I ate some snails!
Posted on May 17.
So it's getting harder to get time to post but I'm doing my best.
So.
First some observations:
1) Wine is everywhere. At times it's cheaper to buy wine than it is to buy water. How weird is that? And it's not "bad" wine either. You can get a 7 year old bottle of wine for less than €10. Because of this you drink wine with lunch and dinner. I almost feel bad asking for water because it might have cost more.
2) Spanish people are labelled as lazy. They aren't. When they work they work really hard. They just don't work as often as most other people. I am undecided as to whether or not the intensity of the work they do do equals the amount of work a North American person would accomplish in a full day though.
3) In Miraclcamp (you'll read about it in a few minutes), they play some music that you can hear over the whole village when someone dies. It's a sad song in Catalan and then they announce who has passed away. Since it's such a small village, generally you'll know who the person was. There have been quite a few deaths recently and people are a little down.
Ok now what's happened in the past week:
I ended up staying in Salamanca for 5 days (longer than I expected). The weather was so-so but I was having a lot of fun with Vlad and Sara so it was ok. It was kind of funny though. During my stay in Salamanca I barely met any Spanish people. At the CouchSurfing meeting there were mainly international people and only one Spanish girl. And she was only there because a Mexican guy brought her as a friend of his.
Tuesday, I headed to Valencia. I stayed with a great guy named Alberto. Alberto was just finishing his studies in Architecture so we didn't have much time to hang out but I still had fun talking and eating with both him and his German roommate, Dominik. Alberto lived near the old city centre (which used to be surrounded by a big wall) so I got to spend some time wandering around there.
On Wednesday it started to rain so I went for shelter under the back of what I thought was a museum (I'm still not sure what it was). I met some Dutch girls also hiding from the rain there (Jennifer and Karen) and spent the rest of the day exploring Valencia with them. Thursday we headed to the beach which, even though it wasn't very sunny out, was still nice and warm. I had a good sleep Thursday night and then hopped on the train to Tarragona Friday morning.
Unfortunately, coach (called Turista) was full so I ended up paying €55(!) for my 2 hour train ride. Stupid trains. Now my budget is all thrown off for the week. I did get a meal, more comfortable seats, and a movie ( Bee Movie in Spanish) but I would have rathered saved the money. I met the members of the band "Reverendo Moe" though which was cool. They had just won a Spanish American Idol-type show and were heading to Barcelona to film a music video or something. They couldn't have been too famous though because they were pretty nice.
I arrived in Tarragona, took a look around town for an hour or so then headed to Miralcamp, a small village of 1000 people where my host, Anna, was going for the weekend. Most of her family didn't speak English but they were very nice and cooked Escargoch for lunch which (you guessed it) is snails. Snails taste kinda like chicken. No I'm kidding they don't have much of a distinctive taste that I could tell, but they have an interesting texture. I ate lots of them though.
Today we're going to hang out around here until 18:00 then head to a place called Reus to see an outdoor Circus then back to Tarragona for the night. Tomorrow I'm heading to Barcelona, I've got half a day to look around then I'm off to Andorra.
The plan is to be in France by Wednesday but we'll see how it goes.
You can see new pictures HERE.
So it's getting harder to get time to post but I'm doing my best.
So.
First some observations:
1) Wine is everywhere. At times it's cheaper to buy wine than it is to buy water. How weird is that? And it's not "bad" wine either. You can get a 7 year old bottle of wine for less than €10. Because of this you drink wine with lunch and dinner. I almost feel bad asking for water because it might have cost more.
2) Spanish people are labelled as lazy. They aren't. When they work they work really hard. They just don't work as often as most other people. I am undecided as to whether or not the intensity of the work they do do equals the amount of work a North American person would accomplish in a full day though.
3) In Miraclcamp (you'll read about it in a few minutes), they play some music that you can hear over the whole village when someone dies. It's a sad song in Catalan and then they announce who has passed away. Since it's such a small village, generally you'll know who the person was. There have been quite a few deaths recently and people are a little down.
Ok now what's happened in the past week:
I ended up staying in Salamanca for 5 days (longer than I expected). The weather was so-so but I was having a lot of fun with Vlad and Sara so it was ok. It was kind of funny though. During my stay in Salamanca I barely met any Spanish people. At the CouchSurfing meeting there were mainly international people and only one Spanish girl. And she was only there because a Mexican guy brought her as a friend of his.
Tuesday, I headed to Valencia. I stayed with a great guy named Alberto. Alberto was just finishing his studies in Architecture so we didn't have much time to hang out but I still had fun talking and eating with both him and his German roommate, Dominik. Alberto lived near the old city centre (which used to be surrounded by a big wall) so I got to spend some time wandering around there.
On Wednesday it started to rain so I went for shelter under the back of what I thought was a museum (I'm still not sure what it was). I met some Dutch girls also hiding from the rain there (Jennifer and Karen) and spent the rest of the day exploring Valencia with them. Thursday we headed to the beach which, even though it wasn't very sunny out, was still nice and warm. I had a good sleep Thursday night and then hopped on the train to Tarragona Friday morning.
Unfortunately, coach (called Turista) was full so I ended up paying €55(!) for my 2 hour train ride. Stupid trains. Now my budget is all thrown off for the week. I did get a meal, more comfortable seats, and a movie ( Bee Movie in Spanish) but I would have rathered saved the money. I met the members of the band "Reverendo Moe" though which was cool. They had just won a Spanish American Idol-type show and were heading to Barcelona to film a music video or something. They couldn't have been too famous though because they were pretty nice.
I arrived in Tarragona, took a look around town for an hour or so then headed to Miralcamp, a small village of 1000 people where my host, Anna, was going for the weekend. Most of her family didn't speak English but they were very nice and cooked Escargoch for lunch which (you guessed it) is snails. Snails taste kinda like chicken. No I'm kidding they don't have much of a distinctive taste that I could tell, but they have an interesting texture. I ate lots of them though.
Today we're going to hang out around here until 18:00 then head to a place called Reus to see an outdoor Circus then back to Tarragona for the night. Tomorrow I'm heading to Barcelona, I've got half a day to look around then I'm off to Andorra.
The plan is to be in France by Wednesday but we'll see how it goes.
You can see new pictures HERE.
