Salamanca

My four month liminal adventure began in Salamanca, a small university city two hours by bus to the west of Madrid in the Castilla and Leon portion of the country.

I'd been lured here by pictures of the Plaza Mayor, a broad open courtyard in the center of town, which, I had been assured by the guidebooks, "is widely considered Spain's most beautiful central plaza," perfect for frittering away hours in the sun with cafe con leche.

To my great surprise, there were no peaceful hours to be frittered away last week. I unsuspectingly stumbled into Salamanca's two week fiesta. The city was packed with returning students and other fiesta-seekers; full of life, music, energy from noon until dawn. The central square hosted a variety of bands--this was the winner of Spain's equivalent of American Idol.

And, as you can sort of see from this picture, scores of "casitas" made up the bread and butter of the fiesta, dotting the streets throughout the city and selling tapas and thimble-portions of beer, wine or sangria, seemingly 24/7. The casitas were continually surrounded by university students who, I'm told, circulated a map of the city detailing which casita offered which tapas. Bar-hopping at its finest.

I spent most of my time here, at the language school I'm attending throughout my stay in Spain. I could not have been happier with the school. It is beautiful, well-organized, and attended by a wild variety of students. My class alone had a retired French hairdresser, a girl who grew up in Curacao and now lives in Holland working as a lawyer, a Cambridge civil engineering student, an 18 year old fashionista from Germany who had just left home for the first time, and a Swiss student who wants to work in the travel industry.

I fell in early on with Maria, from Belgium, and we spent the week speaking nothing but Spanish--broken, error-strewn, enthusiastic Spanish. It was great fun and I miss her already.

This is one of the city's landmarks--the University, which was founded in the mid-13th century, and at its peak during the 16th and 17th. This is the stone tapestry over the door. There are busts of Fernando and Isabel in the center. However, it is not the grandeur of the stone carvings that draws visitors and new students to stare long and hard upon this frieze "como las vacas al tren" (or with mouths wide open). Rather, it is the small frog.

Here it is, on the right-hand column. A tiny little frog on the head of a small skull. If you find it unassisted you will have luck--in exams, in love, in whatever you wish for. If not, well, let's just hope the consequences are not too dire because I absolutely could not find it unassisted. There are similar odd touches hiding in stones around the city, such as a tiny astronaut near the front door of the cathedral, in a restored portion of the stone frieze. I wish I had a picture of that one for you.

And the university library is covered in conch shells, like so.

After five days I moved on from Salamanca, ready to make a cambio de aires. I had arrived jet-lagged, exhausted and without luggage to a city that was mostly closed down in favor of a party zone for college kids. Fun, yes. Beautiful, absolutely. But now, jet-lag cured by wine at all hours, and in great desire of a bicycle, Barcelona was calling.