Fallas!!!!!


       If blogger would let me make the heading bigger I would. Ever since I arrived in Valencia all I heard about was you are so lucky that you decided to study abroad 1) in Spain and 2) in Spain during spring. This is due to the sole fact that Valencia has one of the worlds biggest festivals for four days from March 15th to the 19th of every year (and you don't have to miss the football season).  When I say a large festival I'm going to paint you a picture. Valencia is the third largest city in Spain, and has a million citizens. During Fallas the population TRIPLES! That is three million people packed into only the old historic block of Valencia. It's intense. Everywhere you wanna go takes you five times longer than normal to get there. All of the streets are shoulder to shoulder as you walk.

Side note: this event also brings all of Spain's most talented pick-pockets into one city. watch out!

       Anyways for four days the city goes crazy. No one really works. There are restaurants and grocery stores open but other than that; no one works. They close down the streets and everyone takes part in the festivities. I forgot to mention this earlier but starting on the 12th of March, every day at two o'clock in the afternoon they have a thing called the Mascletá. Its kinda hard to explain but they fence off the center of the city's main plaza (Probably 40 yards by 60 yards), and fill it with fire crackers. Im not talking about m-80's either. These firecrackers are bombs. They have a five minute show each day and you feel like you are in a war zone. The firecrackers are about the size of three Nestle tollhouse cookie dough rolls taped together. No exaggerations. When they go off, if you are within a hundred yards of it it feels like someone has just punched you in your chest. IT'S WILD! For those of y'all who knew me well when I was young I am a huge Piro and I looked forward to this event every day. I only missed one and that was because my tuesday Spanish class doesn't get out until two and it would be impossible to make it there in time/ get a good seat with three million people in front of me. Anyways the point of the Mascletá is the sound not the view. The piro who designed it has essentially created the worlds loudest drum line. My favorite part is the last two minutes of the Mascletá. It is essentially the grand finally and there is so much smoke given off by the "petardos" or firecrackers that it blocks out the sun. You are in a shaded war zone. The majority of the time we left early enough to be really really close. To the point that we were getting hit with parts of the partardos and left at the end of the show covered in the remnants. The crazy thing is that as the week goes on and it gets closer to the nineteenth they bring in better and better piros to do the Mascletá. It is said that between the Mascletá and the 45 min firework shows that would go off each night, the piros come to Fallas every year to test out fireworks for the next Olympics. They see how the millions of people react to different things so they can combine the fireworks that evoke the best reaction and have one hell of a show for the next Olympics.
       Next is the Fallas. If you don't know what they are they are floats that range from "ninots" which are about ten feet tall to the HUGE Fallas that are five stories tall. During the entire year teams of artists construct the falls out of wood, styrofoam, paper maché, and paint. By March 15th their are over three hundred and fifty Fallas throughout the city. After they have all been judged and they have given people time to look at them for a few days, THEY BURN THEM! All three hundred fifty plus five story to ten foot Fallas burn at midnight on the 19th. It must look like the entire city is on fire from an areal view.
       My Favorite Falla was one of D'Vinci. It was one of the five story ones, it it was amazing to see burn.  I could sit here and describe it to you all day but I would rather show you pictures to safe us both time.

I had the best seat in the house to watch D'Vinci Burn. (ps It was really really hot)

D'Vinci's face melting. 

Burn Baby BURN!

how they are made. 

how they pice them together

D'Vinci before being light on fire. 

This one they do not burn, it is the Virgin Mary. Everything but her head, the staff, and the babies are flowers. REALLy impressive. 

classic. 

bull fight. 

back of D'Vinci

There was a whole section of town that had lights like this. 

Spring Break Part 5: Dublin!

       Were going to Ireland! The interesting thing about our travel plans from Munich to Ireland were that Ryan Air, the cheap European Airline, likes to fly into and out of cities that are "close" to where you really want to go. So to get to dublin we ended up taking a bus to an airport that would take us to dublin. The bus ride to the airport was thirty minutes longer than our flight to Dublin. Classic Ryan Air.
     
ANYWAYS....

       Once in Dublin we met up with our long lost friend Drew who had been traveling the majority of spring break by himself. After a delicious meal consisting of an open faced roast beef sandwich with onions and gravy, we met up with the girls. After reminiscing about all of our adventures and what places we like best we decided to, go eat again.

       Paul, mike, and I had been on a hot streak of finding amazing places to eat at good prices. We knew where we wanted to eat and how to get there. This quickly changed when our group expanded by seven people. Not only did we have to wait for ten people to get ready instead of three guys. It seemed impossible to meet everyones needs/wants for dinner. After wondering around for an hour and having to convince one of the girls that we didn't want to eat mexican in Ireland, we found a great place to eat.

       It was after dinner that the shenanigans began. It was one our buddies 20th birthday and we wanted to go celebrate. After finding a suggest bar called "dicey's" or something, we enjoyed the night. It was one for the books.

       The next morning we got a good jump on the day and headed to the Guinness factory! It was really cool. After buying your ticket on the first floor you make your way through a self guided tour. They uses a series of T.V's and videos to explain the history of how the company got started and the Ingredients that they use. Along with a few interesting facts. Aurthor Guinness, the founder of Guinness was so confident about his stout that he signed a 9000 year lease on the property. This was in 1759, which means that Guinness has 8747 more years left on their lease!!! Once you finish your self guided tour you can use your ticket stub to enjoy a free Guinness up at the "Gravity Bar". The Gravity Bar is a bar on the top of the Guinness factory where all the walls are glass and it has a 365° view of the city of Dublin.

       After our departure from the Guinness factory, we went back to the hostel and recharged our batteries before going out for Mike's birthday dinner and a pub or two.

