No longer homeless in the Party Piso and pizzas used as weapons

Palabra del día: Piso
Translation: Apartment, or, as most Spanish people who have been educated in British English would say, "flat."
Frase: Me encanta vivir en el Party Piso con amigos que les gusta tocar la música.
Translation: I love living in the Party Piso with friends who like to play music.

Comida del día: I've always secretly wanted to have a cooking blog.  The problem is that for the last few years I haven't had a kitchen, and I also barely know how to cook.  At the moment though, I have a blog and a kitchen, so I'm going to turn this section of the blog into a "Recipe of the day" instead of a "Food of the day."  This also makes a lot of sense because I've already discussed most of the important Spanish foods and many of the Eastern European ones as well, so this change will prevent me from running out of things to talk about (call it bad planning, but this blog was originally scheduled to end in December...).  That being said, cooking has been a bit of a struggle during my first two weeks in my new apartment with all of the chaos of moving in, getting used to a new schedule, learning how the tiny kitchen works, and navigating Spanish grocery stores.  My most successful recipe so far was this cookie cake:

which I made for my housemate Rebecca's birthday party.  It was a huge success - there were three cakes there and mine disappeared the fastest! Chocolate chip cookies don't exist in Spain so it was a bit of a novelty to many of the guests at the party.  For the recipe, I used the classic toll house chocolate chip cookie recipe (http://www.verybestbaking.com/recipes/18476/Original-NESTL%C3%89-TOLL-HOUSE-Chocolate-Chip-Cookies/detail.aspx) except without baking soda or baking powder (I couldn't find any...), with slightly inaccurate measurements (they measure things in grams here and I was too lazy to convert everything), and with wayyyy to much butter (I should have measured the butter...).  Despite all of this, the cookie cake was still delicious.

Foto del dia: Look how many instruments I have in my new bedroom!

I count four: the keyboard I'm renting this semester, my french horn, the recorder that I'm supposed to learn how to play for my new internship at an elementary school, and a guitar.  I've been wanting to learn to play guitar for a while and there are so many great guitar players in Spain that I decided this was the place to do it!

I'm two weeks into this semester and it's already drastically different than the last one.  But let me backtrack a little bit to explain the strange title of this blog post.  In three parts:

Part 1: No longer homeless

I was never actually homeless, but I was without a permanent home for my six weeks of winter break.  My housemates ensured me that they wouldn't let me live on the street, but not having a the insurance bedroom that I knew I could come home to made me feel a bit insecure.  For much of that time, I was on my Great European Adventure.  When I finally came home to Granada I was expecting to be able to move into my room, but the girl who was living here before me decided she needed to stay an extra two weeks to finish up her classes.  And so I was exiled to the sofa and shared the living room for a week and a half with my friend/housemate Rebecca who was in the same situation.  Although I was incredibly sick of living out of a suitcase and ready to have some space to myself, I definitely appreciate how generous my housemates were in giving up their living room to the two of us.  And not having a bedroom for so long made me appreciate my new room even more when I finally got to move in, fill it with instruments, and find some much needed personal space.

Part 2: In the Party Piso

I've named our apartment the "Party Piso."  Don't worry Mom, we've only had one party, for Rebecca's birthday.  But sometimes it feels like every day is a party because I'm constantly surrounded by friends. The members of the Party Piso include:

• me (duh)
• Rebecca, who is my friend from IES and plays cello in my band (hahaha she plays cello in a band... long story)
• Our friend Alberto who plays saxophone in our band and invited us to live in his apartment since two of his housemates left this semester
• Our other housemate Nabil who is originally from Morocco but has been studying in Granada for a few years
• And various other people who constantly drop by (a mix of friends and relatives and various nationalities)

Ever since Rebecca and I have moved into our rooms, I don't think there's been one night where both of the sofas in the living room were empty.  So if you ever find yourself in Granada and you're worried you'll have to sleep under a bridge (this was my biggest fear for the last six weeks), just knock on our door and someone will definitely let you borrow a sleeping bag.

