Feria de Abril, Sevilla

Feria was something that everyone who lives in Sevilla had been talking about since I got here. “During Feria this, in the Feria that..” Actually they started to build up the Feria area for over two months before the actual happening! So I figured it’s probably quite a big party! I still didn’t have any idea what was it about. But when you think of it, party that lasts for a week is probably pretty big!

Feria de Abril is a weeklong festival, always held in April as the name tells. It’s about eating and drinking good, wearing your best clothes: all the men wear suits and ties and all the chicas wear usually the flamenco dress.

You can’t compare it to the festivals back home where everybody who lives in the city runs away while people from elsewhere come around to party. In here, EVERYBODY in the city participates the festival! For instance, if you walk in the city, everyone is dressed up! It’s unbelievable!

We decided to go and participate the party the next day. Our company naturally didn’t have any days off during the week, but we still had shorter days so that we could participate in to the festival. Actually on Wednesday, we stopped working earlier, headed out to change nice clothes and went to have a late lunch in the Feria area. It was really interesting and nice to see all that. The place was full of people, horses and tents.

Yes, tents. People can rent a tent for themselves for the week. Only the cost is at least 2000 euros for one! Usually you can’t enter a tent, if you are not invited and that makes the tents really desirable for people to get. For those people, who don’t have access to any tent, there are public tents (where to buy food and drinks). Only the prize might get pretty high! Also, there are a LOT of horses around. All the people bring their own horses from the country side and ride them in the festival. You can even buy a horse ride for yourself – if you have the money, it only costs 200 euros for one hour!

In the night time, the Feria area is more about drinking than eating. My friend even said that the Feria is the only place where you can see even Spanish girls going as wasted as their sisters back in Finland! :D The area is lit by over 300,000 light bulbs during the night time and actually the whole Feria area consumes as much energy as a city of 50,000 people. In addition to the tent area, there is an amusement park in the area! All this combined, lasting for a week, now that is a BIG PARTY!?

Make me come alive
Come on turn me on
Touch me, save my life
Come on and turn me on
I'm too young to die
Come on and turn me on
 

Turn me on, Turn me on, Turn me on, Turn me on

David Guetta Ft.  Nicki Minaj -Turn Me On (Michael Calfan remix)

Escape to the sin city, part 3: Chillin' out!

So we got back from The club around… maybe at 5, maybe at six… and mom, I was dressing up like a bitch! But then what goes up… must come down! We had to change hostel the next day. And it happens to be that when you check out a hostel you have to do it 10 am in the morning at the latest! So after 2 hours of intensive sleep we got up and started to navigate our way to the next hostel.

This place was a bit more further from the city centre, but it was near the FC Barcelona football stadium Camp Nou! We spent the day by chilling out at a park next to the stadium sleeping and sun bathing.. Chillin’ baby, chillin’! In the evening we headed back to the centre of the city to see my travel mates’ cousin and her friends again.
  

There, as we were sitting on this outdoor terrace and drinking some STRONG sangria from a can, this French guy from the next table came to talk to us. His friend had been pick pocketed! The thief had taken the guys credit card and ID’s… The thief had been pretending to be a guy inviting people to clubs, giving away flyers and stuff and then started “dancing” with this guy and off goes your stuff..!

Seriously, I’m telling you guys the same as my friend told us the first day we got to BCN: EVERYONE who comes to talk to you on La Rambla is a probable thief. So don’t talk to them, don’t stop and take care of your stuff! Everyone besides the “beer, cerveza?” –guys. They’re usually okay an’ if you should need some refill, they can save your day! :D

                         Remember to f*ck this on Facebook!                This guy is not one of the thiefs!

Anyway, we were so tired that we went back to hostel pretty early. We had some good night sleep until the next – and last day – in the sin city of Spain… On the last day we decided to go to the beach. Now this is what Sevilla lacks: the beach. Barcelona has several kilometers of nice beach where to sun bathe and chill out. The weather wasn’t the best though, but we enjoyed it.

After the beach we went to see this park designed by Antonio Gaudi. Very nice and modernistic park. What a shame that people of the time never understood it. By the way, while visiting the park, three (3!!) different people were trying to reach my friends purse – so annoying! Anyway, some time after the park we got back to the hostel and tried to get some sleep before our very, very early flight back to Sevilla.

