Breakfast of Champions!

Today has been a very full day - and it is only 7pm. (Remember that here in Spain, the day doesn't end until midnight - at the earliest!). This morning I was invited by my downstairs neighbor to breakfast with them. Also invited were my upstairs neighbor, his novia, the dueña of this building and her gardener. Together we made quite a group. The hosts of this breakfast extravaganza are from Japan and have been living in Solsona for the past twenty years. They run a cultural exchange business between Catalunya and Japan - and they speak Catalan, Japanese and una mica of English. Javier (my upstairs neighbor) and his girlfriend Teresa are both from Madrid, but he has been living in Solsona for the past 4 years and as such has learned Catalan, but she only speaks Castellano. Elvira (my landlady) and Ignacio speak both Catalan and Castellano, but of course primarily Catalan. Me, well, I'm beginning to recognize a few words in Catalan, but still wouldn't say I know it. So it was fantastic mix of languages and cultures, this neighborly breakfast. Kasuko is so warm and friendly and eager to communicate - she speaks in Catalan to me and throws in a few English words here and there and I answer in Castellano and some English and little by little we decipher what the other is trying to say. Que chulo!

The breakfast itself was a surprising event. It was HUGE! The table was laid with fresh tomatoes and garlic, olive oil and salt, and a bottle of red wine. The cooking was down on the fireplace in the middle of the living room where we all congregated. They were roasting sausage and morcilla and something that looked a bit like bacon but was really thick and VERY fatty. The bread was cut from a gigantic loaf, creating slices as long as my forearm and almost as wide as the span of my palm. They too were toasted on the fire. This is a very typical Catalan breakfast. The slices of toast are prepared thus - each person doing so individually: a clove of raw garlic is rubbed over the slice, then a tomato is sliced in half and smeared over the top of the bread as well, to moisten it, then it is drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with salt. The meat is eaten either separately or folded into the toast and eaten together. And the wine. Oof! They were drinking like champions at 10 in the morning! I was completely stuffed, but it was delicious. Then the plates were cleared and the wanted to do a "chin chin", a toast, so out came the cava and we all had a little sparkling wine and toasted to some saint. Pretty much every day here is the day of some saint or other. There are a bizillion of them! Then came postre and cafe - fruit and toasted walnuts in the shell, and pieces of chocolate. By the time breakfast was over, around 12:30pm, I was ready to go back to bed. But it was wonderful. Here are a few photos of the cooking and laid table. Check out the wine bottle... the men tip their heads back and a stream of wine comes out from the tip of that container and they drink directly from the bottle. What a trip Spain is.

After breakfast, and digesting por un rato,  I went for a spectacular long run into the countryside. I finally made it to the bridge that I mentioned in my last post about running. It took about 30 minutes to get there and it was a gorgeous day today, sparkling sun and fresh air. The bridge is an amazing old stone structure, towering up into the trees, in the roman style, like a large acqueduct. It is stunning. And I repeat: Life is Good.