Entry #3: La Marcha

 The most important piece of advice stressed by the Xunta de Galicia when we had our government-sponsored orientation for Ayudantes Linguisticos was not to draw comparisons from our lives here in Spain to other experiences in our lives.  They warned that if we tried to argue in favor of one place over another in our minds, we would just end up disappointing ourselves.  They advised us to be open minded, to view the differences between the living situation we find ourselves in now as compared to other places as just that: differences.  Never as better or worse.  However, as I already find myself loving the lifestyle here in Ourense, it doesn’t seem too dangerous for me to start commenting on the similarities and differences between life here in Galicia and my time spent in Andalucía. So here I go.

One of the biggest differences between my experience here in Ourense and my semester abroad in Granada is the constant flow of new people that I meet on a daily basis.  After I left Spain the first time, to return home to the states, my biggest regret was that I hadn’t really connected with any Spanish people in a meaningful way during my five months in the country.  Sure, I was able to get to know my professors at the Centro de Lenguas Modernas (Center of Modern Languages), the erasmus division of the University of Granada for all of the study abroad students, and I even made one friend through my tutoria, a weekly meeting to practice my Spanish with a girl named Carmen, niece of Professor Delgado, one of the Bucknell professors with us for the semester.  And I can’t forget my señora, Lolita, who made the transition to Spain so much easier when I first arrived and through the semester.  But in reality these can’t really count as connections.  It wasn’t like I could have called these people up to go out and grab a drink or a tapa.  Well, maybe I could have, but it wouldn’t have really been genuine.  These were people who were put in my life for a purpose, and to go from there to friendship would have been unlikely.  Plus, I had 27 other Bucknellians in the city with me too, and it was just too convenient to go out with them all the time.  Not that I’m complaining – it was still the best five months of my entire life.  But it would have been nice to have some sincere and authentic interaction.  That’s part of the reason why I wanted to come back so badly.

Now that I’m here, I’m beginning to make these connections that I missed out on the first time around.  The first authentic encounter with native galegos occurred within a few days of coming to Ourense.  My friend, Julie, was one of the first Americans from our program to arrive here in Ourense, and she invited all of the people from our program over for dinner and drinking games before we headed out to the bars and discos one night.  Her two roommates, Alex and Pablo, were also there for dinner, and they speak English very well, so it was nice being able to interact bilingually while we were eating and drinking.  They taught us some card games, and we played some of the old American classics, and then headed out for the nightlife.  The way the nightlife here works is much different than Granada, as well.  In Granada, most of my nights started with botellón, drinking for cheap on the streets with friends, whereas here it gets prohibitively cold fairly early in the evening.  It’s not really the same feeling, standing in the freezing cold, drinking to maintain the illusion of warmth.  In Granada, you could go out in the middle of winter in a light jacket and still feel just fine.  Here, it gets much colder.  Instead, we meet up in someone’s piso, Spanish for flat, and drink until we’re ready to go out, to get drunk on the cheap instead of spending two or three euro on an Estrella Galicia, “national” beer of Galicia. 

The street life is different here.  Unlike in Granada, where you would encounter people all over the city heading out a la marcha, to party, the streets here get pretty quiet after about 11 or 12.  You have to head into La Zona Vieja, the historic district, to find the best concentration of fun bars and discotecas, whereas in Granada the bars were everywhere you looked.  Also, it takes some planning ahead to “pre-game” here.  In Granada, you could grab a couple of litros of Alhambra or Cruzcampo for relatively cheap from any alimentación, corner stores run primarily by los chinos, Chinese immigrants who would snatch the liters of beer from your hand, peering out the window of their store to make sure that the police weren’t waiting outside to bust them (you’re technically not allowed to sell alcohol after 10 o’clock at night in Spain, pero no pasa nada – no worries), and would then stuff the bottles into an opaque plastic bag and hurry you out of the store.  Here, the best way to drink for cheap is to go to a supermarket during the day, where the liters cost you less than a euro apiece, and a bottle of wine rarely runs you more than 1,50€.  Of course, the supermarkets generally close around 21:15 (9:15 PM for you gringos), so it goes without saying that you have to plan ahead, something that doesn’t always happen on spontaneous nights out to the bars.  The closest relative to the alimentación here in Ourense are the “24 Horas” stores, which somehow transcend all legal restraints and are able to sell alcohol to you, twenty four hours a day.  This is all well and good – the prices are even comparable to those of the alimentacion – but the availability of such shops is far inferior.  So far, in my travels through the streets of Ourense late at night, I have only encountered two, three max.  Which, needless to say, poses a problem when one is in search of cheap, easy libations.

