A'dam

Last weekend, I went a visited a friend who is studying in Amsterdam. Amsterdam was a really neat city. Every one bikes every where and there are canals and house boats and a whole host of exciting, interesting things. My first day in Amsterdam, my friend and her roommate took us on a tour of the city. We went to the main square and the red light district, and ate lunch in a really cool public library. On Saturday, we went to the market and had Turkish pizza, which was very good. We also went to the Nemo, which was a really great interactive science museum, which you definitely need a whole day to appreciate, and we went to see the Anne Frank House.

This picture is from the top of a secret tree-house-like reading cubby in the children's section. Also, they use the Dewey Decimal system at the public library in Amsterdam.

The Bronze Bust statue in the Red Light District.

Boats and a canal.

Windmill! This windmill is actually used as a brewery now.

Ducks... with Susie!

This picture is of the paving tiles outside of my friend's apartment complex, and shapes of the paving tiles reminded me a bit of some of the fracture and stability textures. My friend was right when she said that there weren't really any rocks in Amsterdam. There were some paving stones that looked like they were made out of the really well-known black marble from Austurias, which makes sense since the Netherlands used to be a part of the Spanish Empire. There were also some interesting paving stones in the red light distict that were a pink granite, although some had ductile shear zones in them.

.I had to take a picture of the Pyrenees, since I crossed them more successfully than Hannibal, and he's well-known in Salamanca, since he said that the women of Salamanca were the fiercest in the world after they attacked his army and held them at bay for a couple days.

Student strike and San Alberto

So last week, there was a massive student strike planned, and the students were going to blockade the buildings and everything, but it ended up not being a big deal. Most of the students didn't go to class, but the University hired security to prevent them from blockading buildings. There was a pretty big protest in the Plaza Mayor (a couple thousand students were there), but the protests during classes were much more disruptive. Apparently, things were a bit more interesting the Facultad de Historia y Geografía, because there were some students trying to convince other students not to go to class, but most of the foreign students went anyway, because the Bologna Treaty benefits them.

I went to my geo lab, and the prof blamed the low attendance (I was the only student) on the fiesta for San Alberto, who is the patron saint of the Facultad de Ciencias. For the fiesta, there were a lot of good costumes. There was the lab coat (a very useful accessory, because it can be worn for the fiestas for science, medicine, biology and chemistry (chemistry and biology have their own facultads, so they have their own patron saints)), cowboys (the geo department dressed like cowboys), and a very impressive group of people dressed like planets and moons (they even orbited each other).

Halloween

I know this is a little late, but I was waiting for pictures from some friends (I didn't bring my camera out into the rain), and I was otherwise occupied with writing papers and reading Terry Pratchett (I don't mean to say that reading for pleasure is more important than keeping people informed about what I've been up to, although, if you haven't read any Terry Pratchett, I highly recommend him).
So Halloween...
The day before Halloween, IES organized a spooky tour of Salamanca for us, and we learned a lot of obscure, interesting facts about the city. We went to the Cueva de Salamanca, which is associated with a legend where the devil taught classes in witch-craft to 7 university students in exchange for the soul of one of them, but he was eventually tricked by a clever student. We also visited the cathedral and learned more about the "victor" which is the symbol that PhD recipients get to paint on the walls in their facultades. In the good old days, when the university was housed in the cathedral because there wasn't any university building yet, students who passed their exams and got their degrees were expected to throw a huge party afterwards, complete with bull fights (they used the blood of the bulls to paint the victor). However, this was fairly expensive, so poor students would say that a family member had died to avoid all of the hubbub and cost. This eventually lead to a rumor that getting your PhD at USal would lead to the death of your family members. We also visited the Casa de los Muertos (House of the Dead), which was the house of an old Salamantino family that had on-going feuds with another local family in a manner that strongly reminded me of Romeo and Juliet.
On Halloween, there is a tradition where a man climbs outside the Cathedral to the highest bell tower and plays a flute and drum and sings and releases a dove. This tradition started in 1757 after the earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal, during which the tower of the cathedral cracked, but the family that lived there to ring the bells always rang the highest bell in the tower for All Saints Day, but they couldn't get up there because the crack in the tower broke the staircase. To fulfill their obligation, one member of the family climbed the outside of the tower to ring the bell. Later, the tradition moved to October 31, so it wouldn't conflict with All Saints Day celebrations.
Here are some pics (that I mostly got from other people), and a video of the guy on top of the cathedral.
Our pumpkin, which won the pumpkin carving contest is the rana.

