Titta crossing the borders: Celebrating (and) cultural differences

It’s been a while since my last blog post but somehow I have been able to convince myself that I am actually being busy even though I only have two courses to complete at the university! Well, let’s make this long break up with not only wrapping up what I’ve been up to but more importantly pointing out some cultural differences that I have paid attention to during past month especially while travelling and partying along with studies.

Let’s start with the famous Spanish conception of time. I guess most of you know that being punctual is not something really Spanish and also that people here eat lunch around 2-3pm and dinner around 9pm or maybe even later. Because I am a Finn, my hunger is really punctual and therefore I usually need to eat something between these two main meals and maybe also something little between breakfast and lunch. However, this is not the biggest source of problems caused by the time conception differences. Namely, the biggest difference in relation to timings and also one of the biggest reasons for me “being busy” is the fact that everything here starts really late and thus also ends late. The classes neither at school nor at gym never start on time but the best example of this are the parties. When we want to party, there is no point in going to a bar before 2am because there is nothing going on there earlier. However, after the first bar closes around 5am, you move on to the next one and next one and next one… It is not rare to visit to 3-4 bars during a night – or maybe more correctly during a morning – and then come back home some time after 8am. This leads to the fact that sleeping the whole next day is sort of necessary and if you are lucky enough, you’ll wake up right on time for the next party. What a great timing! With this kind of sleep pattern, unfortunately, the weekends pass by quite quickly without me having a chance to do something productive like writing a blog.

Xinzo de Limia

Xinzo de Limia and streets crowded with people in costumes

In addition to the normal student parties, we and the rest of the Spain have been celebrating the annual carnival before the Lent (40 days without meat and alcohol before the Easter) during the past week. During the carnival everyone – no matter if it is a toddler or an old lady – goes out to the streets wearing a funny costume and dancing to the music that comes out of various speakers playing different songs. By the way, wearing a police costume is nowadays illegal here. Moreover, at least in Xinzo de Limia which is a town close to Vigo, there are some weird traditions like the organizers throwing ants and flour to the public and hitting them with sticks because the organizers are representing the people who used to collect taxes apparently quite violently. The whole carnival couldn't differ more radically from the typical national celebrations in Finland when we listen to a couple of speeches freezing on the street or watching people shaking hands on TV for hours… If we are lucky, we might get fireworks which I unfortunately didn’t see here in Spain. The thing that impressed me the most was the ability of Spanish people to throw themselves into the party mood and take the role their costume represents. I wonder how many Finnish families would go out to celebrate together each family member having a costume of a Smurf or someone from the Flintstones.

The Flintstones family

Ice age in the "opening" parade

Aladdin in the "opening" parade

The traditional representations of the tax collectors

Whole Vigo watcing the parade

Even more interesting is that the carnival in many parts of Spain and also here in Vigo ends with people showing their grief of the celebration ending. On last Wednesday we had this “entierro de la sardina” (funeral of the sardine), the special event for this mourning period, to end the carnival. This really "sorrowful" event was basically a massive parade going through the city center in Vigo. People were still in their costumes but this time dressed like to a funeral and crying in the parade. Since I had heard already before that it is a celebration “full of sorrow”, I was rather surprised to see that after the parade there were people drinking and dancing cheerfully again on the street. And the music was anything but what you could imagine as a traditional carnival or funeral music – Pitbull and other club music. Due to the bad weather of the carnival opening weekend, we had the main carnival opening parade this Sunday ironically right when the carnival week was ending but it didn’t seem to bother the celebrators. There were amazing dances and groups with identical costumes having fun and showing what they had been practicing probably for months. The whole carnival was absolutely spectacular and definitely something that I recommend to experience if you happen to be in Spain during this time of the year. Hopefully the pictures give at least some sort of idea what we've been experiencing even though the quality of them is not too good!