Fun in Galicia

I feel like this post is way over due - I was looking at my other posts and it kind of seems like all I do is travel. This isn't entirely untrue, but there is also a lot to do right here in Galicia (which is the part of Spain that I am in, in case you forgot).

Here is what we've been enjoying...

The Beach!
Two weeks ago we went to Vigo, which is only 2 hours away by train, to the beach. As kids from Kansas, Alana, Kate and I were pretty much giddy with the idea of the beach being less than a thousand miles away. So we took full advantage of it.

Kate and Alana - Theresa and I -
I made this sand castle (OK, it was more like a mound of sand - but same idea!)Only to have it washed away by the ocean. Stupid ocean.Speaking of ocean, we didn't actually get into the water (except for Theresa, who really wanted to say that she swam in the ocean before she went back to Germany) because it was still too cold.There was also this giant rock painted like a turtle (?) - Europe is known for their topless/nude beaches and Spain is no exception. There is really no rule to which ones are which - it is pretty much just anything goes. And the only thing that goes is the tops off the women that you'd rather have cover up (read: the older, fatter ones). We saw way too much of complete strangers , but some of it was just downright comical. For example, this woman who we saw knitting on the beach on the semi-nude.
The Park!
The weather has been lovely and we've been soaking up all we can. Sunday, the day after we went to the beach, we went to this cute little park called Vista Alegre which is near North Campus.There was a horreo in the park - they are all over the country side and they are basically little sheds suspended off the ground. They are built like this so the people can put their food into it and since it is high up the rats/mice/animals can't get into it.The park also had the casa de Europa. I don't know what it is, but it looked like it was maybe a museum or something sponsored by the University. It was as pretty house!And because we are still 12 at heart, we made flower necklaces and put them on our heads and took pictures.

Magic Shows!
Last week the city of Santiago hosted a week of magic. This consisted of random street magic like making balloon animals and card tricks. Sunday was the big espectaculo where there was this guy suspended in the air who had to get himself out of a straight jacket and untie his feet before the fire got him.
This was incredibly anti-climatic because the fire never moved past a certain point nor did it weaken the METAL cable it was buring on. And I couldn't figure out exactly where the magic in untying a straight jacket was. The whole thing lasted 5 minutes. When we were walking home we overheard some old ladies talking about how it was the greatest magic show in the world. Another example of the culture barrier.

Bowling!
Last Wednesday Manu invited Kate, Theresa, and I to go bowling with his roommates Jan (from France) and Drew (who is in our Kansas group). Bowling in Spain is pretty much exactly the same as it is in the States. Except when you wear the (always fashionable) bowling shoes you also have to wear these hospital-like booties over your socks.It was a lot of fun. In all reality, it was kind of like high school again. We all had funny names - not by choice but because the guy who put them in had a hard time with our foreign names. I was "Bularie" and Jan was "Goulin". The boys enjoyed taking pictures with my camera -
And Kate enjoyed winning 2 out of the 3 games. That one semester on the bowling team really paid off!
Botellon!
Botellon is a fairly new Spanish tradition that a lot of Spaniards hate. It consists of a bunch of college and high school aged kids going to the park and BYOB drinking. If you have ever been to a kegger you've been to a botellon. They are virtually the same thing.We saw our friend James there, he is one of the 20 people from the United States (the Kansas group makes up 12 of the group) and he is from Alabama. We had a good time!While we were walking through the park someone grabbed my arm and asked if I spoke English (I wonder what would cue her to that?). She was really excited to practice her English and within a few second I literally had a circle of Galician people around me asking me questions. We get this almost every time we go out - there aren't a lot of English speakers in Santiago and the locals are always really excited to practice their English.

Seeing Friends!
This Saturday we went to Lugo to see our friend Anna. Anna, as you might remember, is from France and was in our grammar class. She is an au pair and she changed families a few weeks ago and now she is working for a family in Lugo. Lugo is just 2 hours away by bus, so we decided to go and see her.

