Three Languages or One?

An article was just brought to my attention today via Facebook.  In it, the writer (subtly) complains about a proposal by major Spanish conservative party PP (Partido Popular, or Popular Party) that schools in Catalunya will, under their direction should they be elected in the coming months, switch to a trilingual system in which Catalan, Spanish and English will be in the curriculum until the bachillerato, the optional two years after the mandatory eight years of schooling and before university in the Spanish public school system.

What gets me is that people are complaining about this.  Now, I understand that linguistic freedom is a huge issue in Catalunya right now.  Catalan as a language has been under fire by the Spanish government since 1716 (with a brief revival during the Renaixença period of the late 19th century and early 20th century) and even since the Caudillo's death in 1975 Catalan still does not have the respect it once had.  Whereas other multilingual countries such as Canada and Belgium allow people living in certain areas to speak whichever language they will and not speak others, Spain makes sure that Spanish is still the dominant language throughout the state.  Many Catalans believe their language is still being oppressed because of this.  I don't take issue with this.

Two Stories, One Person

I did a thing on Tumblr just now where people would give me a number corresponding to a question they'd like me to ask, and a few of them had to do with childhood memories.  It's funny, because for me, just thinking about my childhood beyond a certain age is a task.  Not because I had some terrible brain injury that made me lose memory past a certain point, but for (arguably) more bizarre reasons.

It's not the remembering that's hard.  I still remember a lot of things about my childhood: teachers I had, friends I made, toys I loved, TV shows I'd watch, places we'd visit...  It's not even that it's hard.  It's just...well...awkward.  That's what's so weird, how can remembering childhood be awkward?  I haven't quite figured this out.  But it's like there's a wall in my brain that was built at a certain point, and everything before then is different.  And it's funny because nearly half of my life is behind that wall, and I don't always like going through it.

That wall was built on October 26th and 27th, 1997.  That's the date my family left JFK International Airport in Queens, NY on an Air Europa flight to Madrid Barajas Airport.  That's the date my life tangibly changed permanently, to the point where everything that occurred before then would become a life that I would never know ever again.  Up until that date, I had never known any country other than the United States, had never known a language other than English, much less known anyone other than my grandfather who spoke a language other than English --and even then, he never spoke Norwegian around us--.  And as soon as we landed in Madrid and were whisked off to sit in the Madrid police station for four hours doing immigration papers and then sit in a dark van for another four hours listening to two men up front jabber on in a language we didn't understand.  We stopped for dinner somewhere on the highway between Madrid and Bilbao and fell asleep in mounds of rice because we were too jet-lagged and exhausted to eat, and were dropped off by the side of the road in Leioa to wait for someone else who didn't speak our language to bring us to our new home.

I don't know how many other people have such a tangibly intangible wall dividing their memories.  I'm sure there are others, most likely a lot of them had traumatic experiences to cause them to build that wall, maybe others with not so traumatic experiences.  I just know I can literally divide my life in two parts: pre-Spain and "post-Spain".  Pre-Spain for the twelve years I spent as a fairly clueless kid who liked reading atlases and encyclopedias, who enjoyed learning about the world but who had never traveled much farther than to the East Coast of the USA and the occasional shortcut through Canada.  "Post-Spain" for everything since then.  Since I first discovered Euskera my first week of school when we had to choose a language to study and I didn't want to take French.  But I wasn't allowed to take Euskera because I needed to speak Spanish first, and then when I first heard it spoken by real-life people by my 6th grade homeroom teacher to our tour guide on a class field trip to Urkiola, a nature reserve about an hour away.  Since I became fluent in Spanish within nine months of landing in Spain.  Since I started public school and soon afterwards met the girl who would become my best friend for the next eleven, twelve years.

It's just so weird to look back on my life before all that happened.  It's like I wasn't even me back then, I was someone else.  Some other kid.  None of the things that happened to me before then made me who I am today, except for maybe that innate curiosity that helped me discover the world and learn about it.  But none of the events, none of the deciding moments in my life before then actually changed me.  Moving to Spain changed me, so looking back on my childhood is like watching a movie.  A movie that I was a part of and had a role in, but little else.  It really is bizarre to think that at one point, I did live that life.  And I think that's what's so unreal about it.  That I can't imagine living that life now, but I know I did.  That's what's strange.

