A 'fun' fast?

Well, I wouldn't necessarily call it 'fun', but my experience with Yom Kippur was definitely an different one, and many parts of it were very enjoyable. For those of you who don't know, last Saturday was the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, where you fast and atone for your sins.  I went to services Friday night in a banquet room of a hotel. There were probably about 80-100 people there, which is extremely small in comparison to the hundreds I'm used to at home and even at WashU. While the service was done in Spanish and Hebrew instead of English and Hebrew, it was comforting how similar it all was and I thought it was so cool that Jews all over the world do the same things on the holidays.

After a delicious meal of mexican food, we began our fast.  I arrived at the hotel Saturday morning for services (more than an hour and a half late) and was surprised at how few people were there. The evening services were so much more crowded than the morning services, the opposite of what i'm used to (I don't even really go to evening services at home. When in Spain you stay up so late, it's understandable there isn't that much activity in the mornings, you've got to sleep sometime).  That afternoon I went on a search for bagels, not such an easy thing to find. I found myself at the American grocery store, and bought frozen bagels. They weren't like Finagle-A-Bagel from home, but they would have to do. At around 9:45pm we finally broke the fast (Spanish dinner time of course), filled with bagels, cream cheese and lox, salads, fruit, desserts and more.

The funny part of this evening came after we broke the fast.  We went to a 'post Yom Kippur' fiesta at a bar/club and I felt like I was at a bar-mitzvah. They played Spice Girls and Grease, a guy who likes taking pictures was taking pictures of everyone,  and occasionally we did some line dancing (did you know there was a Spanish Version of Achy-Breaky heart?) Every once and a while I would just have to laugh at the scene, reminding myself that everyone there was Jewish. I can't remember the last time I was in a room with that many Jewish people at one time and I don't think I've ever been with that many Jews from so many different parts of the world.

We left 'early' around 4:30am and decided to go get some churros and chocolate. One of the popular places to go, San Gimenez, was absolutely packed but very delicious! Nothing like a cup of melted chocolate at 5am...

After waiting until 6am for the metro to open, we all went our separate ways and I collapsed into bed around 6:30am. It's a good thing the sun doesn't rise until about 8:15am, I was able to fool myself into thinking it was still night time.



More pictures, this time of a medieval festival in Álcala de Henares, about 40 minutes by train from Madrid. It's the biggest festival of the year there, celebrating Cervantes, who was born in the town.  This festival had everything from crepes, to huge vats of olives, wine bottles in the shape of shoes, pony rides and much more.