Celebrating the Holidays in San Sebastian

Last year we spent nearly all of December in California and Mexico, so we missed out on most of the holiday festivities here in San Sebastian, and there are many. This year we have done our best to take it all in. Here’s a quick recap of the excitement.

On December 1, the city turned on all the holiday lights and inaugurated the Christmas market. We joined what seemed like the whole town to see the lights come on:

The Christmas market is set up along the river and includes a diverse group of merchants selling artisanal wares. This year the city installed a giant Bavarian style Ferris wheel along the La Concha beach walk, which has been very popular, especially thanks to the good weather we’ve had so far this winter. We rode it on the 24th and the views were spectacular:

Starting on December 21 with the fair of Santo Tomas, San Sebastian celebrates a month of festivities that continues with Christmas (Nochebuena), New Year’s (Nochevieja), Tres Reyes (Jan. 6), and ends with La Tamborrada (San Sebastian Day, the drumming festival, which you can read all about here: http://vinoconvino.blogspot.com/2018/01/la-tamborrada-san-sebastians-biggest_27.html).

Santo Tomas was a kick. San Sebastian transforms into a huge country market to commemorate the day farmers came to pay their rents to the city-dwelling property owners, sell their wares, and buy products they could only get in the city. Most everyone dresses up in traditional Basque costumes and there are lots of stands selling txistorra (pork sausage) sandwiches and wraps, cider, honey, cheese, and other local products. It is yet another excuse to eat and drink in excess – like anyone needs such an excuse here in the gastronomic capital of the world. There is even a 340-kilo pig brought in and displayed in the main square. The pig used to be auctioned off to a lucky winner:

Here are a few choice photos of the events, including some of our friends in their traditional dress, txistorra in hand:

The city has been busy with lots of shopping activity, music, and decorations. On Christmas we went for a nice long walk on the beaches – it was a beautiful day.

We are spending NYE in Barcelona and will have more to report soon. Sending our very best for a happy, healthy, and joyous 2019.

Feliz ano nuevo,

Shana & Jeff

Spanish School Update

We have completed another 9 weeks of Spanish school. After four months off to travel and relax, we returned to the classroom on October 22. We were a bit nervous to see how much, if any, of our skills we had lost during our long break. We were surprised and relieved to find that we really hadn’t lost too much, and it didn’t take much time to readjust to scholastic life again. We jumped back into the C1 level, which is the highest level in the school. This does not mean that we are anywhere close to fluent though. We still have a long way to go to achieve fluency.

It is hard to explain the process of learning a language and how one measures progress, especially for middle-aged adults who are diligent students but not over-zealous about their studies. As we’ve discussed before, youth and speaking more than one language are two huge assets we lack. In addition, we are not motivated by a specific target, such as a test to enter university or obtain a job. Because we are more “casual” students, and are not pressured by a deadline, our progress is slow but steady.

One of our greatest accomplishments is the ability to read the local daily newspaper, the Diario Vasco, without having to lookup many words. We are often surprised to finish reading an article and realize that we understood the whole thing and didn’t rely on the dictionary once. While we still struggle with articles about politics and economics, we can page through the paper and easily get the gist of most headlines, sub-headlines, and stories. This really makes us proud of our progress. (The DV is probably written at a higher level than USA Today, but it’s not The New York Times or anything.)

In addition, in a movie or TV program that is shown in Spanish, if there are Spanish subtitles, we can follow along and understand almost everything. Whether it’s a movie we’ve seen before, such as the Star Wars movies that were broadcast this month, or episodes of The Big Bang Theory, or Netflix programs that include Spanish speakers, we are pleasantly surprised at how well we do. We do not think we can see an entire movie in Spanish without any subtitles at this point, but we might be willing to try a foreign language film that is shown with Spanish subtitles soon.

And, we finally can conjugate verbs smoothly. Although we may need to pause to think a moment for some of the trickier, irregular verbs (of which there are many), those pauses have gotten minimal.

We are currently a class of 6 students. Of course, we are the oldest. The other 4 students include a 39 year-old Chinese woman who is married to a Basque man, a 26 year-old Russian woman, a 20 year-old from Iceland, and a 17 year-old French girl. Another very international class. Almost everyone speaks better than we do but we hold our own.

We have now completed a total of 44 weeks of school and currently plan to do another 11 (through the end of March with a 1-week break), possibly adding 2 more weeks at the end. We still won’t be fluent after a year of classes, but perhaps we’ll be up to the movie challenge.

