no es adios, es "hasta luego"

One of the first things I learnt here was that the Spanish never say "adios" to say goodbye, but always use "hasta luego" (sounds more like "-ta logo" though...), which literally means "see you later"...
right now this sentence has received another special meaning for me: I had to say goodbye to everybody at school, the teachers, some of my fellow students (some of them will go out with me tonight, so it was not yet all too bad) and at the moment I'm packing all my stuff - but my decision is taken, it won't be "adios, Salamanca", but "see you in a couple of years", I have to come back to this city!!!
And now I can't write more, I need to find some way to pack my suitcase and bags so that I won't have to pay too much for excess luggage tomorrow - and I have to be ready to go out at 8!
So I wish you all a good time, the next post will be back from Zürich! Am looking forward to seeing you all again!!!

No quiero convertirme en un recuerdo

This is a line from a song we listened to in class and somehow it touched me… it means „I don’t want to turn into a memory“ – and with everybody leaving this last weekend and me leaving in only three days, it had a very special meaning for me. As always, when you spend a long time in some other country and get to know a lot of nice people from all over the world, at the end you tell everybody that you’re going to stay in touch and everything, that one day you’ll meet again, you exchange phone numbers and collect tons of e-mail addresses – but after all, how many people will you really ever see again? When I was in England, I still believed all of this, but now my experience has shown me that I haven’t seen any of these people again and there are only two I even talk to until today (about once a month or even less…).
So now here I am having a lot of fun with all these great people and as much as I wish it were different, I have to face the truth that I will most likely not meet most of them again – and all they will be to me and I to them will be a memory. A fantastic one, but still only a memory…

At least I know for sure that Salamanca will be more than a memory, I am so sure that I will come back here one day, this city has really enchanted me!!

Sorry for that slightly sad post, I just came back from another really nice evening with some of the people from school (I’ll post pix tomorrow or so…) and realized that I only have two more nights to spend here in Salamanca, which somehow was kind of a shock… Plus I only slept three hours last night which might explain a bit the strange mood I’m in (although I had a long siesta of two hours this afternoon)! ;)

The cook is drunk!!!

sin palabras...

Fiesta Latina en Arco Atico

Oh my God, what a night! ;) Yesterday, we had a real Latino Party in our flat! No, that’s not a joke, the truth is that we had people from three different Southamerican countries, two guitars, four hours of music and about 20 guests!
Let me explain: Carol has a friend from Brasil who lives in Salamanca. Her boyfriend is from Chile, but also lives here and plays in a band. One of the other members of that band is an Argentinian guy who came here as well, together with a friend of his, also Argentinian. They arrived with their guitars and we were able to enjoy our private concert in our living room together with the students from the flat downstairs and others! They played some songs they had written themselves (impressively good!!) and many, many other songs in Spanish – when they played “en el muelle de San Blas” by Maná, I was really close to tears!!!
It was also interesting to talk to them, although I must admit, I felt like a total idiot when I spoke to one of the Argentinians and had to realize that I didn’t understand a word – although he’s been living in Salamanca for five years or something, his accent is so strong that I couldn’t believe that what he spoke was Spanish! It was just like my first experience in Manchester about 8 years ago, when I thought I already understood English pretty well and then asked myself what language the people there were actually speaking…
However, the fun of the evening turned into a little shock when all the guests left short after 2am. We were just about to go to bed (obviously without bringing all the glasses into the kitchen or doing the dishes), when the doorbell rang. Carol opened and there were two men who looked awfully serious and like a lot of trouble… One of them showed us his ID card – like in a movie, when the police officers open their wallets to prove that they are sherrifs or something!! Apparently the neighbour downstairs had called them because the music was too loud and he couldn’t sleep… We had already been wondering why this guy hadn’t come upstairs before because we had already had some discussions with him because the water seems to be leaking from our bathroom into his and he wanted us to fix it! More than annoying… anyway, so yesterday these guys told us that it was not acceptable what was going on here and that actually they had to give us a fine of 300 euros (!!!) and that he wanted to see our passports. Imagine what a shock we had! We knew that actually it was neither allowed to have guests in these student flats nor to make noise between 11pm and 8am, but well… In the end however, they just took Carol’s details (don’t ask me what for) and left, but none of us could go to sleep, that was just too much for one evening! So now were just hoping that this won’t have any consequences…!

Pix of really nice people!!!

Today I'm just going to post some pictures of some of the many great people I've met so far!

These were three girls (one English, one Austrian and one German) that were here for only one week (my second) and with whom I had a looot of fun!!

