Hey All,
Excuse me while I talk politics for a second. This weekend I
have been focused mostly on catching up or getting ahead with schoolwork. This
morning I woke up, had breakfast, and started working on my microprocessor
project. Admittedly this is a pretty dull start to what is arguably the most
important day in France in the past several years. Today is the second and
final round of the presidential elections. Elections here begin with a first
round of voting. Since France is a multi-party country (as opposed to a
two-party like the US) there are viable candidates from many parties. The first
election votes on a candidate from each major party. Unless one candidate gets
over 50% of the vote there is a second round of elections several weeks later
which takes only the two top voted candidates from the first round. The
candidates running today are incumbent Nicholas Sarkozy of the Union for a
Popular Movement and François Hollande of the Socialist Party (I find it
interesting that words like socialist and communist are openly used in French
politics even in a candidate’s self-description or party name). Hollande
received more of the vote than Sarkozy in the first tour, but Sarkozy has been
working hard to sway supporters of the other right wing candidates to his side
the past few weeks. Together the candidates received only 56% of the popular
vote in the first round, so there is a large enough voter base to make it
anyone’s game going into voting today. The polls close at 8pm CET (2pm EST).
This morning also gave me a chance to finish yet another
post that I started before the break, just after Easter. I go into detail about
French urban planning, Spanish religious traditions, and the difficulty of yet
another language barrier so I am afraid it is yet another long one.
I hope everyone back in the States had a Happy Easter, or as
we say over here joyeuses Pâques!
Easter in France is celebrated similar to Easter in the US mainly focusing on
family gatherings and religious services. Of course, it is also an excuse for
the French to take another holiday, hence I had no classes on Monday or
Tuesday. Anticipating the upcoming weekend and since Kaitlin would be on her
Easter break we booked a cheap flight from Paris Beauvais to Seville, Spain.
Spain is famous
across the world for the elaborate spectacle surrounding Holy Week, the largest
of which congregates around the city of Seville, to the south of the country. The
festivities start on Palm Sunday and go for a full week until Easter morning. I
heard from friends who had studied there that the city was a must-see for being
fairly close and decided that the long weekend presented a good opportunity.
Since the cheapest
flights are either early in the morning we left Cergy around 6am to take the
train into La Défense. La Défense is one of the major business districts of the
Paris metropolitan region and is reminiscent of the downtowns of American
cities such as New York. Filled with clusters of glass-and-steel skyscrapers it
is in stark contrast to what one would find in the center of the city. This is
actually by deliberate design.
In the second half of
the 20th century Paris saw the need to expand to meet the growth of
the city (as of today Paris is twice as dense as New York City). Rather than allow
the city to transform into a large urban center such as New York, the Parisians
decided to keep the small buildings of a few stories that so define its look
and outsource its development to the greater Paris region. That is, in essence,
what created Cergy, the RER lines connecting the city and the suburbs, and
urban centers such as La Défense. As a result, many people who work in the Paris
region end up working in areas such as these.
La Défense’s landmark
building is La Grande Arche de la Défense, which is a large square stood on its side in the
center of the plaza. It is in a direct line with L’arc de triomphe de
l’Étoile (the famous one), Arc de Triomphe du
Carrousel (the one by the
Louvre), and the Champs-Élysées
such that when viewed from one of the monuments on a clear day, the others
appear in an exact line. Together they are called the Voie Triomphale
(Triumphant
Way). It
is said that this was coordinated to maintain a connection with the historical
and cultural heart of the city as it was forced to expand out. Even some of the
banlieues
(suburbs) of the city try to follow this. The most notable
exception is Cergy itself. In the center of the town is a large park formed by
a natural bend in the Oise River at the base of a hill. When the small commune of
Cergy was made into the large suburban neuvelle-ville
(new town or new city) of Cergy-Pontoise the town hall was erected on top of
this hill. A large red bridge, l’Axe
Majeur, was built to connect the park in the middle of the river to the
rest of Cergy that would become the major landmark of the city. Both the town
hall and the bridge were made to line up exactly with the Voie Triomphale. From the top of the
hill to the bottom there is a line about three inches wide that is said to
align exactly with the median of Les Champs-Élysées in Paris. The view from the
top of the hill is wonderful. Though you cannot see all the way to Paris, most
of the l’Oise Valley is visible on a clear day. I will be sure to put up photos
of Cergy once we start having better weather.