Hasta luego,

Shana & Jeff

La Loteria de Navidad (The Christmas Lottery)

The Christmas Lottery in Spain is a really big deal. First organized in 1812 (!) it has happened every year since, including during the Spanish Civil War. It is also considered the largest lottery in the world, with a total payout of about $2.8 billion (the total payout represents 70% of ticket sales, meaning that total sales are about $4 billion). Technically, a ticket for the lottery costs 200 euros, but they are generally sold in "decimos" (one-tenth) for, not surprisingly, 20 euros. Many groups and organizations further divide tickets allowing people to participate for as little as 1-2 euros. It is estimated that 75% of the Spanish population takes part in the lottery.

Many groups of friends or business associates form groups to buy tickets, and often people have friends buy tickets in other parts of the country because ticket numbers are sold geographically (this is, of course, pointless from an odds perspective, but people are superstitious). One small town in Catalunya is named Sort, which in the local Catalan dialect it is the word for luck. This small town sells 19% of all lottery tickets in the country -- mostly through the internet.

The lottery drawing is held each year on December 22. While we were aware of the lottery last year, we left Spain on December 2 and did not return until after the lottery was over, so we did not learn a lot about it, nor did we buy any tickets. This year our teacher talked a lot about the drawing and was the perfect example of how excited Spaniards get about the lottery.

We figured we'd try our luck and we bought a single ticket:

As you can see, the ticket contains a five-digit number. The drawing, which is televised on multiple stations, takes place in Madrid using two giant spherical cages. One contains the numbers from 00000-99999, the other containing the prizes. There are 1794 smaller prizes (100 euros), 8 fifth-place prizes (6000 euros), 2 fourth-place prizes (20,000 euros), 1 third-place prize  (50,000 euros), 1 second-place prize (125,000 euros) and "El Gordo," which literally means "the fat one". This grand prize is 400,000 euros. 

Two children receive each ball as they are ejected into the chute and literally sing the winning number and the prize won. With over 1800 prizes to award, this process takes hours. When one of the 13 large prizes is won, the process is briefly halted and the winning number is specially noted. It is considered an honor to sing when El Gordo is drawn and those children are congratulated. The children are from a school in Madrid and wear their school uniforms during the drawing. We watched a bit this morning, and now the tune to which the numbers are sung is stuck in our heads.

The mathematically inclined among you will note that there are only 100,000 numbers in this lottery. This is correct, which is why the prize amounts seem so low. In fact, multiple tickets with the same number are sold and all collect on whatever prize that ticket wins. In addition, there are other prizes related to having some of the same numbers as the big prizes. In particular, tickets that end in the same number as the ticket that wins El Gordo win 20 euros (in other words 10% of all tickets get their money back). The result is that the money won is widely distributed throughout the country.

So, how did we do in our first Christmas lottery? We actually won one of the small 100 euro prizes!! Next year, maybe El Gordo.

Hasta pronto,

Jeff and Shana

Jewish Prague

As mentioned in our last post, we learned a lot about the history of Prague during our visit. We were familiar with certain “big” events from our studies and general knowledge of “current events,” including the defenestration of Prague in 1618, the Soviet suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968, and the Velvet Revolution in 1993. But it was tremendously interesting to dig into the details at the various sites we visited. One element we focused on was the Jewish history of Prague. One of the reasons we went to Prague when we did was the opportunity to see our friends Jeff and Lauren (one of my oldest friends) and join them for one day in their tour of Eastern Europe and Israel.  We spent the day with their group, giving us the benefit of both a local Czech Jewish guide and an Israeli guide.

Our day started at the Prague castle, where we saw the actual window from which the famous defenestration took place. (Bob W., my and Lauren's former AP European History teacher would have been proud.)  We also visited the St. Vitus Cathedral, which sits in the center of the castle complex. The stained glass was stunning:

After visiting the Cathedral and the castle complex, we wound our way down into town and saw the most unique statue:

Yes, that is two men urinating in a pool shaped like the Czech Republic outside of the Franz Kafka museum in the Mala Strana neighborhood. Kafka was a Bohemian Jew (born in Prague when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and is now recognized as one of Prague's most famous residents. But, during his lifetime Kafka published little, and actually worked as a lawyer for an insurance company (of all things) before dying of tuberculosis at age 40 in 1924.

The artist of the above statue, David Černý, also created the Franz Kafka metamorphosizing head statue, which has become a huge Prague tourist attraction:

After lunch we started our tour of the old Jewish Quarter. You can visit 7 well-preserved, beautiful, old synagogue buildings within central Prague. It is wonderful to see so many beautiful synagogues, but the reason they still exist is disturbing. The Nazis found Prague to be a lovely city and wanted to maintain its charm and history, and this included its synagogues. Apparently, Hitler wanted many of these buildings and their contents to become a museum to an extinct race – the Jewish community he intended to eradicate. 

