I experienced my first Semana Santa, Easter celebrations in (southern) Spain, and it was all just a blur. This was mostly due to my extremely erratic sleep cycle: the first night in Granada was one of the most famous procesiónes of Semana Santa, La Procesión de la Gitanos. So essentially, every night during the week, Catholic brotherhoods or orders wear costumes, much like those worn by the Ku Klux Klan, and parade around town with the idols of Jesus Christ and Mother Mary (for my Telugu readers: Yesu Cristu ooregimpu). These are large figures on ornate platforms that are carried on the backs of about twenty four men (again for Telugu readers: pallakilaga) and guided through the streets by the people in the march. Anyway, so after the weekly CS Granada meeting, we headed over to see the start of the procesión. It started at around 12:30AM and lasted until 7:30AM, until the statue of Mother Mary was finally behind the gates of the Abbey of Sacromonte, a very famous monastery just outside of Granada. There are a few reasons why the procesión took so long. The first and primarily because the people carrying the pallaki had to take baby steps to move. It took about one minute to move one meter, if that. And they switched groups of men very half an hour or so. Secondly, because the abbey is up on a hill, SacreMONTE. Lastly, because they stopped every so often when someone sang a song or prayer. By the time Mother Mary went in, Adele, the Spanish aunty I met at the CS meeting, Serendipiti, the American study abroad student, and I were totally totally tired: from walking, standing, and lack of sleep. I went back to my room and crashed for the day.
The next day was pretty mellow. I thought I was going to have an exciting night out, but I met Rolando who suggested that I sleep early (around 8 or 9PM) and get up around 2AM to see the procesión silencio (silen because Jesus died on Friday), and then wait on line at Alhambra starting at 5AM. So, this is exactly what I did. And after waiting three hours on line to see one of the most visited sites in Spain, I was sorely disappointed. Here I was expecting the Moorish palace to be an exciting melange of religions and cultures, but really, it was simply shoddy, well, more like early, Muslim architecture. It sorely lacked symmetry, was not very big at all, and was overall kind of boring. Especially after seeing the wonders of Muslim architecture in India like the Taj Mahal and the surrounding palaces, Alhambra was really almost amateur. The only reason why I (and the others) stayed was because we went together as four couchsurfers traveling through Granada: Rolando from Costa Rica, Szidonia from Transylvania, Alex from Czech Republic (though I think he's Russian), and me from New York. I'm not going to lie, I didn't think we would get along at first, but either the disappointment of the Alhambra, the general time we spent together or the shitty windy, wet weather...or something, brought us together.
After the Alhambra, we were so tired that we went back to our hostals/hosts and slept for the rest of the day. And of course, because we slept during the day, we stayed up all night. Granted, it was a great night - I saw a fabulous drag show (in Spanish) and later, a real flamenco singer. The next morning, I took the 8:15 train to Sevilla and then another train to Cadiz to get to Rota, all on no sleep, as per usual. This is why my facebook status was: "Just as a heads up for those who will or want to visit Granada: don't expect to sleep much, especially between the hours of 12am and 8am."
¡Be ye warned!
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