On Salamanca, Zamora, & Ávila

Hey! Sup y’all. I cannot get the font size to be consistent on this post and it is driving me crazy. It's beyond my abilities hahaha... Be forgiving. I went for the legible size.

So this week we are in and around the town of Salamanca, Zamora, and Ávila. Map below.  I’m grouping them together because it was more or less a two-day trip and they kind of blend together in my mind. I have to apologize in advance because there is no timeline to this post.

I guess to start the trip we have to acknowledge la semana cervantina; in Alcalá right now there’s a festival that I’ve heard (and cannot verify beyond a Google search which I have no internet to do right now) that it’s the largest medieval festival in Europe. Having been to none prior to Spain, I’d have to agree haha. But anyhow it’s so cool! There are banners hanging everywhere and little booths for the artisans to sell things, we’re going to visit it when we come home. Anyhow the reason I mention it is because it happens at the Plaza de Cervantes (claro) annnnd that’s where we meet the bus. So again: big time festival: big time inconvenience haha. We had to take all our little suitcases and backpacks at 8 am and migrate a street down or so and it felt soooo silly. I hate feeling like a tourist.  Derp derp derp don’t mind us and our backpacks, pillows, and rolling suitcases on this ancient cobblestone while you’re just trying to catch the bus for work…

So these three cities are pretty small in my mind. I know they’re bigger than my tiny-tourist brain can fathom but they definitely weren’t big bustling cities like Madrid and Barcelona.

In Ávila we went to see and walk the giant murallas (walls) of the city. You know when you have days in class where you sit for 50 minutes and walk out not sure if you processed a single thing? That’s kind of how I’m feeling now writing about this weekend. Because I’ve got nothin’. Well shoot I definitely processed it, I just can’t remember it. For shame.

In Salamanca we walked the centro of the city, including (wait for it) the cathedral!! Haha. But there are some interesting things I remember about Salamanca that I can present in no particular order:

This is a staircase. Obviously. But it was just a funny little part of a palace we went to. The guide had said “notice how it’s not closed off to the city… there are two doors. So if an enemy were to come, the guards would point them to this staircase. And it’s tall enough it would give the royal family to prepare themselves but also it’s small enough that you can’t fight within it. “ I actually don’t know if I’m quoting that as accurately as I could, but like I said… it was a harder day for listening haha.

Salamanca is a university town, that’s why it’s so big. I think there are about 17,000 students or so in the town, a lot of them extranjeros learning Spanish. There are tourist shops (like all cities) every 50 feet or so, but instead with sweatshirts and tshirts for la Universidad de Salamanca haha. And there aren’t shoe stores at every corner. Salamanca is cool but I actually think Madrid is a lot cooler, although I know I’ve only seen a few hours of the city. Somehow I have skipped over our stop in Zamora. I think the issue is that Zamora and Salamanca are too similar with the S-sounds. Also it’s because I legitimately can’t separate them in my mind. So from this point on the specifics of these stories are all just heading south haha…

Salamanca has this thing for frogs. It was tough for me to put this together at first because when the guide started talking about the history/story she would say una rana (frog) and I heard arana (araña = spider) haha. But then we would walk down the street and see a bajillion frogs at the tourist shops. So anyhow, it’s all based off this story that I am also going to link you to so my sparknotes does not destroy it:  http://spanishinspain.blogspot.com.es/2014/08/the-frog-of-salamanca.html OR journals.worldnomads.com/colleen_finn/story/.../The-Salamanca-frog

Basically, Salamanca loves frogs. Skim the articles.

After our tour of the city, Rachel, Sarah, Alyssa, and I decided to sit down and grab dinner after a day of walking. And it was phenomenal. It’s such a European thing to sit and just enjoy a meal and your company and it’s so relaxing! When you make the time for it anyways. Otherwise it’s way stressful because you just want “american service” (quick, to the point, bend-over-backwards-to-please–the-customer). I had a seasoned hamburger with tomatoes and fries. I know that doesn’t sound exotic, but it was so stinking good. And I know if I haven’t mentioned it here, I at least made in my mind a goal to order different things to eat but I will talk about this in a sec.