There were more than 40,000 Jews in Czechoslovakia when WWII started. Most of them fell victim to the Nazi Final Solution. Now less than 4,500 Jews remain in the Czech Republic. Sadly, that means that these synagogues no longer function as places of worship. Rather they are museums and memorials of a nearly-vanished community. While Hitler did not succeed, it almost seems like he did. Here are some photos of the ceiling of the Spanish synagogue, the Jewish ceremonial hall, and the Jerusalem synagogue (inside and out):

However, there is at least one old Synagogue in Prague that continues to operate. The Old-New Synagogue, which was completed in 1270, is Europe's oldest active synagogue. The nearby Old Jewish Cemetery contains graves dating from the mid-15th century through the late 18th century and contains the graves of many famous Jewish residents of Prague. This amazing site shows that the Jewish presence in Prague is both longstanding and important.

The Jerusalem synagogue included an exhibit regarding Jewish life in Czechoslovakia after WWII. Unfortunately, things did not improve for the Jews who survived and returned after the war. Instead, persecution and prejudice continued to pervade daily life under Communist rule, which prevented the Jewish community from flourishing and expanding. Our Jewish guide commented, “there’s no antisemitism in the Czech Republic,” based on the scarcity of Jews. But does the absence of an abundant Jewish population really mean there is no antisemitism? Based on the news in Europe, we don’t think so.

It was wonderful to spend time with Jeff and Lauren and their group. Going all the way to Prague to see dear friends and learn so much was worth it.

We’ve finally concluded telling you about our “summer” travels and visits. We returned to San Sebastian in mid-October and look forward to catching you up on our lives here in our next posts.

Hasta luego,

Shana & Jeff

Prague

Drinking wine was not the only thing we did in Prague. We also did quite a bit of sight-seeing during our time there. Prague is a beautiful old city that almost entirely escaped bombing during WWII -- a single attack by American bombers that was supposed hit Dresden, Germany (only 70 miles away), killed over 700 and destroyed over 100 buildings. But compared to other cities in Eastern Europe, the history of Prague is easily seen in its old, well-preserved buildings, including the Prague Castle:

We climbed to the highest point in Prague and then up the Petrin Lookout Tower, which resembles the Eiffel Tower, only much smaller:

From there, the views were fantastic:

We also learned a lot about the history of Czechslovakia and the Czech Republic. After the fall of Communism, on January 1, 1993, Czechslovakia peacefully split into two countries: the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The non-violent split is also known as the Velvet Revolution. The gardens at the Wallenstein Palace, now the site of the Czech Senate, are beautiful with much greenery, fountains and a surprising number of statues that were copies because the originals were taken by Sweden at the end of the 30 Years War (1648) and apparently never returned.

We also, of course, ate really well. We definitely took advantage of being in a bigger city, eating decent Asian and Mexican food. We also found a really good deli -- all the meat imported from Argentina -- and I already regret not going back for a second pastrami sandwich with good mustard and, of course, sauerkraut. We also tried some local dishes although we drew the line at pigs' knees, which is apparently a local delicacy.

More about Prague still to come...

Hasta luego,

Jeff and Shana

Czech WIne

We were a bit surprised to learn that the Czech Republic makes well-regarded wines. Although, obviously better-known for its beer, wine grapes have been grown in the area since the Romans did so in the 2nd century C.E. Although the communists essentially destroyed the industry after taking control post-WWII, the industry has come back strong in the almost 30 years since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Most of the grapes are grown in Southern Moravia in the very south of the country, which is not near Prague. But, of course, where there is wine, there is wine tourism. The first thing we found when planning our trip was a small evening wine cruise along the Vltava River, which flows through the center of Prague. Taking this hour-long cruise on our first night allowed us to sample some Czech wine and see the city from the river at night. It was beautiful.

Here is the Prague Castle as seen from the river:

This shot is from a small area of canals that is known as the Venice of Prague:

We also got a bit of the history of the city including, of course, the Charles Bridge, whose construction began in 1537:

As you can see, the views were amazing and we were able to maneuver through and under some tight spots in the little boat:

Oh, and the wine was really good. We tried a number of wines that were made with Czech-specific grapes we had never heard of, but also tried a very good pinot noir. After this introduction, we made sure to try more wine at a number of the wine bars around the city, and continued to be favorably impressed. Just one of the many great things we experienced in Prague. More about our adventures there soon.

Hasta Pronto,

Jeff and Shana