Spanish Playing Cards

Yes, this is actually a post about playing cards. Did you know there are different types of playing cards throughout the world? We didn't. (We admit, this shows our ignorance. But that's partly why we're here -- to learn new things.) Although Spaniards play games such as Poker and Bridge with a standard 52-card deck, Spain also has its own 40-card deck that is categorized as a Latin-suited deck. There are also related Italian and French decks. The Spanish deck, which was derived from earlier Moorish cards, was apparently exported by Spain in its conquests and today is used in Southern Italy, parts of France, Hispanic America, North Africa and the Philippines. In the description that follows, I will give the Spanish words for various things in parentheses.

Like a regular deck of cards, the Spanish 40-card deck (una baraja de naipes) is made up of 4 suits (los palos), but they are not the same suits.  Instead of diamonds, hearts, spades and clubs, la baraja gives us golds (los oros), cups (las copas), swords (las espadas) and clubs (los bastos). Each suit contains only 10 cards, rather than the 13 in a standard deck. The cards are the numbers one through seven along with three picture cards: the jack/knave (la sota), the horse/knight (el caballo) and the king (el rey). The #1 card is still called the ace, but spelled As. Note that some decks add cards for eight and nine in each suit and thus have 48 cards. Here is how they are portrayed:

The naming convention for cards is exactly the same as in English. For example, the number six card in golds is "el seis de oros," the jack of cups is "la sota de copas," and the king of swords is "el rey de espadas."

What games can you play with a Spanish baraja? The internet tells me that there is a complicated trick-taking game called Ombre (from the Spanish word for man (hombre)) that swept Europe in the 17th Century, but we did not tackle this game. We learned a game called Chinchon, which is basically a 2-4 player version of gin rummy using 7 cards per hand. When someone goes out, they receive -10 points while everyone else receives the points in their hand (with each picture card worth 10). If you reach +100 points, you are eliminated and the game continues with the remaining players until only one player is left. You can also win by reaching -100 points (which seems less likely). In addition, there is also kind of a nuclear victory option called a Chinchon. A Chinchon is a run of seven cards (all in the same suit), and if you complete this difficult hand, you immediately win the game regardless of how many points anyone had before that deal.

So, if you come visit us in Spain, not only do you get to visit a beautiful city and eat great food, but we can play a rousing round of Chinchon!

Hasta pronto,

Jeff and Shana

Springtime in San Sebastian

Spring has sprung. The trees are blooming, and the sun has been out most days. Last year we missed out on Spring entirely with the constant rain that lasted into June. So, we are trying to get outside as much as we can to enjoy the pretty days.

This weekend we enjoyed two traditional San Sebastian pastimes. On Friday night we went to a sidreria in nearby Astigarraga. The cider season lasts from January through April, although some of the sidrerias are open all year long. Last year we visited the local cider museum and a sidreria in January and enjoyed the experience so much we knew we would have to do it again. The standard sidreria menu includes all the cider you can drink (served directly from the barrels), tortilla de bacalao (omelet with cod), bacalao with peppers, txuleta (grilled beef rib chop), and Idiazabal cheese with quince paste and walnuts for dessert. It is a lot of food! We were still full when we woke up Saturday morning!

What made this visit even better is that we went with three Basques, Andoni, Arantza, and Itziar, plus Connie, a friend from school. Arantza lives in Astigarraga and has visited every sidreria in the area. During the season, most of her friends dine at a sidreria once a week! Our Basque friends are studying English at the local official language school and we spent the evening helping them with their English and practicing our Spanish. It was fun to compare notes about the things that frustrate us most about each  language. After so much time in school, we have a new appreciation for how difficult the process of learning a language can be. We really enjoyed the evening, both because of the great company and food, but also because we can finally see how much Spanish we’ve learned and how we are much more comfortable speaking now – finally!! What a difference a year makes. Here’s our group:

Today we took our favorite walk along the San Sebastian coastline and La Concha and Ondarreta beaches. Most of the city seemed to have the same idea – it’s not just our favorite walk. We timed it just right for low tide and enjoyed walking along the sand with all the dogs that can be there during the fall, winter, and spring months. With the water at its lowest point we walked out on the rocky tide pool area and snapped some photos of the city and the Peine del Viento from an area that is usually submerged. We thought you’d enjoy the vistas from there as much as we did:

We are in the home stretch now. Only 1 more week of Spanish school to go!

