peropopo por benandparky 14-01-2013 Dear Diary, We went to Madrid on Saturday. It is a beautiful city, but not one you can see in a few hours. We were blessed with lovely weather, although it was very cold the sun was shining and the sky was clear as a bell. I guess the highlight was seeing Picasso’s ‘Guernica’. If you don’t know what Guernica is, google it, it’s too much to go into here. We also saw some of Dali’s earlier work. I didn’t know he was actually a really fantastic ‘realist’ painter before going all ‘Surreal’. Google ‘lady looking out window – Dali’ if you want to see some of his ‘normal’ stuff. Anyway, got to go now. 10-01-2013 Dear Diary, Today we went to the City Hall to meet with some people there. It was kind of cool. Really it was just a photo opportunity for some PR for our trip and the Salamanca Council, but the building was pretty amazing. You can see us there in Plaza major. 10-1-2013 Dear Diary, It’s been a few days since the last update, since the holiday Monday to be exact. Monday was a holiday because the Día de los Reyes fell on a Sunday. Día de los Reyes is known as the Three Kings Day (or the Epiphany, perhaps). It’s the big day in Spain over the Christmas period. That’s the day when it is calculated that the three kings, Baltasar, Melchor and … the other one … arrived and gave Jesús his gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. So that’s when kiddies get their Christmas gifts in Spain. Makes sense really, doesn’t it? … Well apparently it is also because Franco had a firm dislike for all things Yankee and held them and their silly old Father Christmas story personally responsible for the commercialisation of Christmas that he declared that the Three Kings Day was the day to do the celebrating. This was meant to de-commercialise Christmas and make it a proper Catholic-religious holiday again. I think in some ways, Franco and my dad would have gotten on. Anyway, Parky and I caught up with Carlos (Waikerie’s Language Teaching Assistant) and his family. He’s going to fit in like a hand in a glove, I’m quite sure of it. And we are programmed to meet with the head of English from our sister school in Castile La Mancha next weekend. All in all we are getting some work done. I’m quite excited for 2013. And the language bit, it just keeps going ahead. More than we could have hoped for. Parky has changed class down a level. This has been great as her old class was too theoretical. She is now in a position where the input less technical and the output volume is way up. That’s what we are here for, so she’s a s happy as a clam. We went to the university yesterday. It’s one of the oldest Universities in the world, established in the 1200s. It is a very prestigious place, on par in the non-English speaking world with the likes of Oxford. It’s a crazy place Salamanca, in a very good way. It’s just as though everything has been put through a wormhole in time. Everything is hundreds, and in the case of the Roman gear, thousands of years old, but it all looks new(ish). All the streets are cobblestone or pavers and all of the buildings are huge sandstone structures that are intricately decorated with hand-carved sculptures that must have taken tens of thousands of man-hours to complete and maintain. It is simply put one of the oldest surviving, and fantastically beautiful cities in Europe. But at the same time it doesn’t take itself too seriously. One classic example is the restoration of the old church. Amongst the tens-of-thousands of ornate sculptures decorating the church, in amongst the religious iconography, some boofhead has carved an astronaut so that people will know that it is not the original façade, but indeed it is a restoration. There’s also something about a frog on a skull, I forget the story exactly, but the frog has turned out to be lasting icon of Salamanca, even with its connotations of witchcraft and wizardry. All reptiles cop a bad rap in the bible and religion in general; think of the snake in Eden. In fact, word ‘salamander’, has its roots in the word Salamanca. The Salmantinos (people of Salamanca) are proud of their history of necromancy and ancient schools of the darker arts. They may be something the Inquisition put an end to, but that’s no need to deny them now. Hmmm … I’m not sure where I was going with that, so I’ll just leave it there. 06/01/2013 Dear Diary, Today we went to Segovia, Avila and back to Salamanca for the Three Kings’ Day parade. Segovia is famous for the aqueduct built by the Romans in the 1st century AD. It is hundreds of metres long and takes water from the spring (on one, elevated, side of the city) to the castle on the other elevated side of the city. It is cunningly built using gravity to hold it all together. Not a drop of cement to be seen anywhere. This whole gravity lark must be a good one, it’s cheap and it is 1900 years old and still standing. The castle in Segovia is surrounded by cliffs on two sides of the triangle and a fairly steep uphill on the other. It is perfect for not being conquered, if that’s what you are into. It’s well old and has loads of great stuff in it, to which the photos attest. If you want more information, google it. The Alcazar (fortress) in Avila is equally as old and equally as impressive. Actually, I have seen more castles than I can count over the years (any ex-backpacker will tell you the same), but I haven’t seen that many fortresses; so this one rates pretty high on my recommended list. You can get above it and look down into the walled city, which people still live in. It’s quite outstanding. You can get up amongst the battlements and those thingies you see in the movies, you know the ones that the archers always hide behind while reloading from their quiver. You can stand up above one of the many gates and get a sense of the overwhelming superiority of position were anyone to attack. And one of my favourites; the place where they boiled the oil in a cauldron and the gigantic hole they poured it through were the attackers to make it through the outer defences. Forgive me when I say that it all looks just like it does in the surprisingly historically accurate comics of Goscinny and Uderzo. It all comes highly recommended. Thereafter we, and the rest of Castile and Leon, went to the Salamanca Three Kings Day parade. I’m sure it would be great if I were 6 years old and 12 feet tall, but all in all I’m just not into crowds. I appear to be in the minority though. 05/01/2013 Dear Diary, It was my birthday yesterday. That didn’t stop Marga giving us a bucket load of homework. We did have a great look around the churches in Salamanca though and a guided tour of the history of Salamanca through the “Centre of Interpretation”, which I’m not exactly sure what that means. Anyway, it was very informative and visually splendid as we have come to expect of everything in Spain. We then went out for drinkies, beginning with a few beers and tapas in ‘Bambu’ and then on to ‘Docteur Vino’ (or something similar) to have some of the best red wines I’ve had in a very long time. This is the pub in the photos with all the hams hanging from the ceiling. Apparently if you keep ordering wine, he keeps carving ham and cheese. It is a classic symbiotic relationship upon which there is no improving. 2013/01/04 Dear Diary, ‘Twas our first day at school yesterday and we were sorted into groups according to our language proficiency. We began by immediately tackling two of the most common forms of the past tense and learning how to tell between the subtleties of their usage. We ate paella for lunch, Spain’s signature dish. It was my first for many years. In the afternoon, we took a walking tour of the town which, it will shock you to know, ended up in a bar drinking cervecas and eating tapas. A schooner of beer is €1.30 (about $1.60) and it is an extra €0.90 for a tapa. About 3 tapas constitute a light meal. It’s my kind of place.
