Life: Idiotropic

Valencia fashion is ruled by the calendar instead of the weather. 
Today as I stepped off the train and walked behind a mass of fellow passengers out of Valencia-Nord, I noticed that while I was wearing a darling lightweight short-sleaved summer dress, the rest of the passengers (all of them) were wearing long pants, jeans, or skirts with tights, sweaters, jackets, long sleeved tops, and... SCARVES around their necks!!!  It was not cold then.  By noon, it was sticky warm and humid.


The calendar also rules the beach usage. 
Seriously, from end of June through the end of August, you can barely step foot on the beach and it's not just tourists.  From September 1st onward, the beaches are nearly completely empty except for the random tourist who will still brave the Mediterranean in the wintertime while the locals stay bundled in thick coats and hats.

Smart graffiti:  "Dream your life.  Live your dream."

Valencia has the best graffiti.
It's smart, funny, quirky, and cool.  It is done by a handful of artists who have their own special style.  This one, for example always paints in this color scheme and uses these odd little black characters.  I see his artwork all over the city and have seen him repaint the same wall with another one of his "works."  I don't always understand them... soccer ball heads?  No clue.  But it's cool.





Back to Valencia Fashion... there is no such thing as too many ruffles.

This actually applies to most of Spain where ruffles are reminiscent of the traditional Andalucian flamenco dresses.  Ruffles work themselves into local fashion in a lot of ways both good and not quite so good.



It's in the details.
Valencian women dress well.  That is an understatement of grandiose proportion.  While men also dress very well, women here seem incapable of dressing casual.  I've seen stilletos climbing old cobblestone streets up the hills of mountain ruins and full length fur coats at crowded carnivals.  This is the norm.  Jewelry is big and abundant.  Hair is perfect.  Makeup cannot be forgotten.  Every accessory is there from shoes and stockings to hair clips and jewelry to scarves and handbags.  While I find success in remembering to put on earrings, the complete look is what Spanish women strive for and find without fail.  So, it should be no surprise that an upscale women's clothing shop would also have a bit of bling this time in the form of an uber-fancy door pull not on one side, but on both.

 
Simplicity is for snack time.
Almuerzo in the rest of Spain might be lunch, but here, in Valencia, it is that late morning snack that you grab at your local bar.  It's simple, yet delicious. Before living here I wouldn't even thought of putting calamari on a sandwich, but here, it's something I think about often and this little bar on the corner makes the best calamari sandwich in town.  Bread, calamari, and a thin layer of garlic tinged aioli:  it just doesn't get much better than that.

Coffee is for after dessert.
While a foreigner may get away with ordering a cafe con leche with a sandwich, a local will not.  The waiter will look at you like you've gone completely mad and then offer you a beer or a glass of wine.  That is, after all, what you drink with savory food even at 10am.  Coffee here is offered and consumed not with dessert, but after.  These are the moments I am grateful for my "accent," so that they will just smile at me and bring me the caffeine buzz that I desperately need.  The perfect cup of coffee?  Not quite.  But today, Cafe Mundo did come awfully close.

My little bakery won first prize!  Santi's brother (one of these days, I'll learn his name) hand-made each one of these little marzipan sculptures and displayed them in his bakery case where they could be seen and not broken.  The pineapples and sunflower are especially fragile.  The last few were displayed yesterday just before the judges came.  Look at the seeds in the pumpkins and pomegranates.  The detail absolutely amazes me and the talented man who makes these is not a tiny guy.  He's a big football sized guy with huge hands.  There's no team of bakers.  All of these are the work of one very talented man from Puzol.
As delicious as they are beautiful, these beauties are not for sale.  At the end of the Nou d' Octubre festivities, Carmen and her family will give these as gives to close friends and donate most to people who cannot afford such little luxuries.   Just above the case are three baskets full of marzipan fruit and vegetables that we can buy and it is delicious.  Softer and smoother than German marzipan, it has a more delicate flavor.  Made from regular almonds instead of the bitter almonds that the Germans prefer, they also use less sugar giving these creations a nicer almond flavor that isn't overpowered with sweet.

... that I didn't need.

I know the word for chicken.  It's "pollo."  I buy it all the time at the market.  Some Americans (not me) have made the mistake of trying to make it feminine and ordering "polla," which makes the Spanish grocers fall over laughing to the embarrassment of the aforementioned American (agin, not me - thank goodness).  Until now, I wouldn't have understood why.  I didn't learn this kind of vocabulary in my Spanish class.  Some things, I just don't want to know.