Hasta luego,

Shana & Jeff 

Pasapalabra

Pasapalabra is a Spanish game show (the title means "pass (the) word" and functions on the show as meaning "pass") to which Shana and I have become a bit addicted.

We first saw part of Pasapalabra while in a restaurant when we had only lived here for about 4 or 5 months. At that time, we had no chance of following what was going on because of our rudimentary Spanish. Now, with much-improved language skills, we can watch the whole show but the main prize-winning round (El Rosco) is still difficult because the presenter reads the questions incredibly fast.

The game is about words, which is really great for continuing to improve our vocabulary. Here is how the game works: first, there is a quick game between the loser from the previous show and a new contestant to see who will play against the winner from the previous show. Each contestant is asked questions whose answers are a single word starting with a particular letter. First person to miss two is done.

Because the loser from the previous show can win this initial game, the same two people can compete several days in a row, as we have already seen. Once the contestants are decided, each is teamed-up with two celebrities forming a team of three. (We have no idea who these B-list celebrities are though.) The two teams compete in a series of challenges whose goal is to accumulate time for their contestant during El Rosco. The challenges are: a series of questions (usually about people) with four possible responses shown on the screen (we tend to do well at this, especially when it is about famous Americans) or movies; a strange name-that-tune type game that feels like amateur hour with the teams often being given credit for a correct answer by being able to sing some of the lyrics; a word search game where a 5x5 letter box (a "sopa de letras") contains three words related to a theme (we have improved at this game); and, finally, a really tough memory game in which each team is shown nine words behind the numbers 1-9 for 2 seconds and then tries to identify the number behind which each given word is located within 90 seconds (every miss covers up all the words again).

All of this leads to El Rosco where the contestants generally have between 125 and 165 seconds to try to provide one-word answers to 25 questions using the letters of the Spanish alphabet (26 plus the en-yay, but not including K or W). Mostly the answers start with the letter indicated although for some (especially en-yay, Q and X) the answer simply contains the letter. The winner from the previous show starts and continues until he either misses a word or, more likely, says "pasapalabra", which then switches the turn to his opponent. The winner is the person who gets more correct, but to win the big money (now 184,000 Euros) you have to get all 25 right, which we have not seen happen yet. (A rosco, by the way, is a traditional round cake eaten at Christmas time. The 25 letters are displayed in a circle around the contestant's face during this round. Hence the name.)

We have been watching for about a week during which a guy named Jero has been easily dispatching his opponent each night and getting close to the big prize, usually getting 22 or 23 of the 25 he needs. He has been on for 20 or so days (winning around 20,000 Euros), which we thought was impressive and very Ken-Jennings-like) until we found on the internet that the record is 128 days. Amazingly, it doesn't appear that the owner of that record actually solved El Rosco and won the big prize.

In any event, we continue to enjoy the show, and consider it our Spanish "Jeopardy," although I am worried that I am going to start hearing "pasapalabra" in my dreams.

Hasta luego,

Jeff and Shana

Carnaval in Tolosa

Last Sunday (March 3) I headed to Tolosa to check out the Carnaval celebrations with Connie, a friend from school. Although San Sebastian has its own festivities, Tolosa is apparently the place to be in the Basque country. As is tradition, Tolosa celebrates from Thursday to Tuesday before Ash Wednesday.