It was so much fun to see Anna again. We enjoyed a drink and some tapas at an outdoor cafe - Poor Anna broke her shoe! But being the resourceful people we are, we managed to kind of bring it back to a functional condition.
Then we went walking around the city. Lugo is a lot like Santiago - it has a cathedral, and the buildings have the same arictectual style. This is a "float" basically that is used in the Easter parades. This is inside the cathedral. I didn't get to see one in action since we were on the bus home from Lisbon during Easter, boo hoo.Unlike Santiago, Lugo has these walls built by the Romans that go around the whole city - We saw this bar (represent!) - And some typical Galician food. Pulpo means octopus - looks pretty good, huh? In all reality it isn't that bad at all - a little chewy - but the locals go nuts over it. We had some ice cream in one of the Plazas, then went to the park.This is the river in Lugo, and very typical of the Galician country side - green, green, green,Anna's sandal finally gave out and she called the Mom she au pairs for to pick us up. While we were waiting we noticed these odd trees - I bet they are really pretty when they are in bloom but without leaves they just looked kind of creepy. The mom was really nice and we went back to their house. It was the first time we've seen a real house - with a yard and a living room and everything - in months. We were introduced to the boys who spoke English, as well as French, German, and Spanish. The first one we met was 13 and the other one was 10. There was also a little girl, but she wasn't home. The mom was overjoyed to have us speak English with her kids, apparently she really pushes to get American au pairs but it is kind of hard since there really isn't anything to do in Lugo. We hung out there for awhile until we had to go back to the bus station to go home...only to find out that we missed the last bus. Oops. This gave us time to take a picture by a fountian that had frogs - Anna asked the mom if we could stay in her room overnight. The mom said it was no problem and invited us to dinner. She took us to this place that was more or less Golden Corral - it had big wooden tables and it was packed full of families with young kids. This is the family - TWe had a really nice dinner, the kids were really, really smart. Besides knowing 4 languages they also knew all about US politics and were eager to talk about George Bush. The younger one chimed in that he wanted to come to the US to see New York, Los Angeles, and us. :) We also sang the national anthems of the US and of Spain. It was really a great experience - even though I know Spaniards I haven't seen a really Spanish family. It was really neat to see how the real Spaniard - just not students - live. That night we had a slumber party!
Theater!
Sunday night, after we came home from Lugo, we went to see Romeo e Xulieta which is Romeo and Juliet in Gallego. Now, we don't know Gallego, but it is the official language of Galicia and is a blend of Spanish and Portuguese. I was pretty proud of how much I could understand. I really enjoyed the play - it was a modern rendition of the play, and by modern I mean very modern. There were three naked scenes which at first caught me off guard -but Manu later told us that nudity is pretty typical of Spanish theather. Ole!

So that was my week last week! I'm busy this week with a lot of school things because finals are coming up (yes, I do have class here still!). This weekend Alana and I are going to Prauge, and I'm super excited about that. :)

Lisbon: the Pitfalls of Spontaneous Travel

When we came home from Rome, Theresa, Kate, Farashta and I decided to go to Lisbon during the rest of our Semana Santa, which was Thursday-Monday. Yep, when they take breaks in Europe they don't mess around. We decided on Lisbon, which is the capitol of Portugal and only 8 hours away by bus. Since we were in Italy and couldn't really do anything about it away, we decided to just show up Thursday morning and by a ticket for the bus that left at 10:00. But...the bus was full. Which kind of makes sense since it is a holiday and all, but to Lisbon? From Santiago? So we decided to take the train, which left at 14:30, and while we were at the bus station buy a return ticket for Sunday so we would for sure have a way home. Leaving later was actually really nice, since it gave us a little time to relax before we went on another vacation (remember, we had just gotten home Wednesday afternoon).

