Christmas in Spain

Every time when I travel to Spain I surprise how many different cultures and traditions this one country contains. Not only their language and traditions are different but also the people of that region believe that they should be independent from each other. This time I had a chance to get to know more of the Christmas and New Year’s Eve traditions in the Basque country and the Catalonia. 

The Basque country is much different from the other parts of Spain. Not only the Euskara language is the oldest in Europe but it’s also unique from other languages. The Basque country also has their autonomy which separates the region from the other parts of Spain. Even though Basques are strong in their nationalist habits, they are curios to get to know foreigners and are generally very welcoming people. 

Basque country has probably the best food in the whole Spain. The tiny city of San Sebastian has more Michelin stars per capita than anywhere else in the world. The Basque version of tapas is called pintxos and these little bites don’t only taste good but also look like pieces of art. Also because located on the coast, Basque country is famous from their seafood. Therefore, also the Christmas dinner mostly contained seafood treats such as squid, oysters, crab and local fish. Different but delicious! 

The funniest Christmas traditions what I’ve ever seen is the Catalonian pooping figures. Caganer, which is a pooping boy, symbolizes down to earth people while a pooping log, known as cagatio, is found in every family of Catalonia. One end of the log has a face painted on it. Near Christmas this log with a face painted on one end is draped over with a blanket and on the Christmas Eve kids beat it with sticks and exhort it to defecate. When they lift away the blanket, they find treats hidden beneath – treats, their parents tell them, that the log has pooped out. The Catalonian saying explains about this tradition: “The king poops, the Pope poops. Nobody can escape it.”

Being fooled in Milan

The more you travel to different countries and places the more confident you get about your own knowledge about travelling in general and how to act in certain situation. When you are still a novice in travelling, you get suspicious easily and might not know who to trust or recognize if someone is trying to fool you. After travelling in Asia and being fooled so many times, I thought that inter-railing in Europe is a piece of cake. This turn out to be something totally different…

When I stopped in Milan for couple of hours to change my train on a way to Zürich from Rimini, I decided to take a subway to check the famous Dome in the center of Milan. I looked that it would be only couple of stations away from the main station and I would have enough time to go there. When I was struckeling to buy a ticket from a vending machine which only worked in Italian, what seemed to be a nice man asked if I needed any help. He helped me to choose a return ticket which seemed to be the price I also thought it would be. The ticket worked fine and I was happy that there were still people who would help a lost tourist in this world. 

So I saw the magnificent Dome of Milan but I couldn’t really enjoy the sightseeing while I was stressing to catch my train on time. So I hurried back to the subway station and wondered why my ticket didn’t work anymore even that it was supposed to be a return ticket! Then I realized what had happened before! This nice man, who had offered to help me, instead of a return ticket had bought two one-way tickets! And this worked fine because when I had my ticket in hand, I turned around and ran to the subway, while this man went to the vending machine to pick up the second ticket the machine had printed out. And when I checked the back information of the ticket it said that it is valid for months and it has to be marked before using. So this man was fooling stupid tourists at the station to get free tickets for him which he could use in many months ahead. 

When I realized what just had happened I felt so stupid that I had been so blue-eyed and believed the good will of this stranger. In the end, the situation actually only made me smile because this man was so cleaver to fool me in a place where I never thought I would get fooled.     

A volunteer project with uni

After I finished my studies through the exchange program, I stayed in Bali for another 3 months to do my internship at the same university. I helped the new exchange students to settle down to the uni life and organized events together with the local students. I also took part on a volunteer project where we took clothes and other things to one poor family together with the students and our teacher. Here is the story of the family.

In the village of Bangli lives one family of four generations. I Gusti Ngurah is one of the thee brothers of the family. He is only 21 years old but is already married and has two children. When I Gusti was young, he had a motorbike accident and his right leg was damaged. Because of his family didn't have money for the operation, he lost his leg and now has an artificial leg as a donation from one association. While he cannot do too physical work, he makes baskets out of bamboo for living.

