Este finde

Fin de semana is "weekend" in Spanish, and I've learned that here people often shorten it to "finde" when talking informally. So to give you an idea of what I did on a pretty typically (so far) finde for me:

Fridays everyone in the lab usually works half days, so this Friday after work I got off the metro two stops early and went into the center of the city, where I normally don't have much occasion to go to. I tried a really good Middle Eastern restaurant and had kebab, which here usually means kebab meat wrapped up like a burrito in pita bread. I stopped at H&M and el Corte Inglés (nice department store that has locations all over Spain)…it's fun being within walking distance of everything!

Saturday I went to the Museo de la Inquisición (Museum of the Inquisition), since I don't know much about the Spanish Inquisition and wanted to learn more. The museum is in el Castillo de San Jorge, a castle that was the seat of the Inquisition in Sevilla for three centuries, 1481-1785. And it's basically down the street from my apartment! The museum was small, but I learned that the Inquisition originally started because the Catholics in power wanted to ensure that Jews and Muslims who had converted to Catholicism had converted fully, and it got out of control from there, with thousands of people imprisoned and executed for heresy and other crimes. There were also a lot of ruins to see, because the castle was originally an Arab necropolis several centuries before it was taken over.

Later that afternoon I met up with my friend Marga, who is from northern Spain and just started working in Sevilla last month as an engineer at Abengoa, an international "innovative technology solutions for sustainability" company whose headquarters are in Sevilla. I met her through one of her work mates who used to be a member of my research group, and whom I met at the conference the group was holding when I first got to Sevilla. Anyway, she wants to practice her English and I want to practice my Spanish, and we've had fun hanging out together.

So on Saturday afternoon we walked around the center of the city (see pretty picture below), and ran into a free concert that was going on all day. We came back later that night, along with another one of Marga's friends from work (who's a chemist), and then went out for drinks at a few bars. I got home after 3, which is a perfectly normal time for Spaniards on the weekend! DST ended here that night… at Carleton the change in time always meant YES another hour to work on my problem set! but this weekend it was more like, well, it's like I only stayed out until 2am instead of 3am. :)

El centro por la tarde

Today I just slept in, cleaned, Skyped, went for a run (along the river…very picturesque although I miss the Arb!) and planned for my trip to Barcelona next weekend!! More details soon. :)