The train seemed kind of like a bad deal from the beginning because there isn't a direct train to Lisbon. We had to go to Vigo, then change trains in Porto, Portugal, then take an overnight train to Lisbon. But hey, train rides are fun, so I thought it couldn't be so bad. The ride to Vigo was alright, we had seats by the door so it was a little chilly with people coming and going. Once we got into the train to Porto, it was very symbolic of the Spain/Portugal difference. I've heard Portugal referred to as a "poor man's Spain" which really does have some merit. Everything is nicer in Spain, and the people make more money per capita. Portugal is more affordable, so if people can't afford to vacation in Spain they go to Portugal. Even the roommate/landlady/resident dictator said that people typically go to Portugal to by big things like furniture and cars because its cheaper there. Portugal isn't in the throws of poverty by any means, but things are just a little more rough around the edges. Anyway, the train was like stepping immediately into Portugal, it was a lot older, run down, and extremely rickety.We also had to endure 3 hours of Euro PDA. Seriously. YOU ARE NOT INVISIBLE, NOR WILL IT KILL YOU TO WAIT A FEW HOURS. I might have adjusted to many unpleasant things here (read: the bathrooms, the exchange rate, the water, public picking of nose/scratching of all itches) but the over-the-top PDA is something I simply cannot get used to.Once we rolled into Porto, we had to get off the train and wait 2 hours in the middle of the night for the next train. We made it over to a cafe for some port wine, then back to the train station where we washed our faces and brushed our teeth. Note how I didn't say "go to the bathroom" - we couldn't because the CHARGED YOU. Unlike other pay-to-use bathrooms, these weren't a super nice bathroom, nope, it was your regular train station bathroom with some lady at a desk to take your 70 euro cents. They were really strict in Porto, which didn't help my opinion of the city (see previous entry). It was forbidden to put your feet on the metal benches, and I got scolded in Portuguese by a particularly burly looking security guard and so did Farashta. So sleeping was pretty much out of the question. At 01:00, a half an hour before our train left, they kicked everyone out of the train station. Since we don't speak Portuguese we had no idea why, but regardless we shivered our way through the tunnels of the cold outside train platforms to our train to Lisbon.

The train was an upgrade, the best part was the 3 across seats that you could sort of lie down in. The train was freezing though. After an sleepless hour I went to the bathroom to put my pajama pants on under my jeans to prevent frostbite, only to be walked in on by a sleepy woman. So I pretty much didn't sleep at all. I was too anxious about missing our stop and about how someone might steal my stuff. I was kind of drifting off to sleep when Farashta and Theresa yell for Kate and I to get off the train - once Kate and I had recovered from the shock we realized just in time that it was the wrong stop and got back on the train. Once we finally made it to our stop we were beyond tired, cold, and mainly just out of it. Since it was 06:00 we knew nothing was going to be open, so we hung out at the train station (careful not to put our feet on the benches) until 07:00. We were ready to find a hostel ASAP, and we walked to the downtown part where Theresa had been told there were lots of hostels for cheap. Well, if there were a lot of hostels they were really well hidden because we couldn't find any. Finally we found a hotel that gave us directions to one 15 minutes away only to find it was all booked. We wondered around a little bit more to find another one that was booked - and this time the lady told us that every hostel was booked. I didn't believe her - how could she check every single hostel in one single phone call? - so we went back to the first hotel because while it wasn't the 15 euros a night that we were hoping for, it wasn't out of our price range and we were so tired, smelly, and exhausted that we just wanted somewhere. The hotel manager told us the same thing - everything was full until MONDAY and we wouldn't be able to find anywhere in Lisbon because it was Semana Santa. Not exactly what we wanted to hear. So we walked to the nearby plaza and sat down to evaluate our options and eat our packed sandwiches. It was about 10:00 at this point and we'd been walking around for almost 4 hours. I looked around and saw a lot of people sleeping by the monument. They had backpacks and nice clothes and it made me think they were travelers just like us that couldn't find somewhere to stay.

