Heather Worley Living in St. Petersburg, Russia
Spain is so lovely and sunny! After an average of 2 hours
of daylight in Russia, it¥s almost too much here...it¥s like summer
or something. I¥ve gone from 10C below (which is like 5F, I think)
to 15+, which is like 60. And it¥s not even cloudy here.
A run-down of the past few days:
Thursday I stayed out until almost 6 a.m. with Scott and Barrett at Can-Can,
a club in Alcala. The first couple hours were mostly American students
saying they had to go home early to make it to class the next day, and then
around 2:00 the Spaniards started showing up. I met several students who
study at Scott's school, as well as some locals. Spanish men are incredibly
aggressive if you give them any encouragement at all, which includes making
eye contact. The more they've had to drink, the more dramatic they are,
too. One guy actually told me I broke his heart because I begged out of
the conversation after only five minutes. However, whenever anyone asked
me what I'm doing in Alcala, I said, "Visiting my brother. See, that's
him over there, the tall one." Immediately the distance between me
and whomever I was talking with would increase by 18 inches. It was very
funny. I talked with an Italian guy for a while, which was interesting:
two people both speaking in a second language they barely know. (He's
only been studying Spanish since October, and I've forgotten most of mine.)
He said it's just impossible to study in Spain because he goes out every night,
which is normal for the students here. Every time he talks to his mom
on the phone, he tells her he's studying, which he feels really bad about, but
he doesn't want her to worry.
Friday I went to an orientation thingamajig for Scott's school. I found
out that his university is a World Heritage Site - the only university to itself
be a World Heritage Site. After that I slept off the partying from the
night before. Viva la siesta!
Saturday Scott and I relaxed and did some shopping. In a bookstore where
I bought a kid's version of Don Quixote, the ownder gave me a historical guide
to Alcala. Alcala is a small city (about 200,000, I believe), but a lot
of incredibly important things happened here, including things like the meeting
between Queen Isabella and Christopher Columbus, because it was an important
cultural, educational, religious, and government center.
Scott and I went to watch a soccer game at a tapas bar nearby. Despite
the fact that Scott goes there all the time with his professor Saul to watch
the games, the waiter gave him the foreigner treatment and told him that tapas
do not come with the drinks, even though Scott knew full well that they did.
So he was kinda irritated. We decided to go play foozball at a place down
the street. Scott ordered a calimocho - a drink made of box wine, coca-cola,
and a little grape juice. It's not altogether bad.
Saturday night we went to a club with Maria and some of her friends for a while.
I spilled someone else's drink after being there about five minutes and thought
I'd started an international incident. I tried to tell the girl I was
sorry and I'd buy her another drink, but she was talking so fast I couldn't
understand her. I managed to get Scott to talk to her, we bought her another
drink, and it was all good. But this is why I think Spaniards should use
the cloakrooms like Russians do: I was picking my scarf and coat off a pile
of other people's stuff to take them to the cloakroom, and the whole pile shifted
and knocked her drink over. If the coats hadn't been on the table in the
first place, the drink would have been more than a mere 2 centimeters from the
edge of oblivion. David, the Irishman in our group, said, "There
you go, the Spanish temper. But as soon as you make amends, they've completely
forgotten about it."
David is engaged to Maria's friend Pilar (the reason for going out was
to celebrate Pilar's birthday). We talked about Ireland and American politics
for a while. He said that the Irish just love Bill Clinton because he
helped to play a role in the peace process. And in the capital the only
two buildings on the central plaza are the residence of the president and the
residence of the American ambassador, who is one of the Kennedys. When
Clinton went to Ireland, he said everyone in his office took the day off to
go see him - one of his co-workers actually said he was going just so he could
tell his grandkids he saw Bill Clinton.
David said he took a five-year leave of absence to come study Spanish in Spain.
In Ireland, the law allows a person to take a five-year leave of absence for
personal reasons (raise your kids or whatever), and your position will be waiting
for you when you get back, but in those five years you are not allowed to work
anywhere else in Ireland. That's the option he took when he moved to Spain
to study Spanish.
Sunday I went to El Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, which is Madrid's
modern art museum. On the way there we ran into Scott's friend Lauren
and her friend Andy, visiting from Barcelona. They were blowing time before
Andy's train left, so we decided to go to the museum together. I got to
see a lot of Picasso's, Dali's, and Miro's (my favorite!) works, as well as
a couple of Kandinsky's that predated his smeary messes. The big thing
everyone goes there to see is Guernica, which I've seen before in books, but
was not prepared for in person. In books it looks weird; in person it's
really frightening. After that we all went to a Turkish restaurant for
lunch, and had some definitely-not-spicy Turkish food, and then wandered around
for a bit. We ended up walking through the Sunday afternoon market, El
Rastro, where people were selling everything from stamp collections to vintage
movie posters to used clothing. It was pretty cool.
Yesterday I went to see the Palacio Real. On the train ride there, I ran
into one of Maria's friends we'd gone out with on Saturday night, Julio.