Architecture lesion aside,
we made our way from La Défense to Beauvais where we would catch our flight. As
I have mentioned before, Beauvais was built to avoid the huge prices that come
with flying in and out of Paris by locating itself well outside of the city.
Two hours after takeoff, we landed in Seville.
I was immediately
greeted by temperatures at least fifteen degrees warmer than those from where I
cam as well as the sight of palm trees lining the airport. It would have been
heavenly if it were not pouring rain as we walked across the tarmac to the
airport building. Digging into the recesses of my memory for my high school
Spanish lessons we headed out of the airport on the shuttle bus for the city
center.
The bus dropped us
off at one of the many gardens in the city, lined with orange and palm trees
with tiled benches and fountains in the center. The streets were busy with passersby
many of whom were tourists as well though likely from other parts of Spain. As
it happened the hostels were booked up well in advance because of Semana Santa (Holy Week) so we booked a hostel just outside the city in a
town called Bormujos. Getting there meant that we had to take a bus out of
Seville. After walking around town for a bit and enjoying the now clear skies
we decided to head and check out our hostel.
Taking the bus out of the city center we
encountered the problem that while our booking confirmation email said to get
off the bus at a specific stop none of the stops were named. We ended up
getting off around the area that we believed the hostel was in. We were on the
main road of a small town, lined with colorful Spanish houses each with a brick
patio out front and scattered amongst a few cervecerías (bars, though more in the French brasserie sense, each with patio seating and a light meal
service). Having gotten close to where we thought we should be we decided to
give the hostel a call. Unfortunately my question of ¿Habla usted
inglés? (Do you speak English?) was
answered with a “no”. Undeterred, we were able to communicate with a mixture of
Spanish and English phrases to find out that we were very close, we just had to
look for a market that we had passed on the way and head down that road.
We walked down an unassuming road with
pleasant houses and a median landscaped with small stones and palm trees and
found what we were looking for. Our hostel turned out to be an actual student
housing building, much like my own in Cergy. The owners would rent out the
rooms they didn’t fill to backpackers on the side. As such our room had a
shower and bathroom, two desks with lamps, and a mini-kitchen like in my own
apartment. It was a very nice place to stay, and quite different from any other
hostel we had.
To say the city was
busy is an understatement. I would equate Semana Santa to a New Year’s Eve in
New York City size-event if it was relocated to a small Spanish city with
narrow one-way roads. The mark of Semana Santa is the processions of the hermandades, best translated as ‘brotherhoods’ or ‘fraternities’
which is comprised of members associated with a particular church in the
region. Those who join a hermandad have the privilege once a year to take part in the
march around Sevilla from the exit to the entrance of the Catedral
de Santa María de la Sede during the
week.
Each procession is
done by a hermandad which centers around a float called a paso. Unlike the floats of parades in the United
States, the pasos are carried, not an
easy task since they can easily weigh several tons. The paso is carried by costaleros
which are members of the hermandad that are large, strong, and young. To have
the privilege to carry the paso is a high honor within the brotherhood and
amazingly so since the route can take many hours and the work is very tough.
The costaleros wear turban like head dressings to keep them cool and to keep
the sweat out of their eyes since their hands are too busy to wipe any sweat
from their brows.
The crowd for the
procession begins many hours before the procession itself. There is one or two
each day, commonly during the evening hours. The most magnificent is La Madrugá,
which begins late on Thursday night and runs until dawn of Holy Friday. We were
there for Sabado Santo (Holy Saturday) which
was said to be the quietest day of the whole week, though you would not know it
by looking! We arrived early and were able to get a spot right by the front of
the street.
The streets began to
fill up quickly and every twenty minutes or so, at the point where I thought
that no more people could be put in one place, there seemed to be more
arriving. We were the only English-speakers within earshot. Soon a hush fell
over the crowd and as we looked down the street to the gates of the cathedral the
night’s procession was beginning.