These were the two people with whom I spent most of last week: David from Denmark and Stephanie from Holland! It's such a shame they left, school is really boring without them!!!

This was in Madrid - with Lisa, the girl from the UniZH, my flatmates Seo-Ah and Annika, Michele, a nice guy from Italy who lived in the other flat in our building and Ani, a Russian girl who we all came to like a lot!

And this was last week, going out in Salamanca, with Marine, a French girl from school, David, Ani and Ayu, Ani's Japanese flatmate.

I can't tell you how sad I am that most of these people have already left - and the few that are still here are leaving this Saturday! I guess next week will be rather booooring (as not to say "dauntingly and excruciatingly tedious"... ;))

can't wait to come back to Zürich to show you all the pictures and finally be able to meet all of you again!!!

Back in Cyberspace

Unbelievable but true, I’ve already come to the end of week 4 – time is flying and I’m still enjoying everything here so much!
We’ve passed a wonderfully lazy weekend here in Salamanca, which I now realize was just what I had needed after 4 weeks of travelling and being active non-stop! Yesterday, Lisa, Annika and I went to the shopping mall a little outside the city, but were a little disappointed – it’s hard to imagine, but it’s true, the Spanish people are so unfriendly in stores!!! At least I didn’t buy anything and therefore didn’t add to my worries about a too heavy suitcase (I already panic now when I think about it – I will have to pay so much for excess luggage, I can see it coming…!!!). At night, we were too tired to go out (explanation follows…) and just had dinner in our flat and then watched the movie “Todo sobre mi madre” by Almodóvar.
Today, we all slept until noon and then did basically nothing until 4 o’clock. Then we realized that by then, all the museums had closed and our plans were destroyed (we had wanted to do some “cultura Salmantina” this weekend…)! Since the wind was also a little too fresh to go to the swimming pool, Annika and I decided to just go for an Ice Cream to the centre to at least leave the flat for a moment. So after enjoying sun, Ice Cream, freedom and laziness on the Plaza Mayor for a while, we went on a stroll through the old city centre, past the University (with the frog) and the Cathedrals and ended up sitting on the stairs in front of the Philology department (so on that picture you can finally see where I am hopefully going to be studying in a couple of years!), where we watched street musicians, students, a puppy dog and simply life go by on a beautiful evening in (for me) one of the most beautiful cities in the world!

So now I guess I have to apologize for not posting anything for such a long time! The thing is, it is rather hard to get to the internet, at school, we only have 7 computers, 2 don’t work and the others are occupied every break time by the same people (which really annoy me!). And at home – well…. Life here consists basically of siesta or fiesta or most of the days of both, and the little time that is left between the two (usually from about 7 to 10) is needed for homework, shower and dinner! You see, I’m busy! ;)
The last week has been a lot of fun, I’ll have to tell you all about our trip to Madrid last weekend and our little daytrip to a little village near here last Wednesday (because it was some kind of religious holiday, we had the day off school) and all the parties… but right now I have to run to get dinner ready!

I hope I’ll hear from you all soon, am beginning to miss you all! ;) And thanks for all your comments, I'll answer in a more personal way! :)

More fun...

Let me give you some visualization of fun evenings in Salamanca (and a warning, it might be scary ;))...

Yesterday (I know, it was Thursday, but here there's fiesta every night, who cares if everyone has class the next morning or not...) we went out once again and as always, the first stop was the "Chupiteria". This is most likely to be the worst place here in Salamanca, full of teenagers and the perfect place to get drunk... Here you can see the choice of "Chupitos" on offer! Basically, they are similar to the shots you can get in Swiss bars as well, but here they are less strong and consist instead of pure alcohol of different flavours, actually quite delicious! ;) So here are some of my compañeros before the first Chupito:

And later on, one of the guys tried a new function on my camera and the result looks about the way I would imagine the world to look after a looooot of Chupitos ;):

Having fun...

Since my last post, many fun things have been going on... we've gone out a few times, everytime had a whale of a time with lots of really cool people from all over the world!

We went on a Tapas tour last Wednesday (which you can see in the picture), on Thursday we went to the cinema to see "Shrek Tercero" (of course in Spanish) which was quite funny as well, on Friday we had to say goodbye to 4 of the girls on this picture, so we all went out together one last time...

