Day 19 - No School Today

While Christmas ends on December 25 and operas end when the fat lady sings, Ramadan ends when official Muslim spotters see the waxing crescent moon. This year, they didn’t see it until Thursday, so my Friday class was cancelled when all of our students decided to go to parties where they could eat a lot.

With no class today, I took a break from my normal culture-free approach to travels to visit the National Museum of Art  (pictured here). It turns out that art can be interesting and I learned a few things. Like these four columns, which were built early in the 20th century to represent the four-striped flag of Catalonia, were torn down by a dictator who didn’t want to give the impression that he approved of Catalonian pride. But he liked the idea of towers in general, so he built two brick towers in the same vicinity. But then after the age of Spanish dictators passed, the original ones were rebuilt so now there are six, four columns and two towers.

But possibly the most disturbing thing I learned concerns my phone. After a couple of hours at the museum, I stopped and bought a café con leche and paid for it by tapping my phone on the card reader (as I always do). A couple of minutes later Martha texted me to say ‘good morning’ and my phone immediately suggested that I reply with a selfie of me holding the coffee I had just bought, a suggestion that was both scary and worthless. It pains me to think that some community had to endure the construction of a data center so that AI could suggest that I text a coffee selfie.

This is the courtyard of my apartment building, which my balcony overlooks. 

The neighbors from the next building have a balcony about five feet away from my balcony, but it’s been a little chilly, so we haven’t met yet. I am looking forward to when the weather warms up. I’m sure they’ll laugh when I ask them if they have any Grey Poupon (assuming they’re old enough to remember the commercials).

And here's a little something to brighten your day.

Day 13-14 Germany

If flying to Düsseldorf, then taking a two-hour train ride through Germany’s rust belt and spending two cold rainy days in a tiny town where all the stores are required by law to be closed on Sunday sounds like the perfect weekend getaway, read on!

I went to visit friends, who are really nice people, and we had a good time despite the fact that there wasn’t much to do. And honestly, sitting around drinking tea and eating great food a few times a day is something that I should probably get better at. It gave me time to appreciate the extraordinary length of German words and have interesting discussions about, for example, why all of the houses in the neighborhood have garages, but none of them are connected to the houses, so that even if you park in the garage, you have to walk through the rain to get in the house. And we thought the Germans had everything figured out! 

The rain did let up enough for us to wander through the town streets . . . sorry. . . street. But only on Saturday when the stores were allowed to be open. 

We also visited the Junkerhaus “museum,” a home built by a guy in town, Herr Junker, at the turn of the last century. He was either a brilliant artist or a slightly deranged loner with OCD (I vote for the latter, and even the informational plaques at the house allow for the possibility that maybe it’s a stretch to put this guy in the same category as Frank Lloyd Wright). They call his work reflective of a movement called “Raw Art,” which is characterized by lack of formal training, impulsive behavior and indications of psychiatric disorders (really). 

Every inch of the interior looked more or less like this.

Then a lovely hike in the woods and back home for more tea. A good time was had by all.

Before I left to come here, I attended a presentation at the nonprofit I’m volunteering at about a groundbreaking new Spanish law that gives legal status to any immigrant who can prove at least 5 months’ residency in Spain and no criminal record, probably the most liberal law of its kind anywhere, and the meeting was extremely well attended by lots of people (including all of my students) who want to take advantage of it. 

Sounds easy, but then questions started to come up. Like if you don’t have a passport or any documents, how do you prove you have been in Spain for five months. And if you come from a country like Algeria, which barely has a functioning government, how do you prove that you don’t have a criminal record? I enjoyed teaching my colleagues the English expression El diablo está en los detalles (The devil is in the details).