The bars are very different here as well.  Instead of going to botellón and then to a disco, like we would do in Granada, people spend most of their nights at bars called disco pubs, which are larger than your typical bar would be, with more room for dancing, and usually a DJ mixing a set of techno and house music, but smaller and less expensive than your run-of-the-mill discoteca.  The disco pubs are really fun, and typically won’t charge you a cover charge to get in.  So after drinking and eating, we ended up going out with Alex, Pablo, and their two friends, to our favorite disco-pub (or at least the one most frequented), Boulevard.  You walk in the door and are immediately greeted by blasting techno beats, a thick hovering cloud of cigarette smoke, and a dance floor full of people, moving and dancing to the rhythm.  If you’ve never been in a discoteca before, it’s much more lively than clubs that we have in the states.  The drinks are probably cheaper, if you don’t count the exchange rate, significantly so compared to some of the larger cities, where you can pay upwards of 6 or 7€ for a beer, and more than 10€ for a copa, Spanish for mixed drink.  The atmosphere is much more celebratory.  People are out to have a good time, to hang out with their friends, and to meet other people.  Of course, for guys the task at hand remains the same: find a girl, try to dance with her until it’s time to go home, and from there...well, it depends on the situation.  I guess you could say “it’s history.”  I’d like to give you the girls’ perspective on this too, but unfortunately I’m lacking in a number of regards required to be a proper authority on the subject.  Namely the fact that I have a penis.

 A photo of Megan, Aliana, myself and Joey (my roommate) at one of our favorite disco-pubs, Boulevard.

 

I’m also making great connections with the professors at my school.  The time I spend in the sala de profes is extremely worthwhile.  I don’t view my free time as a time to relax – I see it as a time to learn about the culture of Cea, the small pueblo that I teach in, and of Galicia at large.  It’s free Spanish lessons, cultural exchanges that I value and treasure.  They love to hear me speak in English and laugh warmly at the sound my foreign accent when I attempt to say Spanish words, which can often turn out to be tongue-twisters when converted from text to speech.  Just this morning the teachers that I caught a ride with to school were interested to know what we called canciones de Navidad, and I told them “Christmas Carols.”  This turned into a 20 minute car ride of teaching them tunes like “Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer” or “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”  One of the teachers from la escuela infantil, what could be considered pre-school and kindergarten in the US, had me write down the translation of buen provecho!, the Spanish way of saying “enjoy your meal!”  Now every so often I’ll quiz her on the meaning and receive a hearty “enjoyourmeal” in response, thick and dripping with the totally unique galego accent.

A few weeks back I noticed a sign-up sheet on the coffee vending machine in the sala de profes advertising a dinner for professors, for anyone who was interested.  I signed up, eager to get to know some of my professors better, and to sample some of the local cuisine.  This past Friday we all got together for the dinner, meeting beforehand in a small café until we were all together and then heading out to the restaurant.  As we weaved through the narrow streets of la Zona Vieja, I found us getting closer and closer to the exact spot where I had stayed in my hostel.  The hostel was in the same building and owned by the same family as a churrería, a Spanish café that specializes in the super-delicious dish churros con chocolate, which are fried lengths of dough (much like their Latin-American counterparts, but without the cinnamon and sugar) that you then dip in pure, piping-hot melted milk chocolate.  Just about the richest desert in the world, but also one of the tastiest treats that Spain has to offer.  Confused, I asked some of my professors in a half-joking manner, and in Spanish, if we were going to eat churros for dinner.  They laughed and led me inside. 

The café wasn’t really crowded – about normal for a Friday night considering what I had already seen from my time staying at the hostel – but I was still confused about where our large party of eleven professors would be able to eat.  I greeted the hostel owner, who I had become acquainted with during my stay, and he led us down a set of stairs, through a long hallway (one of my professors, a History and Geography teacher named David commented that it was like un laberinto, or labyrinth, before I could make the joke), and to a small dining room, with only a table set for our party.  No one could get cell phone service, and we kept making jokes about how it was like being in a búnker (side note: the word “bunker” is the same in Spanish as it is in English, you just annunciate the “u” a bit differently – it sounds kind of like “boonker”). 

The table was set with bottles of white and red wines, selected from a wine list that included local vineyard selections, and everyone began their pre-meal vino sampling.  Then the food started coming.  Now, I must say that I’d had Spanish meals before in Granada, but I had long since forgotten how much of a process went into a true Spanish dinner.  First, pinchos, the galego version of tapas.  Platter upon platter of pinchos began filling the table, from slices of local cheeses, to tortilla española, to empanadas, to croquetas de jamón y queso, and finally finishing off with bottomless bowls of bread from Cea, famous in the region for their pan artesana (artisan bread).