Saturday, we visited Segovia and Avila on an excursion the school organised - this here is a picture of Segovia, which is a really nice city! Unfortunately, we did not have enough time to see a lot of it, because - normal when you travel in a group of 40 people - we were always waiting for someone or something and lost a lot of time that way.. I don't know if we will be able to go there once again but it would certainly be worth it. We've seen the castle which they say was the inspiration for Walt Disney's Fantasy Castle and even had a guided visit tour, took a look at the Roman aqueduct which is really impressive, and then went on to Avila, where we had about 1h to look at the ancient city walls - we were absolutely unable to do much more, because the heat was killing us, it was 39 degrees! not to mention that our guide told us that we were lucky to be in Avila that day, as the temperature there was about 5-10 degrees lower than in the rest of Spain...

Well, and when we got home, we just took a shower and then went out for dinner, because it was Carolina's birthday on Sunday and we wanted to celebrate into that day. So while we were out for dinner, Mimi prepared everything in our flat and short before midnight, we had about 12 people, champagne and brownies on our balcony and sang Happy Birthday! Later on, we got to know some more spots of the Salmantian (?) night life - and believe it or not, outside one of the clubs I ran into a guy who studies with me at the University of Zürich! What a coincidence!!

On Sunday, we first had to sleep in a lot, but then took a look at some other parts of Salamanca, for instance the famous Roman Bridge and went swimming in the river (well, you can't exactly call this swimming, we walked into it until the water reached our stomach, but then went out again...). The weather is going crazy at the moment here, after the heat on Saturday, Sunday was terribly stormy and during the night, we had rain, yesterday was very hot again but today we woke up to only 13 degrees! now the sun is shining again and we're back to about 30 degrees, but that seems rather cool...

Well, that's it for now, we've just booked the hostel in Madrid for next weekend, I'll have much more to tell you all about very soon! hope you're all well, miss you guys!!! Take care!

Getting into the spirit :)

Okay, before you might ask what I'm doing with my computer at 1 am - the thing is that we found this wireless hotspot just around the corner of our house, on a little square, so now, after having had tapas for dinner, we are sitting here on a bench, enjoying the slightly cooler air of the night (during the day, the heat is getting almost unbearable, we've had up to 39 degrees in the last few days!) and getting connected with the rest of the world! ;)

So much is going on here that I don't know what to write now! Let me just give you some impressions: This picture shows the balcony of our flat (isn't it beautiful?=), with the table set for one of the moonlight dinners we've enjoyed in the last days: it is amazing, still by far warm enough to sit outside comfortably, eat a self-cooked meal, have a chat with friends and all of that underneath the full moon (la luna llena y sus secretos...)! As we live on the 6th floor, we have a look over the rooftops of Salamanca and sunshine almost until sunset!

We've been to the swimming pool again twice, on Sunday and today, which is the only and best way to cool down a bit and get tanned at the same time! ;) And who says we can't do our homework while sunbathing?! It is also one of the "group experiences" we are having here all the time, we're always at least four or five people sitting together with our towels, talking, helping each other with homework or distracting each other from it...

Oh yes, I haven't told you about one thing that really made a huge impression on me: this Monday, we went on a City Tour, organised by the school. At 5pm we met at school, and a guy (we later found out that he is a English and Spanish student at the university of Salamanca and works as a teacher at our school during his holidays) took us to the most important monuments of Salamanca. Well, what can I say? My first impression, namely that this is one of the most beautiful cities I've ever seen, was confirmed totally and, what is more important, I had a very curious experience that afternoon: after looking at one of the cathedrals and learning a lot about its architecture and history, we went to the building of the Philology Department of the USAL (University of Salamanca). It is a very old building (if I'm not mistaken from the 16th century) and the adjacent building is the former student residence which is now also used for classes. Already there, I felt very peculiar, but when we then entered the building where most classes in "letras" (literature and linguistics) take place, I really got goosebumps and felt that this was where I belong - just the way I've only felt once before in my life: when I (at the age of about 16) first entered the main building of the UniZH and stood there in the Lichthof and knew that I really wanted to be a part of that world one day! I know it might sound really stupid now, but it was as if I saw where I should go in the future - and since the USAL is one of the oldest and most prestigious universities of Europe and especially for languages the best of Spain, I think it very likely that, sooner or later, I will spend more time here! ;)

Now I think I should leave it at this for today and get some sleep - we went out yesterday and the last night was rather short... so keep checking back for news, now that the internet is so close, I'll be able to write more often! :)

P.S.: today's title comes from a remark of one of my "companeros" here today: we all arrived about 10 minutes late at the meeting point and as I didn't seemed to care too much, he was like "great, girl - you're getting into the spirit of Salamanca" - and I think I am really, feel totally comfortable with this way of living... :)