Río Nervión, Puente de San Antón, la Ribera, Bilbao

Euskolegas

I hardly ever talk about the TV shows I watch because a. I really don't think anyone cares, b. fandom has never been my thing, regardless of how hard I've tried, and c. I don't really care if people know what shows I watch or don't watch.

Except in some instances where I will talk about my shows, because I'm pretty sure that no one else in my circles watches them for no other reason that they've most likely never heard of them.  This is one of those instances.

The screencap on the top of this entry is from a TV show called Euskolegas, which aired for two season on ETB2 in the Basque Country in Spain from 2009 to 2010.  It started as a series of skits on Vaya Semanita, also on ETB2, and became a full-length sitcom in 2009.  It revolves around Álex, Pruden and Patxi, three friends who live in an apartment in Indautxu, a district in central Bilbao who come from different parts of the Basque Country --Pruden is from Vitoria, the capital, Álex is from Donosti (San Sebastián), and Patxi from Bilbao.  A girl named Leire moves in across the hall from a small town in Navarra, and shenanigans ensue.

One of the main reasons I love this show is because nearly 80% of the dialog consists of Basque cultural references.  Characters call each other "ama" and "aita" (Basque for "mom" and "dad"), they say good-bye with a quick "agur", nearly everyone has a Basque name or a Basque-ized version of their Spanish name ("Patxi" is the Basque version of "Paco", short for "Francisco", and another character is "Juan César", nicknamed "Xixario"), and there are references to places that no one outside the Basque Country has any clue exists.  San Sebastián is always called "Donosti" like it is up there...among many, many other things.

This show keeps me in touch with my "Basque" side, the culture I made my own for two-and-a-half years and that, eleven-and-a-half years after moving away, I still can't shake.  Every time I pull a marathon I'm reminded of how "Basque" I actually am.  I get all the cultural references, the slang, everything makes sense.  I find all the references funny.  I look at the scene-split shots of Bilbao and it reminds me of home.  There's one moment where one of the characters says to her father "Aita, si tú te pierdes en Barakaldo, ¿cómo piensas ir a París?"  (Dad, if you get lost in Barakaldo, how do you think you're going to go to Paris?) and I crack up because I've been to Barakaldo and I know how much people who are not from any particular city in the Basque Country complain about not knowing where anything is.  There are jokes and digs at Donosti (Bilbao and Donosti have an almost amusing rivalry.  I am forever team!Bilbo.), Vitoria, and Navarra.  Even the interior design of the houses is so totally Basque that it makes me want to do some of my own redecorating.

Just about everything about this show makes me nostalgic for the "innocent" time in my life when my family lived in the Basque Country.  It makes me feel like I'm back there again, it gives me the chance to relive everything I felt when I lived there, even though I was nearly 15 when we left and all the characters are over 25.  The culture is still the same, and it's like having a little piece of home with me.

If anyone's interested in watching it (in Spanish), it's up at ETB's webpage here.  I would also suggest Vaya Semanita to get a humorous perspective of Basque culture (only on ETB and on VS can they make fun of ETA and get away with it...barely) in the form of five-minute sketches all revolving around live in Euskal Herria.

Silly people...

I found this on my Tumblr dashboard earlier today:

When I Hear the Name "Barcelona"...

I think of every single player on that team
Heart Rate Speeds up.
Light Headed.
MESSI.
Red and Blue.
In Love.
Greatest thing on this planet.
Greatest thing that has ever happened to me.
THE GREATEST TEAM.
There’s no definition for the love i have for Barca.

Okay so.  Let me begin by saying no one is wrong here.  I feel like I should make that disclaimer because, well, I like to say people are wrong a lot (sorry in advance...and in retrograde).  But that's not what I want to talk about here.

Because I'm just going to say this, I am a culé.  I do support FC Barcelona as my football/soccer team of choice.  I do.  But here's the thing.  Barcelona is a city, not a football club.  Sure, it has a world-class football club and a world-class football stadium that is amazing and enormous and beautiful and everything else.  It also has another football club, which may not have the renown as their cross-town rivals Barça, they have a very loyal fanbase and a legitimate claim to the city (yes, I'm talking about Espanyol).

