La Merce and the Castellers

This week is the festival of La Merce in Barcelona. It's five days of music, fireworks, and Catalan traditions - dancing (the sardana), running around with fireworks (the correfoc), and building human pyramids (the castellers).  We saw several of these over the weekend - the coolest being the castellers.  They create a six level human pyramid, and the top level is little kids, who as of recently are required to wear helmets (which probably makes it totally safe.....).

In two weeks we are going to the national castellers contest in Tarragona. In the meantime, here's a few photos from the festival. 

(Full set is here:  2014 La Merce).

 

Norway: The Full Picture

I finished sorting through my Norway photos this week.  Made me realize again what a beautiful country it is.  A few samples below, as well as the link to the full set.

Tom's Norway set on Flickr


For those wanting the full details, read on:

We spent about ten days in the country.  We started out in Jotunheimen National Park at Sognefjellshytta, a very comfortable mountain lodge. Although we were only at about 5,000 feet of altitude, we were so far north that the scenery was alpine - above the treeline and hiking across tundra reminiscent of Alaska.  Stark and beautiful. From the lodge, we hiked up to the nearby Boverbreen glacier, strapped on our crampons, and spent the day climbing around on the ice.

We then drove over the pass to the town of Flam (with one of those little circles over the a, and means "little place between steep mountains").  From Flam, we spent two days kayaking through Aurlandsfjord and Naeroyfjord, the latter stunning enough to have been named a UN World Heritage site.  We also took a train up the mountain and biked 30 km back down to Flam, and toured some of Norway's signature stave churches. 

We ended the trip in Oslo, a beautiful, modern harbor city.  Before we went to Norway, we held a family viewing of Kon-Tiki, the account of Thor Hyerdahl's journey across the Pacific in a papyrus raft (both the original documentary and the Hollywood version), so visiting the Kon-Tiki Museum was a kick.  Other highlights were the Opera House, built to resemble a floating iceberg; Vigelandsparken, full of the crazy sculptures of Gustav Vigeland; and catching up with our Haas friends Steiner and Thomas and their girls in their fantastic home in Oslo.

Lunch break in Naerofjord

Hiking the glacier

Born Again

We had dinner and went walking in the Born neighborhood of Barcelona last night.  Fell in love with this city once more.

 

Lost in Translation: Spanish, Catalan, and Apple Piss

No doubt, one of the hardest parts about moving to a foreign country is the language barrier.  Not being able to speak, read or write results in "walking around confusion"; basically you are  unsure in almost everything you do as you go through your day.  Every activity is a challenge - reading menus, figuring out instructions, or just getting basic directions.  And we didn't arrive with strong Spanish skills - my four years of high school Spanish (many years ago) seems roughly equivalent to Leo's one year of middle school Spanish.  (My habit of throwing in Chinese words when I can't think of the Spanish doesn't help either).

This is another area where smartphones and new technology are a huge help.  We have become avid users of Google Translate, both on the phone and on the web.  We use Duolingo to up our spoken Spanish skills.  And the other day we heard about and downloaded a cool new app, Word Lens.  You just point your camera at a sign or a menu and it translates real time right in front of your eyes. It's very simple, great for solving the "walking around confusion" of living in a new country.

Of course, English is widely spoken in Barcelona.  I'm pretty confident we'd be struggling a lot more if we had moved to Almaty or Sana'a.  Still, there is one extra complication about learning the language in Barcelona - they actually speak two languages.  Everyone speaks Spanish, and just about everyone also speaks Catalan.  Most people seem to switch back and forth between the two regularly, and not even realize they are switching.  (We had a local friend tell us confidently that "all of the menus are in Spanish" at the very moment we sat down to dinner with a menu only in Catalan).

It's somehow comforting to me that modern technology is not immune to this dual language problem, sometimes with amusing results.  We tried that new app Word Lens on the Catalan menu at our club the other day, and this is what we got:

To be fair to Word Lens, they don't claim to support Catalan.  Still, we laughed out loud at "Compote of Apple Piss."  Would you rather have that, or "Splint of Veal with Herbs, Pepper, and Bad"?  Clearly, Catalan is as confusing to Word Lens as it is to us.  

We had the paella.