After about 1,5 hours of sleep at 2 o’clock in the morning we headed out back to the airport and back to Sevilla. Back to safety from the city of pick pocketers, prostitutes and drug dealers :D I was back at work at 9 in the morning… pretty tired as you can imagine!

Tired but happy! 

I won’t break down tonight.
I feel it for the first time.
I feel it for the first time.

I found a new place here.
I’m coming down fast.

Afrojack & Steve Aoki feat. Miss Palmer "No Beef"

Escape to the sin city, part 2: Hello Barcelona!

Early on Thursday morning I headed out for the airport in Sevilla with a… let’s say a good friend ;) By the way we missed the airport bus, had to take a taxi instead and pay 25 euros instead of 2,30€… Nice start, aye? :D Anyway, by noon we were already walking in the streets of Barcelona, capital of Catalonia, Spain!

I chose to go to Barcelona as a friend of mine lives there and she promised to be a guide for us! However, on Thursday she was still on a 9 hour journey back from Madrid so the first day was very typical tourist day. We just wandered around the main street “La Rambla” and wondered all the crazy stuff going on in the “sin city” of Spain (nickname that I gave, not in general use).

In the evening, around 10 or 11 pm we agreed that we’d meet this friend of mine and go for “one” beer… Well you know what happens when you’re going for “one” with a friend you haven’t seen for a while :D So we crawled back to the hostel around 3 or 4 in the night after seeing half a dozen of the coolest bars in the Barcelona city center, some prostitutes in the notorious area of El Raval and some pickpocketers around La Rambla (which the city is infested with)!

Next day, Friday, we got up pretty late (I wonder why) and started to plan our next moves for the day. The plan was to meet up with my friend and go see some of the famous buildings designed by Antonio Gaudi, who had influenced to the architecture in Barcelona a lot. Also generally, Barcelona is very nice city to visit because of its modernism in the architecture!

After that, later in the evening it was time for an international dinner! We had appetizers from Colombia (some fried sliced banana with salt and cheese), main course from Finland (kesäkeitto = summer soup, milk based soup with a lot of vegetables ;) and the dessert from Holland (some sort of chocolate jelly)! Also the dinner party was very international as we had people from Finland, Holland, Austria, Lithuania and Mexico!

Later in the evening, we went shortly to meet my travel mate’s cousin and her friends. This time I was the only European as there were people from all over South-America: Mexico, Venezuela and so on! I have to say that South-Americans, they’re laid back people! :)

Even later from that, we headed out for some SERIOUS PARTYING at the biggest club in Barcelona: Razzmatazz! Well actually it’s around 6 or 7 clubs in 3 floors in the same club made out of old factory building… It was unbelievable! You could change from one “room” to another to listen some other kind of music style and choose whatever room you’d prefer… How cool is that!?

More about the escape to Barcelona on part 3!

Tell you like it is with a kiss,
Baby when it drips from your lips.
Tell you like it is it’s like this,
Don’t be such a slave to your brother.


Baby get shaky after school,
Oooh ooh ohhh ohhh there you ooh there you, baby go crazy break the rules,
Oooh ooh ohhh ohhhh there you ooh there you go go go go go go go go ohoh ohhh there you go go go go, ohhh ohhh there you go!

The Ian Carey Project – Get Shaky

Escape to the sin city, part 1: Semana Santa

Allrighty then, now I’m gonna tell you guys about my great escape from the Semana Santa in Sevilla. I started the planning when I got to know about the stuff going on here in Sevilla during the week. There was gonna be some interesting (crazy!) stuff going on and maybe a “few” people (tens of thousands!) hanging out on the streets in the centre (where I live!).

You see, Andalucía is entitled to be the most “Spanish” area in Spain. Also, it is the most religious area in Spain. And also, Easter a.k.a. Semana Santa is maybe the biggest religious festival. Of course there’s nothing wrong with being religious and stuff, but I still had to get out of the city and next I’m gonna explain why...
 

Festival of Semana Santa basically lasts for the whole week and obviously when the end of the week is coming closer, stuff gets more and more intensive. Every day there are thousands of people on the streets watching these never-ending parades going through the streets.