Probably one of the most fun things we did in Zamora (?) was going out to eat as a group. Eating as friends is so stressful figuring out the check. But sometimes our director pays for us to get a snack together that the guide recommends to us when we finish, and we actually had a meal and it was so good. I made a goal in my mind at the beginning of the study abroad to step out of my comfort zone and order things on the menu that I either 1. Have never had 2. If I’ve had nothing on the menu at all, order something I can’t pronounce and so far this has worked flawlessly with the exception of when people ask what I ate I also can’t remember it haha. Sometimes though, you gotta be real… I am in Europe and paying for food, just because I’m having a cultural experience does not mean I should hate my life (or in other words.. my meal) because sometimes it’s anyone’s best guess when we’ll have time to sit down and eat again. SO IN CONCLUSION oh man I just love hamburgers

Other things we did:

SAW SOME CATHEDRALZ

WENT TO SUM MOOSUMS

TALK WIF DA ESPAÑOLAS

Alyssa and I went to this cool Art Nouveau art museum and it was really great. It wasn’t the type I was hoping for (Alfonse Mucha: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfons_Mucha) but I had time to sketch some really fun things. Maybe someday I’ll post those here, too. It was fun going to a loser museum. Of course it was professional and with important pieces, it also had these beautiful stained glass pieces and was just a smaller museum (aka: not the Prado) so it was just a little bit more home-y. Oh and in regards to “talkn wif sum españolas”, that’s not a cool story. We just walked across this ancient roman bridge to the other side of town looking for a famous statue. Apparently it was at the beginning of the bridge and we didn’t see it, so we had a fun chit chat with a local while she walked us back to show us. I love these people!

So remember that link about the frog I just gave? You really should read it. It has this great bit about Ávila that I will straight up copy/paste and not at all claim to have written:

Ávila is a fortress town, with a medieval stone wall that surrounds the city. The town is probably most known for St. Teresa of Ávila, a nun who founded a more primitive order of Carmelites known as the decalced, or “barefoot” Carmelites. After she died, her body was exhumed and found to be in pristine condition—so much so that the Catholics regarded it as a miracle and declared her a saint. As a reward for sainthood (okay, I am writing this part with a touch of sarcasm), a few fingers were cut from her right hand. Allegedly, Franco himself (Spain´s dictator until 1975) kept these fingers next to his bed.

Gruesome little anecdote, isn´t it? But then again, many religious stories are.

We saw this. And I was still gathering my bearings after temporarily losing the group (yes: I’m that kid on the field trip... basically always) and I remember having the 13 of us plus the tour guide huddled around this glass case that said NO TOCAR, NO FOTOS.

Because there was a finger behind the glass.

This stinking ancient, rotting, once-fleshy thing!!!!

Honestly………………………………ew.

So if that is not an exciting way to end this post, I don’t know what is haha. A pointless and funny bit about this trip is also this little tangent I have about the “spain accent” … because I love it. And I feel like among extranjeros it’s hit-or-miss and especially in our group it’s definitely more of a miss. But here’s the thing: IT’S SO USEFUL.

For those reading who don’t speak Spanish or are unaware of the specifics of the “lisp-y Spain accent”, in short, in Spain they use the sound / θ/  or “theta” (but say it like you’re Spanish… so th-ay-tah. Actually I can’t really break that down better unless it was in person). It’s the “really gross lispy Spanish” that I’ve basically heard every in the states say they can’t stand. And I agreed with them up until I had heard it and had to experience it. For example, and my explanations are limited over text, but for example:

Zapato (LA: zah-pah-toe)

Zapato (ES: th-uh-pah-toe)

Luz (LA: loo-z, almost exactly the same as “lose” like “you lose the game”)

Luz (ES: loo-th, like “mama my tooth is looth!!” haha)

Decir (LA: day-seer)

Decir (ES: day-th-ear)

but the “lispy” theta sound is not used for every s- sound or every time you see a “c”

Casa (LA: cah-sah)

Casa (ES: cah-sah)

Considerado (LA: con-see-d-air-ah-doh)

Considerado (ES: con-see-d-air-ah-doh)

*LA: Latin America ES: España

Dang I am so good at this phonetics game. #jokes

ANYWAYS the reason why I mention it:

Once upon a time back at BYU I was having a discussion about different dialects in Spanish, as Spanish students usually do pretty much at least once a week. Someone had told me that the Spain accent is actually ‘super useful in regards to spelling’ or something like that, but… I pretty much forgot it almost immediately after.

But now it has come back in vivid HD color: because I spelled “Zamora” wrong for this entire post when I first started writing I haha This happened since 1. I hadn’t seen any signs that said “Zamora” all day and didn’t think anything of it until the little red squiggle popped up on Microsoft Word but also 2. I spent the day with our BYU group which includes a general majority of Spanish speakers who have learned south-american Spanish. This includes mexico, Costa Rica, or our director and his wife who are from the Domincan Republic. SO when Profesor Alba is saying “Zamora” it sounds exactly exactly the same if he were to say “Samora” and so thus we see my plight.

That took way longer to explain than it should have, but cheers to you for reading this far!!

Peace swag blessinz and frozen yogurt,

Lotsa love

Jessie

Also: we walked around a fountain six times to help us find true love. Oh Spain.

Also also: Alyssa and I went to a 15 minute theatre production for 3 euros and it was hilarious. Not for the faint of heart. Read: not a G-rated performance, not for an LDS audience. Lessons learned… oh Spain.