Galicia adventures

Perhaps one of my favorite things about Spain is that the weekends are almost always longer than the week days...and this past week was one of those. Therefore, we decided to take advantage of that by hopping on a bus, a couple metro lines, a plane, and another bus to Galicia! Yes, we did take the overnight bus to Madrid on Wednesday night, but I slept the entire time. So anyways, we got to Santiago de Compostela on Thursday morning, and headed straight to our house. On this trip we opted to check out "couchsurfing," which is where you are put in contact with people who live in the city you are visiting who are willing to house students for free. With some luck we found a 45-year-old man named Marcos, who had a house just outside the centro that was large enough for the 6 of us. So, as we figured, this could either be a really awesome situation or a really awkward one. Well, we reasoned, at least we're not paying!

So anyways, it turned out to be amazing. Marcos was SO nice, SO cool, and SO generous - he let us cook in his kitchen, crash all over his amazing house (which was very well-decorated, all modern and edgy, which I appreciated very much), play all his jazz cds (again, which I appreciated very very much), and even threw us a party. And we had really deep and awesome dinner conversations - direct quotes include, "I don't believe in borders," "I let my last couchsurfers use my car to travel all over Galicia for a week," etc. etc. I seriously can't emphasize how cool this guy was. And the party was amazing - it was at some Italian dudes' house, and there were like 50 Erasmus (European study abroaders) students there. We met Italians, Germans, and Brazilians, and carried out lengthy conversations in which none of us were conversing in our native language. It was so much fun! Haha the funniest part was talking with the Italians - they really do gesture a lot, and kept hitting us by accident when they got carried away. :0) But I bonded with this one girl over our mutual love of indie rock, so I would say that it was a highly productive night overall.

Friday we took a day trip to Pontevedra, a tiny town located on the river slightly to the south of Santiago. We tried roasted chestnuts (which are all that they are cracked up to be...OHHHHHH), toured the museum, played with random cats we saw in the street, and ate falafel...? Haha it was an awesome day. We returned to Santiago and Marcos that evening, and showered after a tiring day - I bring this up because one of the funniest things about his house was his shower curtain, which featured a white background and a black profile of a woman holding a knife (psycho-style). It was a fast shower.

Saturday we took the train to the third city on our whirlwind tour: La Coruna, which is located on the coast. It was SO BEAUTIFUL - cloudy, green, and tranquil. We spent about 2 hours walking around the cliffs, looking at the ancient Roman lighthouse and the sculpture park. It seriously looked like Ireland, it was so lush - we then headed back to our hostel, run by a super nice elderly man named Gabriel. One of the most defining things about La Coruna, however, was the huge population of futbol fans - that weekend, Galicia was playing Asturias in the stadium in La Coruna, and all the Asturias fans had come to La Coruna to cheer on their team. Although the game would not take place until Sunday night, they were out shouting in the streets, banging on metal signs, and harassing the Galicia fans starting Saturday morning. EVERYONE was dressed in futbol jerseys, so we kind of stuck out. We went out to amazing seafood restaurants in the "restaurant zones," which are literally back streets of the city that are lined with ONLY restaurants. We ate pulpo a feira (octopus! they cooked them in the windows of the restaurants by placing them upside down in buckets with hot water, so there were just buckets of upside-down octopi with their tentacles hanging out everywhere), mussels, shrimp (not de-headed or peeled, which was difficult but worth it), calamari, anchovies...I love seafood. I could not get enough. And we tried Ribeiro wine, for which Galicia is famous - and it was amazing! My hope has been restored!!!

Sunday it rained, but we were not dismayed - we hit up the Casa Museo of Picasso, which was housed in the apartment where he lived for 5 years in his youth. We got a private tour by this really cute guide lady, saw the original linographs that he did in criticism of Franco, and saw the original armoire that he painted a million times. This description sounds lame, but it was unbelievably fun. Then we went to the Museum of Mankind, a life science museum for children...whatever, we had a blast sniffing in the smelly interactive part, tasting sour salts and coffee in the tastey part, and in general, running around like we were 10.

Monday, yet again, we hit the road - this time, back to Santiago (where our plane would depart later that evening). We explored an outdoor farmer's market, cooked lunch in Marcos' house (eggplant and sauteed mushrooms...yessss), and toured the inside of the cathedral. We met a pilgrim who had walked the route to Santiago from Portugal - as coincidence would have it, he's from Chicago! So we bonded over that and he told us about his European adventures. Santiago is such a small town that we would end up running into him 2 more times that day...but I loved Santiago. It was almost like a smaller version of Monterey, with gray and white buildings with tons of windows and little patios.

So we headed back to the airport on Monday night via bus, flew to Madrid, subwayed to the bus station, and took the bus back to Sevilla. We walked home at 7 in the morning as the sun was rising over the river - I then powernapped for an hour and a half, and went to class on Tuesday. Despite awkward travel time, the trip was incredible - my voyages are just getting better and better!

Now it's time for random Sevilla anecdotes: right now is the Sevilla European Film Festival, which is a week-long ordeal. Also, I ate Spanish m&ms for the first time yesterday! They have their own brand (of course) called Lacasitos. Except they are flatter and bigger and come in vintage colors, so I told my family they looked like buttons. They thought this was hilarious. Also, during lunch the kids asked me if I spoke French. I said that I can count and say the days of the week - we then spent the rest of the meal saying the days of the week in French, and they complimented me on my accent (?) We also had a lengthy conversation about difficulties with pronunciation in Spanish and English - that's another thing I'm realizing, that it would take years and years and years to become fluent, but I will never sound like a native speaker. Speaking of which, next week I have to get up in front of my university class full of Spaniards and give a 20-min presentation...so that should be fun! Oh, I had my first midterm today, and I dominated that - yes, I CAN write 4 pages on El Greco!

I am staying in Sevilla this weekend, thankfully, because I actually have quite the surplus of things to get done. However, I'm leaving for Munich and Fussen next Wednesday night. GERMANY!!!!...and the adventure continues....