His wife, Uspita, 22 years old, has also a physical disadvantage while she cannot use her right hand since she was born. Therefore, it makes it even more difficult for both of them to take care of their  two children, both under 2 years old.

I Gusti and his family live together in the same house with his parents and two younger sister, Asea 4 years old and Dewi 10 years old. Both of the parents are farmers growing cucumbers on a rental field. However, that doesn't make enough money to support the whole family.

Also I Gusti's granparents live in the same village, in a small one room house next to them. Both of the grandparents are over 70 years old and still working as farmers to make enough money for the family. The grandparents have always lived in the same village and never been anywhere else.

The house where the family lives has two rooms, one for I Gusti, his wife and two children, one for his parents and his two sisters. They also share a small kitchen corner together. The house is build from left over materials and as the wind on the mountains gets sometimes really strong, it sometimes blows the walls of the house down.










It also gets really cold there at nights and therefore the donation of clothes from the students was really needed. It also rains quite often on the mountains and the roof of the house leaks from many places. The whole village has one Asian style toilet and a bucket shower but nobody uses them while the people of the village are used to do their needs behind their houses and have a bath on the river nearby.



Our teacher visited this village couple of weeks ago because the mother of I Gusti is originally from the same village as he is. As also in the Balinese Hindu religion has a belief to help each other, he wanted to support this family by donating money for I Gusti to make a living in the future. 2.5 million Rupiahs is enough for I Gusti to buy seeds of a special flower which can be grown on the mountains and sold for 10 000 Rp per kilo and during the special Balinese ceremonies for 25 000 Rp per kilo. As a farmer, I Gusti can work on his own and rest every time when he needs because of his disability.

 

...Lost in translation... couple words of Bahasa Indonesia

Indonesian language is not actually that hard to learn.  For example, Indonesian people don’t use the be-verb at all and they don’t have any past or future sentences. If you want to say that you have done something yesterday or you will do something tomorrow, you will simply add yesterday or tomorrow in the normal sentence. Also the way they make plural words is quite funny because when they want to say a word in plural, they only say that word twice in a row, such as, boys = laki-laki.  The only difficult thing to remember is that they have possession sentences other way round, such as my book = buku saya, book mine.

For Finnish people the pronunciation of the Indonesian words is quite easy because also in Indonesian words all the letters are said. There are also some funny words in Indonesian which are similar to Finnish but have a different meaning, such as rumah = a house, sekolah = a school, satu = number 1, lima = number 5. 

One funny thing about Indonesians is that they don’t want to distinguish people’s sex but rather they pay attention to the number order of the children in the family. This means that there is only one word for she and he but then they have different words for big brother and sister and little brother and sister. Also the names of the Indonesian people are given depended on what number you are in the family, such as Wayan 1^st, Made 2^nd, Nyoman 3^rd and Ketut 4^th child. 5^th child starts the list again so there might be many children called Wayan in the family. The names are same for girls and boys but for boys they ad I and for girls Ni in the front of the name. So that's why Balinese people’s names are easy to remember because they only have 4 names they use. :)

The crazy traffic

One of the most interesting things here in Bali is the traffic. The roads are narrow so the traffic jam is inevitable in certain parts of Bali. Therefore the best way to get from one place to another is driving with a scooter.  The scooter is small enough to past the traffic jams also from the smallest spaces. There are more motorbikes than people in Bali so everyone from a child to an old man uses them. Every day you see an entire family driving on a scooter and people carrying what most interesting stuff on their scooters.  

