Three McDaniel-ites in a Faraway Land

Since one of my classes is on nationalism, specifically, Catalan nationalism, our program's activities on Friday were very fitting.  We climbed up the side of a mountain to get to this tiny little restaurant to eat calçots.  Calçots are a type of onion that only grow in Catalonia. They grill them over charcoal, dip them in romesco sauce, and eat them!  The hike up the mountain was a little rough, we were told it was only a mile, but it was a very steep and hot mile!  The temperature was around 70 degrees and none of us were well prepared. We were all wearing jeans and because it has still been a little chilly in the mornings, most of us had jackets as well.  It was well worth it though, even if it was a struggle!

This is me eating one of the calçots. I'm not a huge onion fan, but they really were great!

These are the charred remains that we had to peel off before actually getting to the onion.  It made for an extremely messy part of the lunch!

At the end of dinner we were able to experience a traditional, Catalan way of drinking. This apparatus is what they pass around the dinner table, everyone drinks from it.  Typically they drink wine out of it, but as we aren't allowed to have alcohol when we're with our program, we only had water.

This is the outside of the restaurant. I'm so glad we were able to go with our program, because there's no way I would have been able to find this tiny place without them!

After we ate the calçots, we had a huge lunch. I'm still not used to how much the Spanish eat for lunch, or how long they take to do so! We had salad, bread, tortilla española (similar to an omelet with potatoes in it), peppers, fried potatoes, lamb, sausage, beans, mousse cake, AND coffee!  We were easily there for three hours.  The reason I say this experience was very fitting for my Catalan nationalism class is because they had a sign on the restaurant that said something along the lines of, "My food is Catalan, my language is Catalan, independence is what we strive for."  Typically people from the United States have heard of the Basque country and how it wants to be an independent nation, what I didn't really know before coming here is that there are two other provinces in Spain that feel the same way, just not as strongly.  Galicia (located right above Portugal) and Catalonia each have their own languages and cultures and would like to be separated from the rest of Spain.

This weekend was very exciting for me as well because my friends from school, Luke and Rebekah, came to visit!  They're studying abroad in Budapest this semester and before their program starts they decided to travel across Europe starting in Barcelona, then heading to Nice and Monaco before finally ending up in Budapest.  On Sunday we were able to go to a really nice park in northern Barcelona that had a really cool labyrinth in it!  It's one of the oldest parks in Barcelona and it was absolutely beautiful.

Outside of the labyrinth there was a little China garden we went in first. It was a gorgeous day out and I thought the reflection in the pool looked really pretty.

This is the labyrinth.  We were able to make our way through it fairly quickly, thank goodness!

There were a couple of other trails as well. On one of them we ran across this really pretty little waterfall!

On our way back to the metro stop we came across what was probably the weirdest park I have ever seen.  It had every single punctuation mark there is on the ground on this hill.  This is a picture of me sitting on an exclamation point being exclamatory!

 That night we were able to go to my first ever professional soccer/futbol game!  It was FC Barcelona (Barça) vs. Malaga (a city in the south of Spain).  Even though we were in almost the highest row, it was still an amazing cultural experience.  I've never been to an American football game, but I have been to a couple of Brewers games.  When I go to a baseball game, the game is the last thing I pay attention to.  There's so much else going on! It's the exact opposite at European soccer games.  They don't serve any alcohol at the stadium and the focus is completely on the game.  Luckily soccer is fairly easy to follow and it was easy to get into it with all of the cheering and singing going on around us.

This is Camp Nou, home of FC Barcelona. It seats 99,354 people. In comparison, Lambeau Field (home of the Packers) can hold only 73,128.

After the second goal we scored. They get so excited!

The seats on the other side of the stadium spelled out FC Barcelona!

Rebekah, Luke, and me after we won, 4-1. :)

This was a perfect weekend for them to come as I didn't have any homework.  We were able to do so many fun things in such a short amount of time.  It was great to see some familiar faces in such a faraway country!