Traditions: April 2002 Archives
Today is a special day. Not only because Barcelona is playing against Madrid, but also because today is Sant Jordi (you know, they guy who killed the dragon).
In Catalunya this day is celebrated by giving eachother presents. The boys give a rose to the girls, and in return they receive a book. For me this looks like a good deal, since the average book costs four times the price of a rose. So after work I went to town to buy a rose. This was not very difficult, since there were roses for sale on almost every corner and at every traffic light. Also books were available in plenty; Maria José bought a book of Alberto Vasquez for me.
On the news they showed the numbers of this day of books and roses (besides lot's of pictures of books and roses. Today the Catalan people bought 5,5 milion roses (there are 6 milion Catalans!) and 10% of the yearly volume of books was sold today!!!! Very impressive...
Sunday I wanted to write about the calçots. But after the calçots, I was too tired to write. And the days after I was luckily enough to have to work out of town, so I missed my 30 minutes of internet before lunch.
Anyway, three days ago was the day we had calçots; after all, it is the season for calçots. The week before we (or better MJ) was arranging all the things and inviting our friends. The Saturday afternoon we spent cleaning the garrage, so we could put there some big tables to eat on. When everybody arrived on Sunday, we first drunk a vermouth with some chips, mussels, olives, cheese...
Then the father of MJ arrived with the calçots. Calçot is family of the onion (I think it is leek / prei in Dutch), and over here prepared in a fire, so they are all black. You remove the black part, put the calçot through some special sauce and eat it like the Dutch eat herring. Delicious!
After the calçots we put some meat on the fire, and we finished with a big pie. To finish the activity good, MJ's sister Cristine and her boyfriend Pere told us that they had bought an appartment here in Alpicat.