The parades consist of bands playing religious march music and of these HUGE structures of Santa Maria (St. Mary) carried on by dozens of men. The scariest part, however, are the brotherhoods that are also part of the parades. Basically there are hundreds of these dudes carrying candles and wearing robes. And guess what they look like when wearing those robes? The KKK my friend, it’s pretty scary!

So I was here in Sevilla until Thursday morning and actually it was interesting to see the parades go by my house. They started probably in the afternoon and kept going on until very late in the night. This thing is huge here! The guys who carry the St. Mary structures - they train for this week only for the whole f*cking year! I could see them training with these hugely heavy structures in the streets in February for example.

Anyway, all this stuff was very interesting as we don’t have anything like that in our culture.. BUT besides the fact that I’m not that religious myself and not THAT interested, I also wasn’t very keen to watch AND listen to the parades going below my balcony all day, EVERY day of the week....So I had to get away..! :D

When did punk rock become so safe?
When did the scene become a joke?
The kids who used to live for beer and speed
Now want their fries and coke
Cursing and flipping birds are not allowed,
In fact let's keep noise levels down

Must separate the church and skate!

NOFX – The Separation of Church and Skate 


PS. Would you like to know more? Here's another blogpost about the Semana Santa written by another amazed foreigner and actually I had to borrow the picture from there as well!

From Portugal with love..

This weekend I attended to a trip to Portugal arranged by a local event management company here in Sevilla. The trip started at Saturday morning instead of Friday evening what I originally assumed. This caused also problems for me as the journey was going to last until Monday instead of Sunday. Anyway, as the bus started, I took a look at the company we were travelling with. As usual, Americans are majority in these kinds of trips as there are hundreds of them studying here in Sevilla. Well that wasn’t problem for me as I get along pretty good with them and it’s always nice to meet new people.

I had no idea what Portugal would be like and therefore had no expectations either, nor positive or negative. I kind of imagined it would be pretty much the same as Spain with similar cities, landscape, nature, language and people. How wrong can one be! It was incredible how the landscape suddenly changed when we crossed the border. I don’t know if there are some other reasons for this, but at least in Portugal there wasn’t nearly as much farmed land as there is in Andalucía and that made the landscape very different. Different but beautiful.

We were bit unlucky with the weather and it was raining more or less for the whole weekend. That meant that going to beach wasn’t an option which changed the plans a little bit. I didn’t mind though, as I am usually not so keen on lying on the beach for hours. Instead we headed out to explore the city centre of Albufeira. Even though the city is very touristic, I have to say it is also beautiful with its white marble-like houses, beach and nice architecture. In the evening we all headed out together for a bar tour in the club street of Albufeira which was also pretty much fun!

The next day we departed at 12 o’clock in the morning to Lagos and Sagres, where you can visit the south westernmost point in Europe. The place was pretty amazing, there were very, very high and steep cliffs on the shore and it looked really magnificent. Also, in Sagres I met couple Finnish people having vacation and visiting the place which was a nice surprise. I guess we’re everywhere! Even more amazing than the cliffs in Sagres was the beach in Lagos... Small beach surrounded by high, steep cliffs, pure sand and extremely clear water… So beautiful that I thought I had died and ended up in the paradise! Then I figured I wouldn’t end up there anyway, so all this must be real :D Real but just amazingly beautiful!

The next day it was time to check out from the hotel and head out to a beach. But again, the rain messed out our plans and instead of going to the beach we went to visit a nice little town called Tavira. There we had couple of hours of time to walk around the city and have some lunch. Really nice and beautiful little town. Altogether Portugal must be the most beautiful country in Europe and definitely by far the most beautiful country I’ve ever visited! Also, the cities and landscape are somehow sympathetic and something I really like. In addition to all that, people in Portugal are very nice, friendly and most of them speak English.

This weekend convinced me so totally that I want to say if you are ever going to visit southern Europe, you should definitely put Portugal first in your list!

Nossa, nossa
Assim você me mata
Ai se eu te pego
Ai ai se eu te pego

Delícia, delícia
Assim você me mata
Ai se eu te pego
Ai ai se eu te pego

Michael Telo - Ai Se Eu Te Pego