We talked for a while, and he asked if I'd seen any of Spain besides Madrid.
He doesn't particulary like Madrid - he says Segovia and Toledo are much better.
In his opinion, Alcala, where Scott lives, is a much more important city than
Madrid. Madrid has El Prado and the Palacio Real, but in and of itself,
it's not as good. I asked him if Alcala is actually a separate city, or
if it's basically part of Madrid, and he said no no no - Alcala is a city, Madrid
is just a big villa with a lot of people. Apparently there's a legal distinction
between what is a city and what is not - something to do with a royal decree.
As we were getting off the train, Julio asked if I knew where I was going.
I told him to the Palacio Real, and he told me I would be better of taking the
metro than the Cercanias (suburban) train to the other side of the city, and
then offered to show me there. I told him that wasn't necessary.
I decided to go the Cercanias route anyway, which took forever because it went
around the city instead of through it, but the scenery out the windows was very
interesting. I saw a shack city on the north side of town, a guy herding
sheep, and a lot of landscape. I asked another passenger if I was on the
right line, and he confirmed that I was, and then before getting off gave me
another set of directions so I wouldn't get lost. Spaniards are incredibly
helpful. Scott's friend Lauren agrees; she told me she usually asks old
men for directions, because she figures they have time to spare and won't mind
helping her out, and usually they offer to walk her to where she's going rather
than just tell her. They generally ask if she has a Spanish boyfriend
also, and one even offered to set her up with his grandson.
The Palacio Real was incredible. It was way cooler than I'd thought it
would be. I saw the throne room; a room with porcelain walls; rooms with
royal knick-knacks (like the pen Juan Carlos used to sign the agreement to join
the EU); the royal pharmacy, filled with jars of herbs and who-knows-what-else;
and coolest of all, the armory, with sets of armor given to the royal family
as gifts from other countries.
After going to the Palace, I walked around for a while, went inside a couple
churches, and then came back to Alcala.
Today I went to see El Convento de las Descalzas Reales (the Convent of the
Royal Shoeless Nuns). It has always had connections to the royal family
because one of the princesses founded it and her daughter directed it, and many
royals donated items to make some truly elaborate altars and chapels.
It's still a working nunnery, but is also open as a museum, and it's easy to
understand why - there are works of are in it by some of the most famous Spanish
artists, such as Zurburan and Velazquez, the quality of which is usually in
major art museums. To see it, I had to go in with a tour group, and it
was all in Spanish, but the tour guide purposely talked incredibly slowly, so
I understood almost everything. It was really cool.
After that I came back to Alcala so I wouldn't miss lunch and siesta time.
Other things I've learned about Spain:
1 - There are so many women in Spain with the name Maria that there is an abbreviation
for it (Ma.). Scott tells me that Franco wanted Spain to be a good Catholic
country, so people were required by law to name their daughters Maria.
So there are two generations of Spaniards in which every women has the name
Maria. Fortunately, Spanish names are so long that one more doesn't make
a huge difference, and a lot of women go by one of their other names.
2 - There are drinking fountains here everywhere - something I'm not used to
after being in Russia. The fountains that are merely decorative all have
signs saying the water is not drinkable, but without that sign you can assume
it is, apparently.
3 - Spaniards are loud. Sort of like Americans. This is also quite
a shock after Russia. They also wear colors (as opposed to a lot of grey
and black and navy). And sometimes they smile. And they always kiss
someone on both cheeks when they greet them, which is difficult to get used
to at first.
4 - Spain has an unusually high percentage of attractive men. Even the
little old men that spend all day sitting on the plazas are cute in a little-old-man
sort of way.
5 - Phone calls here are insane. Scott told me even local calls from
a landline cost over a euro a minute (which right now equates to about $1.20).
So everyone has a cell phone, and even on those you don't talk more than a minute
or so. I will never again complain about Southwestern Bell or AT&T.
6 - Water is precious in Madrid. It¥s a very dry climate with a pretty
big population. So people turn off the water in the shower while they¥re
shampooing and the city doesn¥t clean water that doesn¥t go to houses.
There is also very little green space here. There are a few trees
on the streets, but no grass, because everything¥s paved. There are
a few parks with grass, but you can¥t walk on it. Instead of parks,
Spain has plazas.
7 - Spaniards are also very conservative with electricity. The signs in
the suburban train stations only come on when the train is less than six minutes
away. The doors on the suburban train and on the metro don¥t open
automatically, they only open if you push a button. That conserves
energy not only on opening the door, but by letting out less air-conditioning
and heating.
These should be in English...if they¥re not, for some reason, look for a
link on the page that says "English version."
Link to the convent:
http://www.patrimonionacional.es/en/descreal/descreal.htm
Link to the palace: http://www.patrimonionacional.es/en/preal/preal.htm
Link to the art museum: http://www.spanisharts.com/reinasofia/reinasofia.htm
I¥m going to try to send a link with a couple pics I took, too.
Send questions if you have any!
Love to all!
Heather:)
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