Tolosa is a 30-minute commuter-train ride away from San Sebastian, and the train full of people confirmed we were going to the right place. The number of people in costume was amazing. Many families had coordinated costumes – a family of chickens, for example. The people weren’t the only ones dressed up, so were the buildings, including city hall:

Essentially Tolosa had transformed into a big street party. Instead of a parade with floats, the floats were stationary, and each group performed in front of their float. The themes for the floats were amusing and wide-ranging. Here’s an enthusiastic group of Vikings and a group of dancing cave-men:

Oddly there were two Grease themed groups, a bunch of Canadian lumberjacks, Jesus and the apostles at the Last Supper, and honestly, I’m not sure what these cardboard box creations were supposed to be, but their eyebrows moved, which was a nice touch:

As you can see, the streets got quite crowded with revelers. In addition to the float groups, there were marching bands and a stage for musical groups. Everyone was in high spirits. It seemed like the whole town was out and about, and I would estimate that 85% were in costume. Not me though, costumes have never been high on my priority list. Connie got in the spirit with a Basque beret.

I was disappointed to read that there would be a “sokamuttura” while we were in Tolosa. A sokamuttura is an old Basque tradition where a bull is placed in the street tied to a long rope to limit how far along it can go. People then touch the bull and run around it, typically in order to provoke it into chasing them. The bull also often has its horn tips covered. I ensured we avoided the area where the sokamuttura was scheduled to take place. For me, even if it is a centuries-old tradition, cruelty to animals is unacceptable in any form. We have lived in the Basque country for more than 18 months now and we’d never heard of this practice before. The Tolosa bullring has an artistic statute in front of it – the only portrayal of bull-fighting I need to see:

All in all, Carnaval was a fun event to witness and we enjoyed the spring-like good weather as well.

Hasta luego,

Shana 

Art & History in Palma

While in Palma we visited two impressive art exhibitions.  First, we continued getting to know Joan Miro, who now seems like a good friend. Late last year we read a very interesting article about Miro’s amazing work ethic and then re-visited the Miro Fundacion museum in Barcelona. Although Miro was born in Barcelona (1893), and spent a lot of his time in Catalunya, his ties to Mallorca were equally strong – his mother was a Mallorquina and so was his wife. In 1956 he moved to the island permanently and ultimately died there at age 90 (1983).

Miro had always dreamed of a large, private studio space where he could toil away uninterrupted and let his creative spirit soar. His dear friend and fellow Barcelona native, modernist architect Josep Lluis Sert, designed Miro’s dream space on the outskirts of Palma. (At the time, Sert was the dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. He also designed the Miro Fundacion building in Barcelona, and studios for Alexander Calder and Marc Chagall. Busy guy!)  

Visiting the Miro Fundacion in Mallorca is a unique opportunity. Not only does the museum host numerous works by the artist, indoors and out, you can also visit Miro’s work-spaces, which essentially have been left exactly as they were the day he died. He was working right up to the very end. Here is the outside and inside of his main painting studio:

The art and many objects in the studio are copies – the originals are part of the exhibition. But the brushes and other tools are the ones Miro used. In addition, Miro had another work-space for sculpting and engraving on the property. The security guard in that studio was happy to share in detail exactly what Miro was doing his last day in this studio before he retired to bed feeling ill and later died.

It is impressive to see an artist’s personal work-space and try to understand how that space motivated him to create and innovate. The views likely provided inspiration as well:

We also visited the Caixa Forum Palma, which was hosting an exhibit, organized with the British Museum, called “Competition in Ancient Greece.” It included numerous sculptures, urns, and other antique objects portraying the Greek’s obsession with sport, theater, music and war (not necessarily in that order). It was a very compelling and well-designed exhibition, and the contrast between Miro’s abstract art and urns dating back to 500 BC could not have been greater. The well-preserved pieces had tremendous explanations. Interpreting a Grecian urn’s design to understand what is depicted is not an easy task, and a singular urn has less meaning than a varied assortment. Observing a large grouping of these items gave them more significance and context.

Admittedly our “on-vacation-brains” did not think about the famous poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn” while we walked through the exhibit. But a quick review of the poem now demonstrated what a great job the curators did in transmitting the major themes of Greek life, including the conflict between the gods and mortals, and the themes of glory and conquest.

Some final pictures of art – a Miro sculpture contrasted with modern pop art:

Hasta luego,

Shana & Jeff