Salamanca, Spain

You may have seen on the news that Spain has re-entered a state of emergency, involving closures and curfews and other restrictions. Frankly it doesn't affect me all that much. Things might get a bit tricky if travel bans are imposed between the various Spanish regions. But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Possibly the wrong choice of metaphor there, seeing as the bridges might be where they put the roadblocks.

This city is one of the great historical centres of human learning. It has the world's third-oldest university, just behind Bologna and Oxford, and just ahead of Cambridge. It's nice and quiet right now, especially when the hour of the siesta combines with the off-season of the tourist trade (and indeed the year of Covid). When you sit in the Plaza Anaya, in the shade of the cathedral and the trees, with a nearby busker playing classical guitar, it's quite difficult to imagine being anywhere else in the world that's quite as pleasant. Salamanca is definitely the highlight of my trip so far.

It's also one of the easier places in Spain for English speakers to pronounce correctly. Having said that, one should remember that the Spanish are more vigilant with their vowels than we are. Each of the four letter 'A's in Salamanca should rhyme with 'hat', contrary to our natural tendency to call it 'Sallermanker'. (The flipside of this is that Spanish people often find it hard to dispense with vowels like we do, for example in English words like 'comfortable'. What most of us actually say is 'comf't'b'l'.)

The excitement stakes remain relatively low here. Having said that, I did chance upon TV cameras in the Plaza Mayor filming the official Spanish version of 'Masterchef'. The locals pronounce the 'ch' in 'chef' with a hard sound, as in 'check', because the 'sh' sound doesn't really exist in standard Spanish. Accordingly, when they want a person or persons to be quiet, they don't say 'sssh' - they say 'ssss', ie they hiss. It's kind of unnerving when lots of people do it at once. But an appropriate note upon which for me to shut up.

Looking across the Plaza Anaya to the cathedral

Close up of the cathedral, with the sun setting in the southwest

Iglesia Nueva del Arrabal, on the south side of the river Tormes

Plaza Mayor. 
Sunlight on sandstone is the visual essence of Salamanca.

Looking south at the cathedral from the Clerecía towers.
It's windy up there. The viewing platforms are not quite level and the railings are a bit lower than I'd like. Vertigo kicks in. 

Convent of San Esteban

Looking north to the cathedral from across the river

Surely it was destiny that brought me to this park.

Edd vs Food #88
Belatedly it occurs to me that my blog has had something of a savoury bias over the years.
So here's a picture of a lemon & mango ice cream smoothie.
From the Heladería Umami

My Salamanca apartment.
I'll take homely chintz over chrome-plated glamour, every time.

Zamora, Spain

I'm getting into the groove of speaking Spanish regularly. Admittedly it's one of the easier languages for an Anglophone to learn. The pronunciation is entirely regular and uniform: once you learn the basic sounds, all words sound like how they look; there's nothing to compare with our English weirdnesses like 'taught/sort' or 'out/drought'. Nor do they have randomly varying plurals such as 'house/houses' and 'mouse/mice'. There aren't too many irregular verbs, and those that do exist are easy enough to learn and remember. Tenses can be translated easily from English to Spanish - not just 'I am' and 'I was', but also things like 'I had been' and 'I will have been' and so on. Best of all, there's none of this German nonsense about ze verb at ze end of ze sentence putting.

One little challenge is that the subjunctive mood is much more present in Spanish. You can't translate directly an English sentence like 'What do you want me to do if the shop's closed?' It has to use the subjunctive, which in English would probably be something archaic like 'What do you want that I should do, if the shop be closed?' Fortunately the subjunctive is much simpler to form in Spanish - it's generally just a change of one word, a different conjugation of the verb. In English we don't say 'I wouldn't do that if I am you'; instead we say 'I wouldn't do that if I were you'. Well, in Spanish every verb has its equivalent to the change of 'am' to 'were', but generally it just means changing a letter or two at the end of the verb.

An example: I was approached by an homeless person in Valladolid and she asked me for some spare change, '...aunque sea poco'. This translates as '...though it be little', which sounds quite posh to English ears. I gave her a euro.

Now you may be wondering (if indeed you're still reading) - why is Edd waffling on about Spanish grammar? In truth it's because I'm running out of other things to waffle about. There isn't really all that much going on in my life right now. It's not like last year's travels, when there was a change of country and language with almost every single blog post. And these Spanish towns, lovely as they are, don't really vary all that much. I'm well aware that my photos of churches & cathedrals & plazas & Old Towns must all kind of merge into one after a while...

Zamora is notable for the fact that it contains more Romanesque churches than anywhere else in Europe. (Rome included). But I don't have any particular interest in Romanesque churches. Nor, I imagine, do any of my readers. So I guess I'll leave it there. This week's Edd vs Food is a bit of a humdinger, by the way!