Living with friends is a big change from last semester.  It's great to finally have a place to hang out with friends, and I feel like I'm in college again!  It's also a bit distracting, since it's much easier to say no to a night of tapas when my friends are across town than when they're in my room insisting that I stop doing homework and come along.  Speaking of tapas...

Part 3: Pizzas used as weapons

Pizzas are delicious, but did you know that they are also dangerous?  One of the most interesting nights of this semester was when I was at a tapas bar with a large group of Spanish and American friends and a hot pizza was forcefully thrown at us from above.  We have no idea where it came from or who threw it, but a few of my friends were splattered with tomato sauce and possibly suffered some minor burns.  I can guess why it was thrown at us, though, since we were having a rather loud and slightly obnoxious discussion about animal noises.  Did you know that in Spanish birds say "piu piu" instead of "chirp chirp?"  Fascinating.  But clearly not so fascinating to whoever threw the pizza.

In addition to going out for tapas at some great new places that my Spanish housemates have shown me, I've had some other fun adventures with the Party Piso and friends.  We've started having bi-weekly brunches switching between our apartment and my friend Silvia's.  Brunch doesn't exist in Spain but I've decided it should so we're spreading the word.  We've only had one so far but it was a big success: we ate delicious pancakes and then talked for at least three hours about every controversial topic you can think of, including religion, abortion, and gay marriage, and it was really interesting to hear the views of people from different cultures.

Another interesting night was the IES open mic.  My housemate Alberto plays saxophone and clarinet and we've been having a lot of jam sessions, so we decided to play something at the event.  However, we failed to find time to rehearse beforehand and decided to just wing it.  I've never performed for such a large audience (there were probably 100 people there!) while being so unprepared, but it didn't turn out too bad and we had lots of fun.

Two more highlights:

1. Rebecca's birthday party, in which we ate tacos (I made the guacamole) and everyone was instructed to wear a white t-shirt so that we could draw on each other.  It was a lot of fun, and there were probably about 30 people there throughout the night.  We have so many friends!

2. Trip to the mountains: The Sierra Nevada is the largest mountain range in Spain and also happens to be just an hour-long bus ride from Granada.  Last weekend I went on a day trip there with a group of friends to go hiking (and sledding!)  It was absolutely gorgeous and I'm hoping to go back soon to go skiing.

I realize that I've only written about fun social events in this post.  Although it's hard to believe, I have been going to classes, and I started a new internship.  This blog post has reached it's limit though, so I'll save the details about those less interesting things for another day and let you keep believing that my life is all fun and games in the Party Piso.

To Berlin and back

Palabra del día: regresar
Translation: to return
Frase: Estoy muy contenta de regresar a Granada después de mucho tiempo viajando.
Translation: I'm so happy to return to Granada after so much time traveling.

Comida del día: tapas
Yes, tapas are Spanish, but our second to last night in Berlin we went to a tapas restaurant that had some of the best tapas I've ever eaten.  They were so good that we went back the next night for their weekly paella night!  I think the fact that I was perfectly happy eating Spanish food our last two nights in Berlin means that it was time to come home to Granada.

Foto del día: I can't decide, so I'll give you two!  Some of the most unique art I saw on my trip was at Berlin's East Side Gallery, which is a remaining segment of the Berlin wall that is now covered in a variety of street art.

A few people asked me at the end of my trip if I was sick of traveling.  Before the trip started, I was sure that halfway through I would be ready to stop.  Surprisingly, it was only on the last three days of the trip that I started to get sick of museums, living in a hostel, constantly looking at a map, and going out for every meal.  The places we visited were so varied that I was always excited when we arrived somewhere new.  I've had a luxuriously long vacation, and for me it turned out to be the perfect length.