The traffic is also one of the most dangerous things in Bali. Even thought you drive here on the left side of the road, it is not the biggest difference when compared to driving in Finland. When you look at the traffic first, it looks chaotic and you are not that tempted to drive there yourself. However, there are actually certain unwritten rules for driving here and the traffic goes with a flow quite smoothly.  The best way to drive here is to follow the locals and be rather selfish than give too much space for the other drivers. If you suddenly stop to give away for another driver, the drivers behind you are not expecting that and they might crash you. Also, how strange it might sound, sometimes it is better to drive towards the red lights than stop in the last minute because the locals behind you most likely won’t stop there and then they will crash you if you stop too early. :)

One annoying issue about the traffic here is the traffic police. When you look like a tourist, the local police will stop you for any reason to get your money.  I was once stopped by a police when I didn’t stop on the right line for the red lights. Because I also didn’t have my international driving license with me, I was supposed to pay fines for two mistakes. In those kind of situations it is really useful to know couple of phrases in Indonesian and especially to say that you are a student in a local uni. If you just keep smiling and stay friendly with the police, in the best scenario you will survive from the situation with only a warning.  :)

Everyday-life in Bali

Getting used to the every day-life here has been quite interesting because the way of living differs so much from the routines in Finland. For example the eating habits are different from back home, because Balinese eat rice for every occasion, which means rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Any Western food is really expensive here and therefore I also eat rice and noodles every day. Luckily eating in a local restaurant here is so cheap that there is no point of cooking your own dinner. 

Balinese people are really friendly people and they are always smiling to you. Even the people you don’t know comes to ask from you how are you or where are you staying at. Not all the locals speak good English so they get really happy if you can say couple of words in Bahasa Indonesia. It is also useful to know a couple of phrases of the language when you buy something from the markets and you can bargain like the locals. 

Balinese people are also quite religious. Their main religion is Balinese Hinduism which is also influenced by naturalism and animism. Balinese people try to obtain a balance and a harmony in their life by keeping both the people and the gods happy. They also believe in the law of karma and therefore all the little gestures have an impact. There are temples everywhere in Bali including in every home and almost in every habit or event has a spiritual meaning. There are ceremonies almost every other day and during the ceremonies people have a day off from work because they are busy of making all the offerings ready for the gods. There are also many customs which are important to know so you won’t insult the local people. For example you are never allowed to point someone with your finger or give something with your left hand (the toilet hand). 

Studying in Bali - what is that?

My University started two weeks ago. The Udayana University is located in the capital city, Denpasar, and driving to there takes about 20-30 min depending on the traffic.  During the first week we took a taxi to the Uni because we didn’t know the way and driving with a taxi is really cheap here. Now we are driving to the Uni with the scooters but we still get lost almost every day, because the way is not that easy to remember. :)

 

Studying here is not that difficult but the quality of the teaching still surprised me in a good way. We have quite many hours of the Indonesian language and the rest of the studies are mostly about tourism, business and culture in South East Asia and mostly in Indonesia and in Bali. Indonesian language is not actually that hard and because we use it all the time, we learn every day something new. We have lessons only from Monday till Wednesday and Thursdays we have a cultural workshop where we get to know about the Bali culture. The lessons are in the mornings so in the afternoons we also have time to go to the beach. The nearest beach from our villa is about 10 min with the scooter so not that far at all!

The way of life here is really laid-back and the Balinese are not that strict with the time. This is also seen at the Uni because often we might go to a lesson and find out that it has been cancelled. The facilities at the Uni building are not that great and for example the Uni library is really old-fashioned. There is one computer available in the whole faculty and if you want to print out something, you have to ask from the student office.

Our exchange program, Asia Exchange, organized us a big ice-breaking party in a cool beach lounge last Saturday. The club was huge and there was a big pool downstairs. There are many clubs and bars in Kuta so you can have a good night out any day of the week.

Last week we also made a visit to a local orphanage which the Asia Exchange also supports. There were about 70 children living in the orphanage and they were all so happy and excited to meet us. The children were really talented and were singing to us and playing different instruments. Some of them could also speak good English. The visit there was an eye-opening experience and I wish to visit there again while I’m in Bali.