Spring Break Traveling: Sevilla

Previously on this blog, Mark Skovorodko and his sister Taisa were leaving Madrid and heading towards the southwest of Spain at a death-defying velocity of 310 kilometers per hour. We join them now in the very heart of Andalucia, treading over the cobbled, crooked streets of Sevilla which hide beneath the shade cast generously by the Giralda and her neighboring buildings. Little did our protagonists know, a convicted murderer was playing his own hiding game, lurking beneath the...wait a second. Wrong story.



What I meant to say is that Semana Santa (Holy Week) festivities were in full swing when we got into Sevilla. In the picture on the upper right you can see the balconies bordering Plaza de San Francisco decked out with crimson balcony-cover-skirt things (do those have a name?), and on the lower right are the chairs that are set out for people to watch the pasos (only if you pay for a seat though). For those that are unfamiliar with Sevilla's Semana Santa, I'll explain the pasos later in this post. And there's the Giralda, with the top of the tower finally restored. No more unsightly scaffolding (as you can see in the last picture of my first post from Sevilla).

The pictures you're looking at now are actually from our first full day in Sevilla. Taisa and I got in from the Madrid the evening before (Friday), and after lugging our luggage (ooh!) over to Katie's place (because of Semana Santa, all of the reasonably priced hostels in Sevilla were booked for Friday night, so Katie, the student ministries coordinator of our program, was so gracious as to let Ty sleep over at her apartment), the three of us walked to the Alameda to the best tapas place in ALL OF SEVILLA. Well, maybe not, but probably. The restaurant, called Duo Tapas, puts a modern-fusion-esque spin on tapas...I can't describe it very well, so there are a couple pictures a little later in this post of my favorite dishes.



Now back to Saturday. It was nice having Ty come to Sevilla because it gave me a great excuse to do a lot of touristy things in Sevilla, some of which I hadn't done yet (liking going on top of the Setas, or to the Carbonería - read on to see pictures of those!). But before those things, I figured that showing Ty the Guadalquivir (Sevilla's river) and the Torre del Oro was pretty essential, so that's what we started out with.



Afterward, we headed towards the centro. The guitarist in the bottom center is always playing bluesy slide guitar type music on one of the main streets in Sevilla's centro; he's really good!



Here's the Giralda again.



Orange tree leaves.



We spent some time strolling through the judería, the neighborhood where the Jewish community historically lived. They call this neighborhood Santa Cruz, and in addition to the private residences, its maze of white-washed, flower-covered, cobbled narrow streets is filled to the brim with little shops, restaurants, and bars.



More typical sights you would see in Santa Cruz.



"What else floats?" "...churches!"



This is a secret little passage we found between Calle Tetuán and Calle Sierpes (if I remember correctly).



And here is a typical Semana Santa paso! Essentially, the pasos are ornately-decorated parade-float-type things made to carry religious relics. Every Holy Week in Sevilla, a number of churches (who have been historically selected to be part of the processions) carry their paso (which they've been building and decorating the whole year) from their church to the cathedral in the middle of town, and then back again. This process often takes over ten hours. The pasos are really heavy, so the guys that carry them constantly switch out with others from their brotherhood. For those that belong to a brotherhood (you have to pay some sort of fee to be in them), carrying the paso is a very honorable thing (albeit very strenuous; while the men have padding on their necks, they're often left with open wounds after hours and hours of carrying the paso).



Now, usually the first reaction Amuricans get when seeing a procession is surprise, because the outfits of the nazarenos (those participating in the procession) are very reminiscent of those of a KKK demonstration. However, the Klan actually got their outfits from the Semana Santa festivities. The initial purpose of the outfit for both groups is the same actually: anonymity. However, the nazarenos want to be anonymous because they aren't supposed to receive any recognition for their walk of penance (many even go barefoot) in the processions, and KKK members wanted to be anonymous as an additional fear tactic (and probably to avoid legal repercussions as well, I'm guessing).