Zamora city walls, seen from across the Douro.
Do a doggy paddle in this river for long enough and you end up in Porto.

Cathedral, seen from Castle

Cathedral again, seen from its own front yard

One of the nicer church interiors. I forget which one.

Edd vs Food #87
Full Spanish breakfast, curated and home-made by me.
This took nearly as long to eat as it did to make.

Valladolid, Spain

The chicken & carrots pictured in my last blog elicited more negative feedback than any of the previous 84 Edd vs Foods. To which I can only say, OK OK keep your hair on. I shall try harder in future.

I think I'm getting soft in my old age. Not too many years ago, a typical day on the road would encompass a pre-dawn start in a stinky hostel dorm, a sweaty 12-hour bus ride, and an exhausted late arrival at another stinky hostel dorm. Whereas so far on this trip, a typical day's 'travelling' involves a sleep-in, a noon check-out from a comfy apartment, an hour in a first-class train compartment, and then arriving at another comfy apartment in time to get all my food shopping done before tea. It's not exactly Jack Kerouac, is it?

When you board a Spanish inter-city train at a big station, you have to put your bags through airport-style security scanners. I guess this is a hangover from the 2003 Madrid bombings. Yet if you're boarding the same train at a smaller station, your bags aren't scanned, and indeed sometimes you don't even get your ticket checked. 

Of course, self-defeating bureaucracy is hardly unique to Spain. And the trains are fast, comfortable and affordable. Longer journeys generally have a TV screen in each carriage showing films, to which you can listen via your earphones if you wish. On one recent journey I watched a subtitled French black comedy called 'Docteur?' Kind of low-key, but it grew on me. One to watch out for if you can get it on NetBox or whatever it's called.

Here my apartment is a bit smaller than usual because it's right in the middle of the city. I've got a nice little terrace, although it's the kind of terrace which doesn't really look out onto anything, being instead looked down on by things, mainly other people's terraces. Nonetheless, it's nice to have one's own little piece of the outdoors; and what do I care who's watching me enjoying a beer and a book? The weather in this part of Spain at this time of year is curious: very chilly and dark in the mornings, but becoming steadily warmer until the heat peaks around 5pm at 20℃ or so. Which is more than hot enough for this particular ginger. In fact, even in the mornings when it's still below 10℃, I generally don't bother wearing a coat, and of course I get funny looks from the locals. None of whom ever had to stand in the Roker End on a wintry afternoon.

Valladolid presents yet another dilemma when it comes to pronunciation. The native way (very vaguely, 'bye-a-doll-eeth') or the English way (ie, rhyming with 'shall a solid')? Another minefield. Overall it's a very pleasant and liveable city. If 'pleasant' sounds like I'm damning it with faint praise, well, yes I suppose I am. It's more of an industrial town than a tourist destination. Having said that, if I got offered a few months working here then I dare say I'd jump at the chance. Not just yet though.

Plaza Zorrilla

Can't remember where this was. Just a nice spot.

Plaza Mayor

Church of San Pablo
The highly ornate frontage is a notable example of the Gothic influence. Apparently.

Valladolid's very own Millenium Dome (Cúpula del Milenio)
Note to younger readers: Millenium Dome is what London's 02 Arena used to be called.

There's nothing you can translate that can't be translated

Statue of Christopher Columbus, who died here in 1506.
Without Columbus, there'd be no USA, and therefore no Trump...
#ColumbusMustFall #CancelColumbus

I think this guy must be in the Qué Qué Qué 

Apartment, with terrace

Edd vs Food #86
Home-made ham and cheese sandwich. Bear with me here. This is fine dining.
Aged manchego cheese at €20/kg, and jamón ibérico at €120/kg.
All in all, this sandwich cost me about 10 euros to make.
Fresh bread from the local baker. No mayo, no butter, just a smidge of olive oil. 

León, Spain

'León' is Spanish for 'lion', as you may already know. I don't think there are any cities in the UK named after big cats. Although in Australia there's a place near Melbourne called Garfield.

Similarly, most of you will know (thanks to SEAT) that it's pronounced 'lay-on' rather than 'lee-on'. Bear in mind that the stress is on the second syllable, not the first (hence the accent on the 'o'). Normally I think there's no need to adapt native pronunciation - I'd sound a real plonker if I always said 'Madrid' the way the locals say it - but in this case 'lay-on' is necessary to distinguish León from the French city of Lyons. Saying out loud the 's' in Lyons would be too crude, whereas pronouncing the '-ons' a la francaise would be pretentious. It's a minefield.

In Zaragoza I stayed in a building dedicated to holiday lets. Here I'm the only tourist in a residential block and accordingly my apartment has an entirely pointless 3 bedrooms. It's in a rather unglamorous industrial area, with a nice view over a pharmaceuticals factory, and indeed the address is Antibiotics Avenue. (Not kidding.) I'm on the third floor, and in my twin pursuit of physical exercise and dodging Covid, I haven't used the lift once. The long walk into town does me good too.

