Happy New Year to everyone! This is the second New Year that I have spent in Spain and, after ”living” the holiday twice here, I thought I’d write a short post to tell those of you who are less familiar with Spain’s traditions a little about the holiday. Basically, if you’re a Spaniard about to “ring in the New Year in style,” you need two essential items in very large quantities: grapes and fireworks. Let me explain:
Essential item #1 — Grapes: Grapes are used during the final New Year’s Eve countdown right before midnight. As Spaniards are counting down the final twelve seconds of the year, they eat grapes — one grape for each second marked by the clock. As a result, it’s very typical to buy large amounts of grapes right before New Year’s Eve and then sit in front of the TV with your family on December 31st to eat the grapes during the “official countdown,” which is televised live from Madrid.
Essential item #2 — Fireworks: After counting down the final twelve seconds of the old year, Spaniards grab their fireworks, firecrackers, and other miscellaneous, loud pyrotechnic devices and head for the streets. In fact, there are usually so many Spaniards on the streets shooting off fireworks just after midnight that the entire city fills with smoke and sounds like a war zone. To be quite honest, the first time I saw this happening last year I didn’t really know what to think — it appeared to me to be a loud, dangerous pandemonium with fireworks flying everywhere. I still wonder how more people don’t have accidents with all those firecrackers going off everywhere. In any event, along with the grapes, fireworks are a “must” on any Spanish New Year shopping list.
There you have it. Two “essential items” for the New Year in Spain. What are your “New Year Essentials?” Continue reading this post…
As part of the Christmas festivities in Burgos, a "Christmas Fair" was set up in the Plaza Mayor in which people purchased crafts from local vendors.
I’ve decided to title this post “Merry (ongoing) Christmas.” You may be asking yourself why I’ve put the word “ongoing” in the title and the answer is really rather simple: in Spain, Christmas isnot over yet. In fact, I’ve discovered that the Spanish love to “make the most” of their holidays — no matter how big or how small they are — and that’s exactly what they’ve done with Christmas (you’ll see what I mean in a moment). Continue reading this post…
Let me start off this post by saying ‘Happy Thanksgiving’ to all of my fellow Americans. You should feel very proud and lucky that you’re hearing those words come out of my mouth (well, in a figurative sense — you’re actually reading those words) because, as much as I hate to admit it, I almost “forgot” that today was Thanksgiving Day.
You see, today started like any other day. I woke up, got a shower, got dressed, and went to the school to teach class. I went through most of the morning normally — the same way I would any other morning — completely oblivious to the fact that today was Thanksgiving. Later in the day, when I had a free moment, I decided to check my email and, lo and behold, I had a message from my mom in the States wishing me a “HAPPPYYYYYYY THANKSGIVINGGGG” (I write the phrase in capitals because that’s how she put it in the email).
It wasn’t until I received that email from my mother that I realized that today was Thanksgiving. It’s funny, really. Since I’m living in Spain and Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated here, the whole fact that today was the day just “slipped my mind,” so to speak. Still, my Thanksgiving story does not end there….
After I realized that today was Thanksgiving, I mentioned something about the holiday to my housemates. Of course, they explained to me that they already knew all about the holiday from watching American movies on TV. They then proceeded to elaborate further on how the “Americans” wake up very early on Thanksgiving morning to go outside and kill the turkey that they’re going to eat for dinner. This made me laugh a bit because, despite being an American who has celebrated Thanksgiving pretty much every year of his life, I have never “went outside to kill a turkey.” I then explained to my housemates that I preferred to buy my turkeys “already dead” from the supermarket and, although it may have been disappointing for them at first, they seemed to accept the new information rather well.
So, to end this post I’d like to remind everyone in the USA to be careful with those axes when they’re killing their turkeys. After all, we don’t want any accidents, do we? Continue reading this post…
A garbage can brims over as the Burgos Festivals come to an end.
My regular readers know that, over the last couple weeks, I have been writing a mini-series on the 2009 Burgos Festivals – the biggest party of the year in the city of Burgos. To finish up the mini-series, I thought it would be appropriate to write this post about the tons of garbage that were produced (and needed to be cleaned up) as a result of the massive partying during festival week.
For those of you who have never been to Spain before, let me tell you that Spaniards are known to party hard until the wee hours of the night and all this partying can sometimes leave behind “trace evidence” in the form of empty food containers, bottles, etc. Judging from the amount of garbage in the container pictured above, the recent festival week in Burgos was no exception to the general “party all night long” rule. Still, despite all the partying, we have to give the Spaniards credit for always cleaning up their mess afterwards. Just take a look at the picture below to see what I mean. Continue reading this post…
I thought I would upload this short video to give you a look at one of the fireworks displays during the recent Festivals of Burgos. There were fireworks every night for an entire week during the celebration and I was pretty impressed with the quality of the shows. Of course, I should let you decide on the show quality for yourself after viewing the video. Continue reading this post…
Members of a peña march in the parade with their instruments. The interesting thing was how these people kept themselves hydrated.
The fiestas of Burgos wouldn’t be complete without a parade — and there was a gigantic parade about halfway through the festival week that included clowns, street performers, marching bands, dancers, and even giant inflatable floats like the dragon one pictured below. For the most part, the parade in Burgos was basically the same as any parade that I’m used to seeing in the USA; however, there was one slight difference in “hydration techniques,” so to speak. Continue reading this post…
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