We experienced some bullying last week.  Not "we," really, but my 9-year old girl.  She was repeatedly called loser and tonta (stupid).  One boy picked up leaves and smashed them into her face knocking her glasses to the ground.  A group of boys followed her around each day asking "do you eat 'polla?'"  She came home angry and upset, hating school and begging not to go back.

I was upset and sent a note to the school.  On Friday, I found out what "polla" meant.  Anger, frustration, hurt, disgust:  I was absolutely horrified.  Apparently this thing that is not a female chicken refers to that little floppy thing that hangs between these little boys legs.  Yep.  Gross.  These boys are nine and they're asking "do you eat...."

Nine.  Seriously, is this normal?  Certainly not in my world.  Thankfully, my note was met with as much horror and the issue was dealt with immediately.  So far, so good... Arianna came home on Monday absolutely happy that now "everybody wants to me [her] friend." 

Phew.  Now I don't have to go down there and beat up any prepubescent school boys.

This week in Valencia you’ll see more “massapan” treasures than any other time of the year as they present themselves as fruits, vegetables, and firework shapes to commemorate the arrival of King Jaime the First in Valencia.  When he arrived in 1228 to conquer the land and drive our the Moors the people thanked him with what they had:  fresh vegetables and fruits from their gardens all wrapped up in the simple scarves they wore around their necks.   Now people give these tiny treats to loved ones wrapped in prettier scarves on el dia de Sant Donis, the 9th of October.

You’ll see signs referring to Sant Donis, but the giving of these fruits has little to do with the saint and everything to do with King Jaime.  It just so happens that 9 October is also Sant Donis day.  Every day has a Saint associated with it and in the Catholic faith, you’ll celebrate your Catholic name on your name day, the day corresponding to the saint that shares your name.
These little fruits are all made by hand.  The almond paste is made in the weeks before at my little Puzol bakery, then these pieces are dyed and formed by hand by one very talented pastry chef from whom we learned to make marzipan roses just last week.

Adding orange coloring and snails.  When I arrived, they'd already added the chicken and rabbit and had added some broth to make the caldo.

Stirring with long metal flat spoons over a hot fire.

In 2006, just a year after the 50th anniversary of the Parroquial de Santa Marta church in Puzol, a group of 11 girls decided to revive a long dead tradition of celebrating Santa Marta with festivities over a two week period of time.  The same group of young women have been doing it ever since funraising, then organizing dinners, dances, and concerts in honor of the saint not just for their church, but for all the pueblo.

A bit of salt.

Today was the final day of the fiestas, a day that began with a special mass in the church and would end with a solemn procession and fireworks.  Between those is a paella lunch for the community.

Until today I've only heard about these giant paellas made for hundreds.  The largest I'd seen served only 50.  I didn't have a ticket for food though I would have loved to stay, but I showed up just a bit early to watch the process and talk the locals who were just as entranced with the giant paellera as I was.

I walked down a narrow street normally just big enough for one car.  Today the cars were all replaced with two long lines of tables with chairs on each side, sodas and beers out and bags of chips.  Someone had marked places and family names with a sharpie and some had brought their own special things from home to add to the meal - salads, sweets wrapped up in foil, cocas, olives.

We arrived in time to see one cook add heaped spoonfuls of yellow coloring into the paella while another stirred.  It used to be saffron that lent it's color to this signature dish, but now coloring is a cheapter way to get the color and no one seems to miss he flavor.  The snails are next.  One big bag of striped shell creatures.  Something that I just can't get used to, but snails were the "red meat" used when beef was too expensive.

Every cook needs to taste.  Two of these guys both tasted the caldo (broth).  One walked away smacking his lips and moving his head from side to side like it was ok, but not perfect.  The other sipped, smacked, then sort of shrugged his shoulders.  Neither impressed, one grabbed the big white bucket of salt and threw a few handfuls in before stirring again.

The watched the pan carefully and the fire... taking long metal tools and putting it between the heavy pan and the stand to move it just a little. 



When the fire was almost out, they added the rice.  That white bucket is one of at least 8 that they added.

Adding Valencian rice.  Short grained, but not sticky.  It soaks up the caldo very nicely.

When the rice has been added and mixed in, they pull all the smoldering coals from under the pan to the outer edge of the pan forming a ring just outside of it.

The paella isn't stirred much after this.  It sits and rests.  The men will throw scrap wood on top of the coal ring to begin a fire there and heat the rice with indirect heat.