The Old Town is full of ersatz, poncey, overpriced bars & cafes, although it's worth running the gauntlet to get to the cathedral. My personal historical highlight was the Basilica of San Isidoro, site of the first Cortes of León in 1188, which UNESCO recognises as the oldest documented example of modern parliamentarism in Europe. Iceland's Althing is in fact older; evidently they didn't submit their paperwork correctly.

The Basilica also contains the Pantheon, ie the tombs, of the erstwhile Kings of León. Here I would normally insert a joke that connected thousand-year-old graves with Sex being On Fire, if only I could think of one, which sadly I can't. And I'd like to show you some examples of the unsettling murals above the tombs, babies being put to the sword etc, but photography isn't allowed in any part of the Basilica.

PS: my blog is always published retrospectively, so if by chance you're aware that León has just gone into lockdown then don't worry. It happened several days after I left. No matter how eagerly Covid chases me around Spain, those high-speed trains will always enable me to make good my escape.

Obviously...

Convento de San Marcos
Consecrated church, museum, and also 5-star hotel.
I'm sure God understands.

On the left is the Casa Botines (1891), a rare example of Gaudi outside Barcelona.
On the right is the Palacio De Los Guzmanes (16th century), 

Léon cathedral

Graffiti: 'If you're bad by nature, you're good by choice.'
An echo of Hamlet, act 3, scene 4: 'Assume a virtue, if you have it not.'

Comfy digs on the third floor.
If you squint, you can just see the bidet in the far left of the picture.
There can't be many Englishmen abroad who haven't mistakenly pissed in a bidet at least once.

Edd vs Food #85
The outer limits of my culinary creativity.
Chicken, carrots, rice.

Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain

During my South America trip in 2012, I made half-hearted attempts at speaking Spanish, and on the whole I failed. Miserably. I did a lot more homework in advance of my Spain trip in 2017, which meant that things improved a bit. Ever since then I've been studying daily, with the help of numerous tutors, and though I'll never be properly bilingual - I started far too late in life - I'm definitely at the point where I can now say, out loud and in capital letters, that I Speak Spanish.

And this trip should be an ideal opportunity to build on that. I'm confident that I can make myself understood in Spain, and that I can understand what's said to me in response. The only thing that can possibly go wrong is if we're all suddenly obliged to mumble at each other through facemasks.

Sigh.

It's especially annoying because when I'm unethically eavesdropping on the conversations of nearby strangers, I generally understand them pretty well. They have their masks down and they're speaking clearly, stretching out words for effect, accompanied by the obligatory wild Latin hand gestures. But most of my conversational interactions are with bored, masked, mumbling shop assistants trotting out a scripted line for the 100th time that day, and thus not bothering to enunciate that line properly. In fairness it's the same in England, where - from a foreigner's perspective - "Do you want fries with that?" could just as easily be "Have you got piles, you twat?"

Spain is currently a bit of a Covid hotspot, but I'm not about to run away, just as I didn't flee to Spain from England when things were hotting up back home. I'm staying in apartments rather than hotels. My social isolation here is pretty much total, and everyone I see is wearing masks, not just in shops and on public transport but also in the parks and on the streets. I'm not mixing with unmasked people in bars & restaurants - and that, incidentally, is why my Edd vs Food pics are going to be all about the home cooking until further notice. The positive side of this is that I'm saving tons of money and eating more healthily than ever. Go me. 

Vitoria-Gasteiz is the capital of the Basque autonomous community, although obviously that community's biggest city is Bilbao, where I passed a happy few days in 2017. (Spain has 17 autonomous communities, but this isn't the place to bore you all with lectures about that. Instead, I'll spread those lectures out over the next few months.) It's a nice enough place. Nothing to write home about. Hence all the waffle above. 

By the way, another consequence of Covid is that I'm limiting my exposure to trains & buses by spending more time in each city. This also means that I'm saving money thanks to AirBnB's generous discounts for full-week stays. So my blogs will be a bit less frequent than during previous trips. But don't worry, I'll be fine. Y'all take care now.

Helpful turf sign, just in case you forget where you are

Catedral de María Inmaculada

Another angle of the Catedral María Inmaculada.
Note the stone alligator at the foot of the picture.

Grass around the tram lines. Nice touch.

Random place in the city centre. Note the wall art, and the the total absence of litter.

Siesta time. As above re litter.

Edd vs Food #84
Home-made pizza with chorizo, goat's cheese and red onion.
OK, admittedly it's home-topped rather than home-made. The base was out of a packet.
Years ago I tried making my own pizza bases and it ended badly.
Former housemates still recall the 'Flourpocalypse'.