I dressed up like a mouse, with a tail and whiskers.

The cathedral climber on a balcony.


On top of the cathedral, sitting on the weather vane.

Here's the link to the Mariquelo playing and singing from the top of the cathedral:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOIZF1oHa_A

Toledo

A few weekends ago, IES took us to Toledo, which is a city just South of Madrid which is famous for its cultural history (it is known as the 'city of 3 cultures'), its swords and its marzipan.
Toledo used to be the capital of Spain, and, because of that, it is both a surrounded by walls, both natural and man-made and the River Tajo.

Walls and bridges

City of 3 cultures:
Like every Spanish city, Toledo has a cathedral, but unlike many other Spanish cities, the cathedral in Toledo is actually an important part of people's every-day lives. Toledo is considered the most religious city in Spain, and daily mass at the cathedral is usually well-attended.
In the past, though, think pre-1500, Toledo was known for having the largest Jewish population in Spain, and one of the largest in Europe. Toledo was also ruled by the Moors for 500 years, and during this time, about the last century or so of Moorish rule, Toledo managed to support a population of Christians, Muslims, and Jews, although they all lived in separate parts of the city, which were walled and isolated from each other at night.
A great example of the mix of 3 cultures in Toledo is in the synagogue of Santa María la Blanca, which was designed by Muslim architects, used as a synagogue, and then converted into a church/ convent.
This façade is from another synagogue in Toledo, and will show up in a slightly different form later.
Since Toledo was the biggest city in Spain during the late 1400's, it was also an important place for the Reyes Catolicos (Fernando and Isabel). They had actually planned on being buried in Toledo, but changed their minds after conquering Granada. They constructed Monasterio de San Juan de los Reyes for their tombs, but ended up donating it to an order on monks.
Tanto monta, monta tanto, is an idiomatic expression that roughly translates into 'one is equal to the other', and it was used during the reign of Isabel and Fernando to signify that they were equals. It can be found in a lot of the buildings that they built (like the Alczár place in Segovia).

Swords:
While we were in Toledo we went to the factory that made the swords that were used in the Lord of the Rings movies, and we got to see swords being made and iron being deorated with gold.
Forge that is dormant, but you can see a pile of swords to be finished in the lower left-hand corner, and some iron to be turned into swords on the right-hand side of the picture.

Here a metal-worker is decorating iron pendants with gold wire. The pendants are made in molds and have little grooves in the top. He puts the gold wire (which he draws himself) into the grooves, and then the whole thing gets re-heated, and the iron turns black and the gold stays nice and shiny.

Marzipan:
Toledo had very tasty (although very expensive) marzipan.
Here is a model of nuns making marzipan that was in a window of one of the marzipan stores in Toledo.
Here is the façade of the Synagogue del Tránsito, but this time it's made of marzipan.

Toledo is also famous for being the home of el Greco, the famous painter. While in Toledo, we went to see the 'Entierro de Conde Orgaz', which is one of his most famous paintings.
Toledo also had really great rocks. The city is located on a reverse fault from the Hercynian Orogen and is built on a migmatite complex (if you click on the picture, you can see better detail of some migmatite structures).
My 900-page long 'Geología de España' textbook definitely comes in useful at times like this (I actually consider it one of my best purchases so far. My only complaint is that it doesn't have a very good index).

Besides having amazing outcrops of really interesting rocks around the city, there are also some great building stones in Toledo (like there are in all proper Spanish cities...).

Also, a picture of some ducks for my friend Cori...
and windmills in the sunset.

US Elections

I watched the US elections tonight from the BBC coverage, and found it very amusing. British journalists are a lot more confrontational than US journalists, and they argue with the experts on the news station, which is very amusing. Also, they used a lot of geology terms, notably: seismic, tectonic plates, and mountain building were mentioned.

Oh, plus, a republican ambassador to the UN told the BBC that they should fire one of their reporters...