To continue celebrating my November of 4-day weekends, I went to Castilla y León to visit Linnaea Cunha, a fellow Linfield ’10 grad, and to see “castilla y leony stuff,” as she put it. Castilla was one of the kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula before Spain was Spain. Isabella of Castilla married Ferdinand of Aragón (together known as “the Catholic monarchs,” these were the people who finished off the Reconquista, started the Inquisition, and gave Columbus money for his harebrained adventure to India), and Spain was born. Linnaea works in a small town called Arévalo, and seeing it made me very happy about the small town that I was placed in! No offense to Arévalo, but it’s very spread out, and unfortunately we didn’t have time to actually see the old part of town, so I’m basing my opinion purely on the new bits that I saw. Santanyí feels much cozier, and is a whole heck of a lot warmer, than Arévalo. It was freezing there! When we went to Segovia, it actually snowed for a few minutes.
My dad shoveling off the cars at home—I’ve gotten soft if I whine about a few minutes of snowfall!
I crashed at Linnaea’s place for the first night, and the next day we set off for the mountains. We wanted to go hiking somewhere, and Linnaea’s Spanish roommate suggested Béjar, which is surrounded by mountains and has something called the “Jardín el Bosque”. Unfortunately, connections from one small Spanish town to another are usually terrible, and we didn’t get into Béjar until 2pm, right as the tourist office closed. So, we did the next best thing: found some old men to ask for suggestions on hiking trails. Since we got there so late, we only had a few hours to hike, and they suggested going down by the river. We wandered through Béjar and eventually found signs for the “Jardín el Bosque” (the place recommended by Linnaea’s roommate), but that, too, was closed. Asking more random people for directions, we found our way down to the river and started off on a path. It was awesome!
The Río Riofrío: the River Cold River, or the Cold River River.
A dozen or so textile mills had been built along the now-canalized Cold River River, and for some reason, they have all been abandoned and have fallen into disrepair.
Béjar has added a concrete walkway and interpretive signs, so Linnaea and I wandered along the old millrace.
All too soon, we had to leave Béjar and take a bus back to Arévalo. It was a neat little town, but I would definitely visit it A) with a rental car, B) with a map in hand, C) with non-leaky shoes, and D) not in the rain.
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The next day, we set off bright and early to take a train to Ávila, and then take a bus from there to Segovia. The bus ended up being sold out, so we spent the day in Ávila and arranged to take a later bus into Segovia, which worked out well. Ávila has a gorgeous old city surrounded by an immaculately restored wall. We explored the cathedral, climbed the walls, and spent lots of hours ducking in and out of cafés trying to keep warm while we waited for the bus to Segovia.
Eventually we caught our bus into Segovia, whose old city and aqueduct are listed as UNESCO World Heritage sites.
Segovia at last! The aqueduct.
One of Linnaea’s co-teachers used to work in Segovia, and she gave us the email of a fellow American who is in his second year as an English language teaching assistant. He met us at the bus station and took us directly into town to have a drink. A couple other Americans who are just starting out this year with the program joined us, as well as one of his friends from Portugal. It was so much fun to relax and hang out with new people! No matter how much I love Santanyí, it has 0 nightlife and 0 inhabitants between the ages of 18-30. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it makes it hard to meet people in Santanyí, whereas in Segovia, where we had instant new friends.
There was an international film fest going on, so we went to go see a Czech film that someone had picked off a list at random, and it was indeed very random. Take lots of cutout animation (think: Monty Python style) and naked people with chickens for heads, mixed in with a storyline about an Oedipus complex and dream interpretation, while being partly dubbed and partly Czech with Spanish subtitles, and you get two hours of creative confusion. After that movie, we needed another drink.
Segovia, as with the rest of Spain, doesn’t really start the night until midnight. After getting out of the movie, the party was in full swing. We squeezed into a bar, had a drink (which comes with free tapas! I don’t know where Mallorca went wrong—none of the tapas are free, and none are all that good, here) and then followed the packs of Spanish people out and went to a restaurant famous for its house wine. Apparently people are in a permanent pub-crawl state, so when that restaurant emptied, we went into another bar, found a table in the back, and had one more drink.
After getting up far too early after a night out, we hit the streets of Segovia again, and explored at our leisure.
Segovia's Alcázar
Aqueduct again
Because I’m not a partier by any means, I am delighted to live in a small town devoid of nightlife, but hanging out in Segovia at night with a fun group of new people was definitely a highlight of my trip. I have made it a goal to push myself here in Santanyí to get to know people—although new friends don’t just fall into my lap here, the people are friendly and all I need to do is make an effort. It’s a bit daunting to be in a group of people who only speak Mallorquín (the dialect of Catalán that is spoken on Mallorca—see lovin’ languages) but I’m going to keep trying my darndest to understand Mallorquín and to break into conversations even when I’m really not sure what’s going on. Sitting quietly in the back is a great skill for not being noticed, but not a good one for making friends. My list of new-friend-making techniques are as follows:
A) go to the one café-bar that Santanyí offers and listen to the live music on Saturday nights. The live music happens to be played by the high school philosophy teacher’s band
B) hang out with the philosophy teacher
C) listen to the computer tech teacher’s suggestion that I find hiking/outdoorsy groups
D) figure out how to find hiking/outdoorsy groups, and then find them
E) find out if anyone in Santanyí is registered under www.CouchSurfing.com, and contact them to see if they want to go out and have a cup of coffee
F) ditto for www.LiveMocha.com
G) next Tuesday, I’m having a “Thanksgiving potluck” at the elementary school. It’s not actually that exciting—all the teachers always eat at the school on Tuesdays—but I’m starting off with my proactive-friend-making plan right now. I wanted to host a Thanksgiving party at my house, but there are far too many teachers to cram in here, so we’re just doing it the easy way. Today, the teachers remembered that I’d mentioned the potluck, so we started a list of who wanted to bring what, and lots of people actually seemed excited!
Wish me luck on my friend-making endeavors! And if you want to see more photos of my adventures in Castilla y León with a good, old friend (being one Linnaea Cunha), then go to: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2050519&id=65202311&l=a5040f9c97
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