When the paella is finished, the caldo has been soaked completely into the rice.  They douse the flames with water and stir them into the sand to put them out completely.  The paella is ready to serve.








A local woman asked me if I was with the news.  We talked a while.  She's a year older than me, but doesn't have any children.  "It's hard to find a man here," she says, "All they want is sex."  Funny to hear this from a complete stranger... it's true.  It is difficult these days for women here.

Another came to talk to me.  She asked me how long I've lived here and if I like Spain.  "Oh, I love Spain," I tell her.  She smiled.  That's the biggest question I hear here.  "Do you like Spain?"
This paella will feed 800 people.  Incredible, isn't it?   I absolutely love the sense of community.  The notion that this one simple dish cooked in one pan will feed 800 people lined up at tables out in the streets.  It's beautiful.
These guys were quick to serve up generous portions.  Folks came with trays and pieces of cardboard to balance plates on to take back to their tables. 

This is the truck that carries the pan.  It will hang from a hook that will lift it up.  Too heavy for a person to carry.  Next time I'll ask the weight.
The line stretched just about forever across the bridge and down the street, but people were happy and patient.
I thought that may be if I hung out a while, that I would be able to sweet talk my way into just a small taste to see how this paella for 800 compares with our little one, but they served it all!  Every last grain.  No leftovers.  Sad.







Not a part of this celebration and with no leftovers to sample,  I walked back to my car through these streets full of happy people filling their bellies.  Sunshine, a giant paella, and these tables full of families and friends.  It's a beautiful thing.


The church of Santa Marta where 11 girls decided to bring this festival back to life.  Just eleven girls.  Good to see young people contribute to their community.

News of the century:  A bull run sans bull is really quite boring.


This weekend was the first of the "Bou d' La Avenida" Puzol.  Ten small city blocks were blocked off in one of Puzol's neighborhoods with tall light grey slanted "ladder" style gates that are perfect for running up if a mad bull is chasing you and perfect for standing behind and taking pictures in relative safety.  Perfect -  if - there is actually a bull running towards you.

However, it appears the young people of Puzol have been organizing these corridas del bou this year and may be the older folks didn't advise quite enough.

You see, it is a well known fact that the bulls like sand.  Thus, if you put down too much sand, the bull won't leave it no matter what you're waving in front of him.

Somehow a fine balance must be found. 



Three horses each pull the tiny little boxes that house the bulls.  The horses are finely decorated with fancy harnesses and lots of bells.  There's a band playing behind.  Men walk along the sides to keep the box in line as the bull kicks.  A man stands on a tire dragging behind the bull box.  They'll stop today at the end of Garcia Lorca street, the opposite end from where they started last year, where I was standing today.

I could see the line of sand ending at the intersection just ahead.  I heard the firecracker sound the warning and I saw the crowds of men turn to run.  Sigh.  And that was about it.

Bou d' La Avenida 2010

One, two, three bulls released and this is about all the view I got. 

Why?  A tiny old woman stood behind me with pale blue glassy eyes and light red hair.  She looked disgusted.  "Demasiado arena," she compained.  Those around her agreed.  Too much sand.

The bulls come out of their boxes initially with so much speed and force, that they have to put sand down on that first road or the bulls would slip and fall, potentially seriously hurting themselves.  So, there's has to be sand on that first stretch.  But when there's too much, the bull is too comfortable.  He knows he has more traction there and he's reticent to leave it.  Today's batch stood there on the border of sand and bare pavement.  A couple times he'd trot to one side briefly, but he'd return and stand there again.  My view?  Pretty lame.

I'd love to just walk through the thick wooden bars out in to the street and get close enough to snap some good shots... but I'm a girl in flip flops and camera or not, the men around me are not loving that idea.  I did venture out today, briefly, but that view was obscured by this: male derrieres standing, waiting, talking amongst themselves, drinking beer.  Some even had their back to the bull, so it's hard to take it real seriously.  But the second I walk out there men start to whistle to offer me a safe place on the gate or behind it.  Another tells me to get my picture and go.  It's dangerous.  "Sí, sí.  Yo sé."    May be it would be if the bull would actually leave the sand!

So, for future views, I will go where I was the first time I went to a bull run: to the sand.  The bulls love it there and from that sandy place, you're sure to get some great views and wonderful photos of runny nosed bulls whether the young toreros over-sand it or not.

Bou d' La Avenida 2009