Sunday, April 7, 2013

It was pretty quiet in my new neighborhood last night; I heard a motorcycle or two but that was it. I woke up early  and was ready for breakfast before it was ready. (had to wait until 8:30) I took my phone down to the big shared living room in the basement where I found a coffee vending machine.  I  checked out the reading material there; it looked like many publications of research projects. Since this is the residence for "investigators," maybe the articles were written here, but I don't know that. There was a small group at breakfast. It looked like most people were making grilled ham and cheese sandwiches--they are called bikinis here. I was not in the mood for that so I had cereal with milk, fruit, a hard boiled egg and coffee. Lola would have liked the coffee. It was served in a regular coffee carafe with hot milk on the side so the coffee was more like we are used to at home. I had to make my own cafe con leche and it was not quite the same, but I made do. Weekdays a hot breakfast is served, so I will be interested in seeing how that is.

After breakfast I went down to the computer room to see what was available. The computers are a bit dated--Windows XP and only 2 GB of memory, but they worked fine for what I was doing...a little email and a quick look at Facebook. Since it was about 2 am at home, no one was on Facebook. At about 11:15 I set off for Sunday mass. There is a church in a little plaza just a short ways off with an 11:30 mass. The small side street I am staying on was filled with people in colorful traditional dress--I think someone said they are Pakistanis. Anyway I arrived at the church shortly and people were streaming out. This puzzled me because I was sure when I read the schedule that 11:30 was the first mass. The whole courtyard was like a big fiesta; people were standing around, talking and eating. I waited until people stopped coming out and then I went in. There was music playing, but it wasn't until about 11:40 that mass finally began. I was beginning to think I had the wrong time. The mass was in Spanish rather than Catalan and for the first time I understood almost everything. They put the songs on a display so everyone could see and I knew just about every word. I think maybe the Spanish lessons did me some good.

After mass I immediately headed over to the cathedral, not because I had not had enough mass yet, but because I heard that people showed up around 1pm and danced the traditional Sardana at the cathedral. Sure enough when I arrived I could hear music and saw several circles of dancers. They join and raise their hands and do some intricate steps while in a circle.

There seemed to be one energetic group that jumped up and down more than the others but for the most part people seemed to take it seriously as you can see from my photo.  I saw people break into the groups by just grabbing the hands of people already in the circle. I have some video of two people doing the dance by themselves. There seemed to be a lot more women than men and while there were a few younger people, most were on the older end of the spectrum. I enjoyed it and wonder if I might be able to learn it--maybe from YouTube?

Then I was off to the Picasso Museum which is free to enter on the first Sunday of the month. I found out that it is free to enter but you still need a ticket. I stood in line for about 25 minutes which I did not think was too bad considering how long the line was when I started. When I got to the ticket counter, the attendant asked me in English where I am from--apparently I am not fooling anyone--and gave me my free ticket.

 I enjoyed the exhibit more than Alberto thinks anyone should. I  read up on it last night so I would know how the exhibits are laid out. I know that I like his earlier work more than his later work--I think my favorite was the painting he did of his mother when he was about 15 and I have always liked his Don Quixote drawing. In the 1950's he did a series of 58 paintings based on different aspects of Diego Velasquez' Las Meninas which is considered to be one of the most important paintings of Western Art. If you see the series that Picasso did, you can see that he had his own take on how he saw it! (a little to the left?)

The Barcelona museum was the idea of Picasso's lifelong friend, Jaume Sabartés, who had many paintings given to him by Picasso. He planned to locate it in Malaga, Picasso's birthplace, but Picasso suggested it be in Barcelona. It is the only Picasso museum opened in his lifetime. The works came from some Picasso had given to Barcelona, those from his friend Sabartes, over 700 that Picasso himself donated, some his wife donated after he died, other collections from other galleries, and other places, I am sure. The Picasso Museum occupies five large palaces on Calle Montcada in Barcelona so the building itself is quite interesting. You can find out more with this Wikipedia article.

I have about a 32" flat screen TV in my Residencia room and it is much nicer to watch than the TV at my former piso. I don't have as many channels, but they seem more interesting. Tonight I have been watching Steve McQueen and Richard Crenna speak excellent Spanish in some war movie and Sean Connery was also doing a fine job in some other movie earlier!

Well, enough with the procrastination--I still need to work on how my language study has benefited my professional development. More later.