Seville Service: Spreading Halloween Cheer Throughout Andalucia

First things first...HALLOWEEEEEEENNNN!!

Thursday night we boarded a night train because where we were going we didn’t need roads. I carried with me a bocadillo from Lola, a bottle of wine, and the good news that the U.S. had finally made it out of the recession. The whole night train thing was new to me and I was excited to lie down in a bed, let the rails rock me to sleep, and wake up miles away. However, the prospect of a growing economy was too good to ignore, so we spent most of the ride in the dining car toasting the night away. Whether it was true or not did not matter in the slightest. I woke up a little after six to the sound of the train lady banging on the door of our compartment with my headphones in and my disconnected iPod strung out on the middle of the floor with the battery drained, playing “Baby, Baby” by Amy Grant.

So there we were in Granada, and it wasn’t even light out yet. We decided to find a place where we could drop our bags, and then we went to a café to wait until we could go into the Alhambra. For those of you who don’t know, The Alhambra is a giant old palace from when the Moors were hanging out in Spain, the last place to be re-conquered by the Christians in 1492, and Spain’s most popular tourist attraction. Armed with the knowledge I’d acquired from the tourist book in Lola’s bathroom, I began to give everyone a tour. Much like the troops under King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, who laid siege to the city for seven months, we walked like warriors up the hill to the giant complex. It is really just a huge fortress that I was very excited to see and it did not disappoint. We saw great examples of some beautiful Moorish architecture, strolled through the gardens, enjoyed some magnificent views of the city, glimpsed where Washington Irving wrote Tales of the Alhambra, and stood in the same room where Columbus secured royal support for the voyage that discovered America. You know I was pumped. Go on a little tour yourself through these amateur photographs that feature one semi-pro model. Photo credits: Sharon Casola.

After the Alhambra we enjoyed a nice long Spanish lunch, toured the cathedral, walked around the old Moorish neighborhoods, and did some bartering for some Technicolor dream coats. In the end I decided that the tie-dye hoodie that I made myself was of much better quality, so I walked away empty-handed. After all that we were still feeling pretty Moor-y, so we decided to sit down for some hookah until it was time to take the train to Seville. We lost track of time while we were wondering what kind of person teaches their toddler how to walk inside of a hookah lounge and ended up running to the train station, making it just in time.

Since I was the resident expert on all things Andalucian (Lola is a great cook, but let’s just say the food gives me plenty of time to read), I had a list of semi-secret places we could go catch some authentic, spontaneous flamenco. After we checked in to our hostel, grabbed some food, and I called my mom for her birthday, we decided to head to the closer of the two places I picked out. It was an old carbon warehouse with a really cool vibe. We got there just as they were closing up so I wish we had gotten there earlier, but it was still nice just to hang out there and have a beer.

The next morning (Halloweeeeeen!) we woke up and went straight to the largest cathedral in Europe. It used to be an old mosque but when the Christians took over they said “nah uh” and turned it into a massive cathedral, but they kept the orange tree garden, so that was kinda cool. We climbed up the massive tower, la Giralda, which is supposed to be the girlfriend of the tower here in Valencia, el Miguelete, but she was a lot bigger.

After that we went to a great tapas place where we sampled all kinds of wild things, like bull tail and pigs cheek. Both were very good, but I preferred the pig cheek since it was less work. Here’s me making sure I get all the meat off that succulent bull tail:

From there we headed to the Alcazar, which is just another Moorish palace, but this time we got in free because we were students. Very similar to the Alhambra, just not on a giant hill, the Alcazar was very beautiful. We were able to see some of it, but unfortunately not that much. You see, the Alcazar has a top notch hedge maze and we got a little side-tracked playing tag and pretending we were in Harry Potter and the Goble of Fire, which we did until it got dark, the place closed, and the cops came into the hedge maze and told us we had to leave. Whatever, we had a great time.

Next we did a little more touring of the city, but we knew we had to get back to a square near the cathedral because our waitress had tipped us off that there would be like, a hundred zombies doing the “Thriller” dance there. This was obviously something we were into, so we went there to wait and felt encouraged when we saw TV cameras there. Buuuut, it ended up just being about six zombies, two of which were too drunk to dance. For those of you who are not engineer, six is a lot less than one hundred. And I don’t know about the Sevillians (get it?), or the Seville engineers (get it?), but in the good ol’ U.S. of A. six drunk zombies dancing to Michael Jackson isn’t newsworthy, it’s a J.M.U. pregame.

Now that the witching hour had officially arrived, we decided it was time to start putting together some costumes. Some ideas were tossed around and I thought I had brought enough dumb clothes that I could put together a sufficient costume, but it was still lacking that true Halloween spirit, you know, the kind that really gets your fist pumping. It was then that we turned to one of my favorite places in Spain: the Chino shop. Note: Spaniards refer to all Asian immigrants as Chinos, and Chino shops are the wonderful places that these immigrants have opened up where they sell everything under the sun at bargain bin prices. I consider them the Goodwills of Spain, except the stuff doesn’t have as much history. This particular Chino shop happened to have exactly what I needed: a full Santa Claus costume (ages 10-12) for five euro. It was a true Halloween miracle.

I giddily made it back to our hostel where obviously I popped the sleeves off my Santa-vest, threw on my Santa-capris, tightened my Santa-belt, donned my Santa-cap, and as a finishing touch, snapped on my Santa-beard. I was a very jolly boy. We then went up to the roof terrace of our hostel where we hooked up with some other costumed travelers and finagled our way onto a pub-crawl for only one euro. The miracles just wouldn’t stop. I half expected John Arms O’Neils to pop out dressed as the Easter Bunny. Or a T-Rex. I feel like this has gotten long, so I’ll just sum up the pub-crawl with this picture and tell you that my favorite part was probably walking between bars telling the bewildered Spanish people on the street that there were only 55 more days ‘til Christmas. Well, I should also tell you that the Sevillians didn’t get my Sevillians joke.

In conclusion, I’m glad I was able to add a little bit of Christmas flavor to the spooky night that is Halloween. I just hope the opposite doesn’t happen and I get a visit from the South Bend Shovel Slayer. I might have to file a Seville suit.

Besitos,

Jim