Many of the pasos are accompanied by music as well, which includes (and often is limited to) high-pitched, out-of-tune cornet-playing. Looking back on it now, the juxtaposition of military-like aspects of the process and the religious imagery is a pretty strange aspect of these processions. The whole idea behind the Holy Week in Sevilla is actually pretty strange, because there's so much tradition behind everything, but so little religious substance in it; such a minuscule percentage of the population actually practices any sort of faith, let alone Christianity.



Jesus leaning against the cross. It's interesting how much emphasis is put on the crucifixion in the Spanish culture in comparison with how de-emphasized the resurrection is. Yet the resurrection is the most important part of it all; without it, we'd have no hope at all! Anyhow, all this is definitely a good reason to keep the people of Spain and Sevilla in your prayers.

We actually hadn't planned on seeing this particular paso at all; Ty and I were moving her things from Katie's place to a hostel when we happened to come upon the procession. That was actually kind of a theme that weekend. At first we were worried we wouldn't see any pasos, but by the end of our time in Sevilla, our route had been redirected by unexpected pasos so many times that we thought we'd never be free of them!



Anyhow, after dropping Taisa's stuff off we headed to the building you see above! That's the Plaza de España (or Naboo, just for you Bradley). I think I have a picture or two of it in a previous post, but here are a bunch more for good measure. It is one of Sevilla's most famous landmarks, after all.



Tori met up with us at the plaza and joined in on our touristy activities!





Speaking of famous landmarks, these are the Setas (Mushrooms). This is the largest wooden structure in the world!



You can go up on top for a small fee and experience a pretty awesome 360° view of the city.



If you look carefully at the picture in the top left, you can see a Semana Santa procession going on down in the street below!



Later that evening, we were headed to the Carbonería (a place where they have live flamenco quite often) when we had the good fortune of being trapped by another paso. Woohoo. Imagine being stuck in the crowd pictured in the top left. Not. Fun.



Well, we finally made it to flamenco! Before the show started, some people in the back corner decided to have their own flamenco performance, complete with typical Andalucian vocals (ask Rafa to demonstrate for you), guitar playing, hand-clapping, and dancing. Soon the show started, with even better music than the impromptu performance, and a dancer that looked suspiciously Ukrainian.



The next day, I took Ty to the church I'd been going to all semester, after which we went out for tapas in El Tardón, my neighborhood. Post-lunch, we met up with a large group from our program at Príncipes, the park we would spend time at whenever we got the chance. Some played frisbee, cards, guitar, or with dogs, while others (*cough* Ben) analyzed and critiqued the clothing in a fashion magazine.



Lauren, Kerianne, and Sarah!



Whenever you found us at the park, you would find exploded oranges as well (throwing oranges is a wonderful pastime).



With my sister's time in Sevilla coming quickly to a close (she was leaving the next day in the wee hours of the morning), we decided to walk to another park, Parque de María Luisa. These pictures are from the walk over. The main picture is a typical Triana/Los Remedios afternoon scene, up on the top right is the Guadalquivir, and in the bottom right you see the building our school is in (it was originally built as a hotel for the world fair).





In the park! The building in the main picture is the Museum of Arts and Traditions of Sevilla (Museo de Artes y Costumbres Populares). It lies right on the edge of the park in this pretty sweet plaza called Plaza de América.



Well, the time came to leave and find dinner, and since dinner with Katie the first night had been so good, we decided to go back to Duo Tapas :) On the top right is this really good prawn dish (or cup, I guess...) called capirotes de langostino, and the bottom left is a duck dish called magret de pato (I'm not the biggest duck fan, but this dish was amazing; it tasted and had the texture of really tender steak). It was Sunday night, so on our way back we stopped at the weekly jam session at Café Eureka. We hung around for a few charts, and then made the walk back south to Taisa's hostel. The hostel was called The Living Roof, because the roof area there was open to hang out on; you could see the cathedral really well from the top and they were projecting a soccer game onto a wall (talk about hip). We talked for a while to the Peruvian couple who was sharing a hostel room with Ty, and not too long after I bade my farewell and headed back over the river to my neighborhood (to get some sleep before I woke up at 4am to walk Ty to the airport bus stop - #goodbrotheraward).

In summary: a wonderful week with Ty, even with the unexpected flight plan changes. The hard part was going back to school the next morning...

Well, I'm out for now. Tsa luego!