Here's the thing though.  When I hear "Barcelona", or when I see it written on bags and elsewhere in print, I think of the Passeig de Gràcia, the Torre de Collserola, the Passeig de Sant Joan.  I think of the metro station at the Estació de Sants.  I think of the Palau de la Música Catalana, the Liceu, Casa Batlló, the Sagrada Família.  I think of Sants (featured at the top of this post), I think of Poblenou, of the lower Dreta de l'Eixample.  I think of the time I got lost on the tram and ended up in Sant Adrià de Besòs and ended up not caring because I was lost in Barcelona.

This is the city I first fell in love with in 2004 when I saw the Sagrada Família for the first time in my life, when my family walked down the Passeig de Sant Joan till we got to the Arc de Triomf...and then walked back to the Sagrada Família where we'd parked our car.  It's the city I fell in love with again in 2008 when two friends and I spent five days there, and again in 2010 when I spent six days there by myself.

This city is magical, and not just because of the football club.  Yes, I'm a fan, but this city means so much more to me and the people who live here, who go through every single monotonous day in this city.  I feel like all this blog is a defense of Barcelona and how much I love it, but who cares.  This city has changed my entire life.  And yes, FC Barcelona is a great club.  But it pales in comparison to the greatness of the city that houses it.  Because that's what's really important here.  It's not the club, it's the city.  It's the great city of Barcelona.  Let's not forget that.

Plaça del Progrés, Terrassa, May 28, 2010

"Turkey, Greece, Italy, Catalunya..."

Today I found that list of countries with extensive cultural histories in a travel book I got in 2007 before I went to study abroad in Spain.  It's published by Rick Steves' company and yes, I was incredibly shocked to find it in a sidebar tailing a section on Ancient Greece.  I mean, how likely is it to find Catalunya mentioned (in that same spelling) 1. in a book on European history, 2. in a book on European history geared towards North Americans, and 3. in a book on European history that's more of an overview?

Not very likely.  Catalunya and its unique history, culture and language may get a comment in most major guidebooks (Lonely Planet is decent enough to include Catalan phrases in their Barcelona guidebooks, I have yet to see any others that do), but this statement referring to cultures that are visited by many people, made me weak at the knees...if I hadn't been sitting while reading it.  Because in that short statement, probably overlooked by most people, states what Catalans have been trying to tell the world for centuries: We are our own country.

I think it's a beautiful thing when information like this, however subtle, is given to the general public.  Very few guidebooks seem to completely overlook Catalunya's cultural and historical differences from the rest of Spain, using wording that makes it sound either like Catalans are utterly delusional ("They carry Spanish passports, of course they're Spanish!") or the European equivalent of hicks ("Without Spain they'd probably still be tending their sheep in the hills!").  I sometimes like to go to the travel section in major bookstores and see what different guidebooks have to say about Barcelona/Catalunya "for the lulz", and this is a common attitude I get.

I just have to say, thank you, Rick Steves and Gene Openshaw, for considering Catalunya a country.  You're some of the few.

Palau de la Música Catalana

Lluís Domènech i Montaner

This is probably my favorite building in all of Barcelona.  Worldwide, the city is known for Antoni Gaudí, the 19th century architect who's known for the Casa Batlló, Casa Milà, Parc Güell, and the Basílica de la Sagrada Família, among others.  I'm not going to deny Gaudí's genius, I'm not going to deny his talent or his ability to buck every single trend and design buildings that have captured imaginations for over a hundred years.

But (because there is always a "but") Barcelona is not just Gaudí.  He's the city's most famous person (despite being born in Reus, in Tarragona, not Barcelona) and he has certainly left his mark on the city who sponsored him, but there were two other great Catalan architecture masters who are often overlooked because Gaudí's work and fame tends to overpower their own.  Take for example Josep Puig i Cadafalch's, whose Casa Amatller sits adjacent to Gaudí's Casa Batlló, and I often wonder if people who crowd in front of the Casa del Drac, as it's sometimes referred to in Catalan, realize that the building next door is just as much an architectural monument.  No matter, it probably enjoys being an understated beauty.

Now, the Palau de la Música Catalana...this building is anything but understated.  Built to house the Orfeó Català, the Catalan Orphic Choir, between 1905 and 1908 in the Ribera district, it's a testament to the Modernist movement in Catalonia.  The main stage has incredible acoustics; in the tour I took last year we were played Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor and even though I've always loved that piece, hearing it in that hall nearly moved me to tears.

I would love to see a concert here, in this Palace for Catalan Music.

