's ready), and to Casa Batllo, his whacky marine house with the most inane of audioguides. Sagrada Familia was really very inspiring and amazing, and the idea that it's going to get *taller* is kind of insane. We took lots of pictures but you really must go there to get a feel for it. We went up into the towers, which have pathways between them and insane sea-shell-inspired spiral staircases and let you get a sense of what the outside of the building looks like up-close. We got soaked with rain but it was mucho worth it.
Casa Batllo is a really neat house, except that the audioguide spends so much time telling you how neat and amazing it is that you almost stop believing it. Here's a quote: "You are now entering...the most extravagant and fantastic room...you have *ever* *been* *in*." or, in case you didn't know, "Imagination is the psychic faculty to see new forms..in your *own* *mind*" Lame. (But Casa Batllo was very much not lame.)
The next morning, we went to Park Güell, Gaudi's flirt with landscaping. We took a bus, then hiked up a hill for 30 minutes (we later realized there's another way up involving escalators. oops). The park is tourist central, with a ridiculous number of people sprawling themselves over the beautiful architecture and making thumbs-up gestures or what-not for photos. [soapbox]I never really got the point of avoiding areas where tourists go, since I too would be a tourist, but I get it now. Tourists are really annoying! [/soapbox] Anyway the Park was beautiful, and then you realize that the plaza is actually on top of a hall of columns, and next to one of the most amazing feats of architecture I've ever seen. He has a pathway under a wave of rocks, and you actually feel like you're inside of a moving wave. Except it's made of rocks. Madness.
Barcelona was really fantastic. It's a wonderful city, pretty easy to get to, great food, blah blah blah. A+ gold star.
Only going to show 20 photos per post, in the interests of bandwidth kindness to, well, Andrea. Click on that first photo of the trees to get you to the beginning of the Barcelona photoset.