This scared me. This was the first time I had ever felt like there might exist the possibility that we really don't have any options. Not only that, but we didn't have a way back until Sunday and we didn't speak the language. I think it was more of the fatigue than anything that made me skip straight to the worse-case scenario, but at the time it felt like a legitimate fear. After we decided on a route to take, we stopped in at three more hostels before we found somewhere with openings. We were so relieved - it was 20 euros a night per person, a little expensive for the two rooms with private baths that we got - but it wasn't the street. Kate and I put our stuff in our room before we went to pay only to return and be unable to unlock the door. The key was stuck. Not only were we unable to unlock the door, the cleaning lady couldn't get it open, nor could the manager. He even unscrewed the handle to no avail. Finally he told us to come back in 3 hours, he was going to call the locksmith. 3 hours you have got to be kidding. Kate and I were in no mood to hear this. All we wanted was a nice shower to wash away the lingering smell of train and sweat to recharge before we went out to explore Lisbon. Oh well, there wasn't anything we could do. So we went to Theresa and Farashta's room to hang out while they showered.The view from their room (note the castle at the top of the hill!):Kate and I made a few videos with my camera about our discontent, and if I knew how to post them I totally would. Once we were all ready we did a little retail therapy until we could get back into our room. Three hours on the dot from when we were told to return, Kate and I took our smelly and slightly greasy (ok, just I was greasy. and there was nothing slight about it) selves back to the hostel to shower while Farashta and Theresa went to have lunch. We got back to the hostel to find that...it still wasn't done. The room was open but they were still working on it. So Kate and I sat down, about ready to slap someone, when I realized that I was missing my pashmina. My beautiful, brand-new Italian pashmina. So I went in vain to try to find it - I retraced my steps and went back to the stores we went to. Nothing. I guess I dropped it then someone picked it up. I walked home, still unshowered, beyond exhausted, minus my new favorite pashmina (I only have two but STILL. it was TRAUMATIC.) thinking about how this was the worst day even despite the fact I was in Lisbon. I got back to the room and told Kate my sad tale of woe, and then there was a knock on the door. It was Theresa, and I was just about to regale about my terrible loss when she exclaimed that her bag had been stolen while they were eating lunch. She had everything in it - her money, her camera, her MP3 player, her phone and her passport.

Suddenly my pashmina didn't mean a thing. I let her use my phone to call her mom then we all went to the police station to report it missing. We sat there for a good 2 hours while they filled out the report, Farashta, Kate, and I providing what little details we could. They told us they would call the hostel if they found anything, but they weren't too optimistic. Still shocked, we went back to the hostel so I could shower. Farashta bought Theresa some ice cream and then we went to explore the city.

We saw some more bad English -Colorful tourist stores - The trolleys that were everywhere - And the river - Before we made it to the castle! Just Kate and I wanted to see it, and it was totally worth it even if we had to pay to get in.Kate, the photog, told me "you are a beautiful flower"Views of Lisbon from the courtyard - The Castelo de São Jorge was a lot of fun. Basically it was a castle that you could climb all over, and of course, take awesome pictures.
After we were done, we were hungry. We knew that Lisbon has a lot of Brazilian influence (funny because Portugal colonized Brazil now the reverse is happening culturally) so we decided to get a Brazilian dinner. Maybe it was the restaurant, but we weren't that impressed. We ordered "stuffing" which was just meat and cheese. To make up for it, we went through this mall and bought gummi bears. Kate accidentally bought 4 euros worth of gummi bears, ha ha. Walking through the mall we found this odd scooter thing (how are you supposed to make it go?) - When we got back to the hotel there was a note from the police saying they found something of Theresa's. So we went back to the police station where we had to wait, yet again. This time there were really nice people to talk to, this one girl from Madrid and I really hit it off and we had a nice conversation in Spanish. Apparently Lisbon is really bad for petty theft. Once it was our turn, we found out we were in the wrong police station so we left to find the right one. They had Theresa's bag - minus, of course, the money, credit cards, MP3 player, and camera. But it had her passport and all of her other things. This is how they work - they take the things of value and get rid of all the evidence that will tie the items to the criminals. After this small victory, we went back for a much needed good night's sleep.