So, about Berlin.  My word for Berlin is "young," in reference to both the architecture and the population.  Like Budapest, much of Berlin was destroyed during World War II and ignored during the communist era.  Unlike Budapest where there are still bulldozers everywhere, Berlin's post-communism "reconstruction" seems complete, with lots of modern buildings and memorials.  For example, the Reichstag Parliament building has a giant transparent dome that signifies that the government won't keep any secrets (and that tourists are allowed to climb up for a nice view into the building and of the whole city).  The city was also young because there were young people everywhere, though it seemed to me that almost half of them spoke Spanish rather than German: I had heard that Spanish people are flocking to Germany to find jobs after graduating from college, since there are no jobs to be found in Spain, and based on my observations that seemed to be completely true (and would also explain why the tapas restaurant was so good!)

Other common things in Berlin: there seemed to be vegan cafes on every corner (which I loved) and some great up and coming neighborhoods with fun vintage boutiques (which Annie loved).  Berlin was quite a contrast to Rome or Venice, both of which have held on to so much of their history, but overall it felt like a city meant for living in rather than a city meant for touristing.

Despite its lack of historical sights, Berlin certainly isn't lacking in culture.  My favorite part of my time in Berlin was, by far, going to a philharmonic concert.  Whenever I want to listen to a piece of classical music, I always try to find a recording by the Berlin Philharmonic, so I was thrilled to have the opportunity to hear them live.  We bought the cheapest tickets but our seats ended up sitting behind the stage and directly above the horn section.  This meant that I could hear the horns perfectly and watch the conductor the entire time, so if I tried hard enough I could almost imagine that I was playing with the orchestra in their gorgeous rendition of Dvorak's cello concerto...but then I was snapped back to reality in the second half, in which they played a piece based off of an 80s punk rock band that had musicians moving through the audience, sounds I had never heard before, and a few of the older audience members walking out in the middle.  It was a unique piece and (obviously) very well done, but since I had never heard the Berlin Philharmonic before I would have preferred to hear something a bit more classic.

Before going to the concert, I went to the musical instruments museum next door, and saw some very strange instruments, like this cross between a violin and a horn:

And this strange loopy thing which is apparently a tenor trombone in B-flat and F:

I also walked through Berlin's gorgeous snowy Tiergarten Park, where I found these cows:

Berlin was also the final stop in my exploration of the Jewish history of Eastern Europe.  I went to three Jewish sights.  First, I went to the Holocaust memorial, which was a field filled with rows and rows of pillars of different heights, and an accompanying exhibit that explained the experiences of various people and families who were victims of the Holocaust.  Next I went to the Great Synagogue, which used to be one of the biggest in Europe but was completely destroyed during the war.  Now, the facade and three rooms have been restored, and there is a patio in the back where you can see where the bimah once was and where the congregation once sat.  The Great Synagogue was also interesting because the architecture was modeled after the Alhambra - yet another piece of Spain that has found its way to Berlin.  However, it was a bit of a shock to see the beautiful facade and then to walk into a building that remains halfway destroyed.  Finally, I went to the Jewish museum,  which was built in 2001, with maze-like architecture and an exhibit in the basement that is also a memorial to the Holocaust.  

Restored facade of the Great Synagogue

Going to all of these sights where so many horrible things happened to Jewish people was not only a chance for me to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust, but also prompted me to think a bit about my own religion.  I've never been very serious about celebrating Jewish holidays (in the past year I've been to mass more times than synagogue...), but thinking about how much Jews have struggled throughout history to practice their religion, I've realized the importance of practicing my religion and sharing it with other people.  This doesn't mean that I'm going to start going to services every week, especially since the values and the community of the religion has always been more important to me than the purely religious aspects.  However, I think I will make a conscious effort going forward to share my religion with other people, and since Spain has so few Jewish people this semester should be a great opportunity to do that.

And so the longest and by far the best vacation of my life has come to an end, with classes starting up again on Monday.  Normally I would be dreading going back to classes after vacation, but after such an amazing trip and with the fact that my classes are in the lovely city of Granada, I really have absolutely nothing to complain about.