This Moment

All that I need is this moment
To send me away with a smile on my face
I tried to leave but I turn back
On my heart remains a trace

I don't usually like to talk about my favorite music.  Not because I don't listen to music --on the contrary, I'm always listening to music--, but because I just don't care if other people know what kind of music I listen to.  I refuse to judge people based on the music they listen to, so I usually try not to make a big deal out of what I like to put into my headphones.  Anytime I share music I enjoy on Tumblr I'm lucky to get two notes, but since I only have just under 140 followers it's not that big of a deal.  Besides, Flash takes up a lot of memory to run.  It's cool.

But I kind of want to talk about some music I like right now.  One of the genres that I've really grown to love in the last couple of years is trance.  Mostly trance prog, or progressive trance, because it's more mellow and low-key and much more melodic than what most people expect when they think of "trance" music.  I actually enjoy all kinds of trance, from relaxed progressive to frenetic, gritty industrial, but prog is definitely my favorite.  And this track, the one I posted above, is one of my all-time favorites.

One of the things I really love about trance music is that when lyrics are involved, they tend to be incredibly powerful.  Trance artists don't just throw lyrics at a song just to try to make it more interesting, there is almost always a lot of thought involved in the songwriting.  So many of my favorite trance songs are favorites of mine because of the lyrics almost as much as because of the music itself.  And what's beautiful about trance is that since most people just shrug is off as being "talentless" because it's electronically generated, it's still in a sense "under the radar".  And honestly, the biggest trance artists like Above & Beyond and Gareth Emery have an extensive background in music-making.  I heard an Above & Beyond acoustic session once and was blown away.  Two of the DJs were on the acoustic guitar, another on the keyboard, and then there was a vocalist, and the result sounded like jazz night at your local bar.  And Gareth Emery...he plays keyboard on his track "Too Dark Tonight", and when he performs it live, it's an acoustic performance, at least when his sister Roxanne, who does the vocals for the track, is onstage.  I sincerely believe that it is completely unfair to consider electronic music, at least as far as trance is concerned (but even electronic music as an entire genre), "talentless", because I have seen nothing but talent from many of these artists.

Anyway, trance music isn't the only music I listen to, and some other time I'll talk about some of my other favorite songs.  But right now I wanted to post this one, because it's been a favorite for a while now and I felt I should share.

Of Memories

I get very emotionally attached to the weirdest things.  It's weird; I have a shampoo and conditioner set that I rarely use (even though I'm almost out by now) for the simple reason that the first time I used it was when I was in Barcelona last year.  I have a face wash that I'm the exact same with, as well as a perfume.

There's even a music album that I absolutely adore that I haven't listened to in over a year for the simple reason that the last time I listened to it I was getting off the plane at the airport in El Prat, was waiting to go through security, and was on the train on my way into the city.  I refuse to listen to it again until I can find a moment that's adequate.  I doubt I'm going to find it, but I'm holding out.

The truth is, I don't hoard things.  I hoard memories.  Most of the crap that I have is actually meaningless to me, save for a few things that have sentimental value because of where I got them/who gave them to me.  I can fit most of my belongings, my valuable belongs anyway, the things I couldn't live without, into one suitcase.  This is perfect for my plan to actually move back to Europe one day.  Honestly, the most important things I have...I have in my head.  I do keep some of them locked in songs, albums or even scents (for example, the perfume Chance by Chanel...will never not remind me of Bilbao, simply because I wore it a lot while I was there last summer), but in general, they're in my head.

I am a bit of a pack rat, I admit it; I hate throwing things away.  But one of the things I have noticed about myself though is that eventually, I don't care if whatever object it is gets thrown away or lost.  Important things I keep with me at all times; I know exactly where they are and they're impossible to lose.  But in general, the things I'm terrified of losing the most are the memories I have in my head.  The memories I get when I'm about to hop in the shower and I think of the automatic faucet at the hostel in Barcelona that caused so many unknown roommates and floormates grief because they couldn't figure out how the damned things worked.  The times I wake up in the morning and have to rub my eyes again because I could have sworn I was still in my best friend's apartment in Algorta.  The time I pick up a tube of mascara and think "Oh, R gave that to me in New York City right before I left for Spain!"

It's the little things.  The meaningless, worthless things that mean most to me, the little things that trigger memories or thoughts of things I can't have right now, but with a little patience, I could most likely have again.