The next day, Saturday, we woke up, had breakfast and then left for the Largest Aquarium in Europe. Actually, it is the second largest aquarium in the world. It got rave reviews from Mila, and who doesn't love aquariums? Needless to say, we (ESPECIALLY Kate, who is embarking on the aquarium-tour-of-Europe 2007) were excited to see it. We took the Metro to the Aquarium and it is probably the nicest Metro I've been on yet. It had a lot of really cool art (click here to see some of it) and the cars were very spacious, clean, and had LCD monitors to announce the upcoming stop. The only complain I have is that it didn't actually cover the whole city, but they are working on it. We made it to our stop on the other side of the city and walked along the river to the aquarium, we got a taste of the modern architecture that Lisbon is known for. This is where all of my saldo goes - The aquarium!I was very impressed with the aqurium, it was by far the best I've ever seen. It was organized by ocean and it had a mock-up of each of the environments with a lot of fish and plants. There was so much to look at and it was a lot of fun. Click here to see the website!

They had absolutley everything -

Penguins!Sea otters!Divers!Kate's favorite, sharks!Rainforests!Sand fish!Star fish!Random assortment of fish!Colorful fish!They had this really neat "behind the scenes" part where you could see how they maintained the fishies. Here are some growing sponges - and these are baby sharks!Before we left I wanted a picture with the mascot of the aquarium, but these dumb kids kept getting in the way. Honestly. In this moment, I knew I was very far away from motherhood. We had lunch at a cafe near the aquairum where we had smoothies (!! something they don't have here in Europe and we miss dearly). Then we made our way to the Torre del Belem which is basically a tower, but the main draw was the cakes that are made in this neighborhood. I hadn't heard of them before, but Mila said we couldn't go to Lisbon without trying them. We were literally on the opposite side of the city, and we needed to go to the part that (of course) didn't have the Metro. So we took the Metro as close as we could get then crammed onto the trolley until the conductor kicked everyone off for some reason. I know there was a reason, but since I don't speak Portuguese it was lost on me. Then we took the bus, and finally we were at the Tower.We were 10 minutes late for the last tour, so we couldn't get in. Nuts. So we settled for the small tower - and just enjoying the sun.Then we went for the cakes. Pastels del Belem are kind of like little creme de burles in tart form. They are also called "cakes of cream". OMG, to DIE for. Because I was so engrossed in eating, fat kid forgot to take pictures. But here's the website!

In the park we ate our cakes in had a WATER FOUNTIAN. This is the second one I've seen in Europe. I'm not sure why they don't have them here, I think it is because they 1) don't really have a filtration system for the drinking water, so everyone drinks bottled water 2) they are running out of water 3) water foutians are free, and that is not the European way. It was a really pretty park.That night for dinner we just wondered around looking for somewhere that looked good. We encountered the euro-typical anti-Bush sentiment - And then we saw the Sound of Music musical advertizement at a theater - Kate was beside herself with joy.Much to Farashta's excitement, we found an Indian restraunt and I had my favorite, lamb korma. Yay! It was a great end to a great day.

That next morning (which was Easter) we had breakfast at the same cafe near our hostel (I had another pastel de Belem) then metro'ed to the where the map said the bus station was. Only, there was no bus station. We only had 15 minutes until our bus left and we were in NO MOOD to miss another bus. We grabbed a taxi in the nic of time and told him to take us to the bus station listed on our ticket - which was a bus station NOT ON THE MAP. Once we were at the bus station we threw some euros to the driver and ran to the bus. We made it, barely on time. Call it an Easter miracle.

On the whole, I really liked Lisbon. It was vivid and really clean. They hosted the Word Expo in 1998 so the city was still in realitvely show-case condition. OK, so we only stuck to the touristy sites but I really enjoyed what we saw. Hearing all of the Portuguese really made me excited to start learning it for myself. Lisbon changed my mind about Portugual. I would highly reccomend it to anyone who is considering coming to Europe.