Before the paso,
there were many members of the brotherhood who walked in the procession. Called
nazarenos, they wear a tunic and a capirote
which is a tall pointed face mask to cover their identity and symbolize
repentance and grief. Americans will recognize them as the headdress that was
adopted by the Klu Klux Klan, thus it was surreal at first to see a parade of
hundreds of men of similar dress. Each of the nazarinos carried a cirio, a long candle around four feet
tall that was lit at the start of the procession. Some of the young onlookers
held out a ball of wax to catch the drippings of the cirios. Some of the
nazarinos walked barefoot the entire way, a tradition dating back to long ago. Depending
on the route taken, the hermandad could be walking for many hours.
Intermixed with the nazarinos were penitentes who carried large wooden
crosses to symbolize atonement for their sins, bands that played Spanish
Christian hymns as the procession went past, and a capella singers in small
groups of a dozen or so. Finally the paso would be seen exiting the cathedral.
Each was a huge float, several dozen feet long and just narrow enough to fit
through the streets of Sevilla. The floats were elaborately decorated with
images of the Virgin Mary or of Christ, adorned in gold, silver, and flowers,
and lit with as many candles as could possibly fit onto the paso. In front of
the paso was the capataz who directed
the float since those underneath were hidden by a velvet curtain and could not
see. As it wound its way though the narrow streets of Sevilla, often impeded by
crowds spilling into the street, the procession stopped suddenly. At that time
the capataz would tap a large silver knocker on the top of the float and it
would be stopped and slowly lowered to the ground. When the procession
continued the capataz would hit the knocker again and begin yelling to the costaleros
underneath. After several shouts the would then quickly hoist the float into
the air, jumping into the air in the process. The procession would then continue
on down the street.
Along side the floats marched other
costaleros dressed and ready to go. At a few points during the procession, the
float carriers would swap places in order to give themselves a rest. Those
underneath would emerge covered in sweat and ready to don a jacket against the
now chilly evening air. The costaleros walked alongside the float chatting with
onlookers that they knew with a cocky attitude that only comes with having
carried a several ton piece of wood and metal though narrow streets. As the sun
set the hundreds of candles on the floats and the cirios of the nazarinos
became spectacular against the darkened streets. After a particularly beautiful
float of the Virgin Mary passed by I caught a glimpse of several older ladies
across the street in tears marveling at the beauty. Each hermandad was
comprised of several hundred to several thousand people so a procession that
began in the early evening was winding down just before midnight. After taking
time to navigate the narrow streets amidst throngs of people walking home we
returned to Bormujos and to our hostel for the night.
Since France was unique in having the
Monday after Easter off, we were able to stay another day, catch a cheaper
flight, and watch the city slowly return to normal. Since the city was emptying
out we were able to get a reservation at a hostel in the city center and headed
there the next morning. The grandstands and barriers were in the midst of being
taken down and the candle wax that was over the parade route had dispersed throughout
the city and made the roads squeak when walked on.
We arrived at our second hostel,
located in a small brick paved lane off one of the larger roads and checked in.
The hostel was awesome, all the doors and windows were open and the breeze
worked its way in from the balconies that were on each floor. On the roof of
the building was a deck with a bar and small kitchen. There were lounge chairs
made out of wood pallets like you would find at a factory. From the top you
could look down at the loud and busy street below.
We went on a walking tour on which they
explained a lot of the history of the city and took us around some of the small
alleyways that we would not have found otherwise. It seemed that each street
had a story. Sevilla was an important place from the Roman empire through the
Middle Ages and up to the Napoleonic Wars. It was at one time a place where
Christians, Muslims, and Jews all lived together in peace. However, that of
course did not last long which makes up a lot of the cities rich and turbulent
history. Back at the hostel we found that our hosts were cooking a patella dinner, a dish made with fish
stick, rice, seafood, and spices so we decided to hang out and relax until
then.
In the morning after walking around
more of the city we did the same trip in reverse this time landing in Beauvais
and taking the bus back to Paris and the train back to Cergy. After testing my
recollection of Spanish I was glad to be back in a country where I could
communicate a bit easier!
-Adam
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