Sadly the next morning was the end of spring break and we had to return to Valencia.

Here's some pictures from dublin though:

The group at the Gravity Bar. 

Spring Break Part 4: Munich! 


       So after our brief stay in Venice, we hopped on a night train to Munich instead of paying for a hostel and then having to buy a train ticket in the morning. It turned out to be cheaper but not that comfortable of a nights sleep. Paul, Mike, and I bought our tickets separately so we didn't have to figure out who owed who. However, because of this we had seats scattered all around the train. The train didn't look that full so we decided that we would just take over one of the cabins. The cabin had six seats (two rows) facing each other. Instead of all of us trying to sleep all night sitting up, I elected to sleep on the floor between the two rows and that way mike and paul could lay down. Like I said not a great nights sleep, but absolutely worth it because we got more time in Munich which is one of my favorite cities now!
       When we got to our hostel at 6:30 in the morning, our rooms were not ready naturally, so we just sat in the lobby (for four hours) until places to eat opened. When we returned from breakfast, our room was ready so we placed all of our bags down and then asked the man at the front desk for some fun things to do. He suggested that we go to a castle named Neuschwanstein; the castle that Disney modeled Cinderella's castle after. Seeing as this was one of the things that Mrs. Johnson, a family friend that's kinda like a second mom, told me I had to do; we did it. However it required another train to get there. 
    We went back to the train station and we asked for three tickets to Füssen (a small city outside of the castle) the guy said, "how about five". Thinking this was a joke we said that we only wanted three. But then he told us about a thing called the “Bavaria Pass”. It is a round trip ticket to Füssen for five people and it was only 23 euros! This turned out to be a lot cheaper so we did it. It was nice because as we were waiting for our train people would come up and offer us money to hop on as one of the five people on our pass. We ended up allowing a good looking  German girl who was about twenty six, on as our forth. Paul was in love with her.


Here's a picture from the train window on the way to Füssen: 

I couldn't beehive there was still snow everywhere. 

       After our two hour train ride, we were there. Well, kinda. We still had to get on a bus that would take us to the bottom of the hill where the castle was. We could see the castle as we approached the hill, it was gynormous! It put all the castles in Spain to shame. This is what we saw as we were driving in on the bus:

I didn't take this picture, but this is the castle in winter. You'll see why I couldn't use my photo in a min. 

The bus dropped us off at the bottom of the hill and this beauty was over our shoulder. 

      We then purchased our tickets for the  bigger castle and the guy behind the counter told us it was a 40 minute walk up to the top where the castle was. We made it up in 15. Yes, I timed it. This gives you a hint as to how fast we walked our entire trip. 
       When we got to the top this is what we really saw: 

 The majority of it was covered in scaffolding. They are restoring it or something.  

       As bummed as we were we continued on with our tour of it. The good news is that the scaffolding did not affect the beauty of the inside. As we walked through "Cinderella's Castle" we learned about the lives of Ludwig I and Ludwig II. Pretty cool stuff. 


Here's some pictures from outside the castle: 

If you look closely there is a bridge that we wanted to walk across be we didn't know how to get there.
Later our tour guide told us that you have to tress pass to get onto it. Which explains why there were no signs telling us how to get there. 

       After walking back down the hill we realized we had just missed the bus back to the train station. When we looked at the bus schedule it said the next bus came in an hour. Instead of sitting out in the cold we decided to walk the 4k back to the train station. It turned out to be a nice walk and we got to see some cool sights. 


Here's some pictures from our walk. 

That Wraps up day 1. 

       The next morning we got up at 10:00 to go on a tour of Munich. I don't want to tell you the whole tour but I will tell you that the whole city's history is based off of beer! Which was really cool to hear how much  it influenced what when on back in the day. Also every time our Australian tour guide said beer he would 1) yell it. 2)throw his hands over his head.  3) have the biggest grin on his face. It made the tour a lot more fun. 

Here's some pics from the tour: 

The Famous Glockenspiel Clock. (youtube it, it has really old animatronics)

Quarter million eruo watch that doesn't tell time. 

We walked by this on our tour. They Love Michael Jackson. They covered a cool historical figure statue that is outside the hotel MJ used to stay at with flowers pictures and candles. Our guide said that everyday people light candles and bring fresh flowers. 

The "Devils Footprint" in one of their churches. The story behind it is way to long to blog about but I'll tell you if you ask me in person. 

BEER GARDEN! This is one of the coolest things about Germany. It will be a sunny Tuesday at 3:00 in the afternoon and the beer garden will be packed. (They only sell beer in the beer garden by the liter and half liter)

The Hofbrauhaus. Know for where the Nazi's would declare policies and hold parties. 

Initially a Nazi symbol on the roof of the Hofbrauhaus. But they painted flags over it. If you  look closely you can see the difference between the old paint and the new. 

When we finished with our tour we grabbed some food and a beer in the beer Garden and then headed over to the BMW factory. It was really cool they had the original air plane engine (for those of you who don't know they weren't initially a car manufacturer) that put them on the map. Along with all the cars they and motorcycles they have ever made. 

Here some pictures for car enthusiast: 

The old Formula One steering wheel 

The new Formula One steering wheel ('08)

All the logos of car names on a hanging timeline. 

One of the cars Pierce Brosnan Drove in James Bond. 

To top it all off here is the environment and the type of food we ate while we were there. 

12 weissbiers on tap. 

A hearty meal of meat potatoes and Gravy, with a Weissbier. 

My favorite part about germany is the environment in which you eat. Two stories packed with Germans being loud, eating hefty meals, and continually laughing with deep jolly laughs. This is some of the best food I have ever had.