Carnival

Oh dear, I seem to be getting a little behind on my storytelling here. Well let me see . . . nearly two weeks ago it was Carnival in Madrid . . .In the week leading up to carnival, the talk around the computer lab was of masks, costumes, bars, buses, trains, and flights. It seem the more serious college students wanting to ensure an experience of excess to the excess, flew the coop for the weekend to the southern city of Cadiz. There the Carnival festivities allegedly are almost as spectacular as those held in Brazil. Apparently, if you know your Carnivals, Brazil is best of the best.

Back in Madrid the Carnival, or what I saw of it, was lovely. Friday night was quite cold but hardly felt it in the crowded streets of Sol, the heart of Madrid. Not sure of the exact location of commencement ceremonies, Ana and I wandered in search of them, following a performer here, a costumed person there and ultimately following the sounds of drums to a metal elephant on wheels as they made their way to the Plaza where the opening ceremony took place.


A group of drummers and dancers, dressed all in blue and white representing Paraguay were our true pied pipers of the evening. Without them we might never have found the elephant or indeed the ceremony.

The opening ceremony was a lot of smoke and fire, figuratively and literally. The mayor of Madrid was there to give the key to the city to Don Carnal, a master of ceremonies of sorts for the Carnival. It was goofy and excoriated, with him climbing up to a balcony to the mayor, "falling" on the ladder and making jokes the whole way up and down. Once the key was procured, Don Carnal lead a small procession of performers, the elephant and Paraguayan band included to the Plaza Mayor. Again relatively small, but I liked the way it felt intimate and personal. The plaza was full of people, but people were clustered around individual groups of performers. We were able to go up to the Italian fire throwers/breathers afterwards and ask for a picture with them, a man dressed as a pirate and on stilts went into the crowd and asked children for help "pulling" the elephant and picked children up. There were a lot of families around, and tourists to be sure, but it felt like more locals than tourists.

That was just the opening ceremonies, we returned to the center of Madrid the following evening for the parade. It was pouring rain, but a lot of people came out, and it ended up being very worth it. The floats were fun and impressive. In particular the one making fun of Bush, a person playing him stood on a float of a theater--a puppet on strings. Then came the bugs. A group that featured hornets on stilts and beetles on shorter springy stilts, they hoped around and did flips. The bug group also had a large spider balloon that they pulled a person's height above the ground and every so often pushed the legs into the crowd. Soon followed a white ship that floated it's own moon eerily above it. The effect was very pretty, even though I wasn't sure exactly why they were wearing tall white fur hats.

All in all a good time. If carnival is more than those two nights I never saw it. We had heard some crazy things went on in the night life, but as it was so cold and so wet we did not stay out late that night. Following the parade we sought the warmth of a restaurant where we sat for hours drinking coffee and watching costumed people make their way in the street through the rain. I love this picture of the people at the parade, like I am living a movie. This is the life.

Snow

Despite what your ideas of Spain might be, and what mine were, it snowed a whole 4 inches here (a few weeks ago, my posts are still on backorder). Yes admits the palm trees and white washed walls there was snow in Majadahonda. Granted we're a little outside of the city, slightly to the north and in view of the snow-capped mountain range where Madridites go skiing, but still 4 inches of snow, even in Majadahonda, is apparently unheard of. I felt like a little kid when I woke up late looked up at my skylights only to see they were covered with snow. In an instant, my reflexive inner delight took over, it was like waking up to snow at home, thoughts raced fast to the hope of school being canceled, the possibilities of walking and building out in fresh snow. I raced to my skylight and pushed it open, so as to revel at the sight of outside. I heard shouts and looked down to see two boys having a snow fight outside my apartment building.

Instinctively I dressed quickly, donning boots hat and gloves and grabbing my camera. This was an event not to be missed, the reactions of these Spanish suburbites to this bombardment of snow. Here street cleaning is a 24 hour job, it seems like there is no time of day when you can step outside and not see a person in a neon green and yellow jumpsuit cleaning up every butt and piece of gum that has fallen to the sidewalk. It was no surprise then that the people who normally pick up wrappers and leaves were hard at work on a Sunday morning trying to manage this new type of litter. I had laughed to myself earlier in the year when a dusting of snow called for a dumping of salt, so much that the salt on the sidewalk was a much bigger nuisance for much longer than the snow ever would have been. This morning there was not salt in sight, but there were shop owners trying to deal with the snow in any way they could, including sweeping.

There were also, a plethora of children outside. This, as I have said, is a normal Sunday occurrence. Sunday brings out the people, even in colder temperatures; you’re likely to see a lot of people outside on a Sunday. Here too it was the case, but I soon became confused, because there were children in costumes, which is not an average Sunday occurrence. So as I walked further and further down the wide sidewalk street that is the center of the suburb, I couldn’t help noticing more and more children in costumes. I figured it was children dressed up for carnival, I had heard there was activities for the children in Madrid on Sunday, because as it happens this snow event happened the day after the carnival that I just wrote about.

I assumed, wrongly, that the children were on their way to Madrid. Apparently I had underestimated Majadahonda. At the end of the sidewalk street people were gathered with their children, waiting for something, and not far off I heard music playing. My innocent query to see the children in the snow had been answered with a mini parade and the joint joy of seeing the carnival in Majadahonda in the snow. Everyone was in rare mood, for one reason or the other. Children threw snow at their parents, and the parents just smiled and threw snow back (where as parents in climates that receive snow more regularly are less tolerant to such attacks) children all along the street were making snow men, this one using palm leaves for hair. A rare sight indeed.

For icing on the cake, the music drew closer and a parade of jester like carnival characters poured forth onto the street. They became the new target for the snowballs, but like the parents they seemed to be delighted by it rather than upset. It became part of the act. The small parade delighted the children of Majadahonda who had come out in their boots and costumes. And the morning spent with the people and in the snow delighted me. Just being out for an hour in the wet snow my feet got wet and cold. It felt good to return to my warm room and hang up my things wet from the snow. These simple actions and feelings came welcome and familiar. They brought me back across the Atlantic, for a fleeting second or two over the course of this morning; I might have easily been there as here.