(side note: the galego version of the empanada is nothing like your typical Spanish variety.  Here, the empanada starts with a generous layer of bread dough, and is filled with different ingredients.  Ours included tuna, cheese, tomatoes and peppers, but some other kinds that I’ve had before were combinations of different sausages and meats, with onions or different sauces too.  Even more strange is the Galician insistence on serving the dish cold!  At first it took some getting used to, but now I understand that it gives the finished product a taste more like a “sandwich” than the typical empanada, which is rolled into small, bite-sized pieces and served fried.  They call that version of the empanada “empanadillas” here in Galicia.  Anyhow, back to my story…)

After the pinchos, the main course.  We had a chosen between pescado (fish) or carne (meat), and I had gone with meat.  When the food finally came out, I was blown away by what was placed in front of me.  There was a full rack of ribs (though different than in the United States, these were extra tasty – just replace the barbeque sauce with oil, herbs and spices and that’s what it was), a sizeable link of chorizo sausage, and a combination of potatoes, onions and red peppers that had been sautéed together, creating a tantalizing aroma that got my mouth watering.  I chowed down, but in the end the combined effect of the pinchos and the main course were too much for me to handle.  I had to leave behind a few of the ribs and part of the sausage.

And then desert came out.  There’s always room for desert.

And then came the questions of “¿Quieres un café?”  Well now that you mention it, I’m a little exhausted from that meal.  Who cares if it’s one in the morning!

And finally, they brought out the shot glasses for a little night-cap.  Licor café is a true Galician original.  It’s kind of like Kahlua, in that they are both liqueurs and taste like coffee, but at the same time it is totally unique.  For one, the best Licor café is homemade in each bar or restaurant around the city.  You can go to one bar and try their version, and try something completely different at your next stop.  It’s really sweet (because of all the sugar) and has an extra-caffeinated kick (because of all the coffee grinds they use to flavor it).  So if you end up having a “licor café” night, make sure you’re ready to stay up late.  Seriously, this stuff will not let you go to sleep.  Perfect for a late night at the discos.  The other option of chupito (shot) to finish your meal was something I hadn’t seen before, but had heard of.  Known only to me as hierbas, Spanish for “herbs,” the shot used a large amount of Galician aguardente, a super strong liquor, similar to what we might consider moonshine in the states, that only the super brave would dare attempt to drink straight.  The literal translation of the word is “burning water,” so you can imagine my surprise when I took the whole shot instead of sipping it – I missed the memo on “slow and steady” rather than “down the hatch” (they also told me not to smell it before I tried it because it would “just make it worse”).  With aguardente, licor café, and vino in my veins, we finally headed out to the bars.  ¡Ay, dios mio!

The rest of the night passed by pleasantly, drinking Estrella Galicia from the bottle and playing a videogame version of “Trivial Pursuit” in one of the bars we stopped at (all in Spanish, of course), and after three or four bars a few of the professors decided to go home.  From there, a smaller portion of our party (about six of us) went to a disco-pub to dance for a little while.  Always amused by my English speaking and singing, I proceeded to regale my profes with my own vocal interpretations of “Single Ladies” by Beyoncé, “I Like It” by Enrique Iglesias (son of Spain’s own Julio Iglesias), and finished off the night singing “I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing” by Aerosmith (which is, inexplicably, still incredibly popular here in Galicia.  I must hear it at least four or five times a week, and it always catches me by surprise).  In return, I was treated to renditions of Spanish tunes, which I cannot recall the names of, in unison from my five fellow Spaniards.  We decided to call it a night around 04:30.  On Monday, when asked about how late we stayed out that night, the other profes responded with “Ah, so it was an early night.”  I love Spain.

Now where was I?  Ah, yes – the people of Spain!  Before this entire dinner experience, I took a weekend trip to Santiago de Compostela, located about an hour northwest of Ourense, to visit some friends of Julie, another Ayudante Linguistico here in Ourense.  The city of Santiago was stunning, ancient like most other places that I’ve visited but with a history all it’s own.  Just a week after I was there, the Pope (El Papa, to the Spanish) took time out of his visit to Spain to grace Santiago with his presence.  From my limited knowledge of Santiago remains one of only three holy cities for Catholics worldwide, along with Vatican City and Jerusalem, and is second only to these cities in terms of global pilgrimages taken annually.  El Camino de Santiago (“The Way of St. James,” with “Santiago” coming from “Sant,” meaning saint, and “Iago,” the Spanish way of saying James) snakes throughout Europe and different starting points, all of which lead to the sacred city of Santiago.  St. James, of course, being one of the apostles of Jesus.  The reason for all of this pilgrimage, you might ask?  St. James is rumored to be buried in the city, and the magnificent Cathedral is said to be built upon his grave.  To this day, people march across Galicia, enduring kilometers of difficult terrain and hardship, just to pray at the feet of Santiago.  It is said that upon entering the main plaza and seeing the Cathedral for the first time at the end of their journey, many pilgrims drop to their knees and begin crying, feeling the touch of God (or maybe just exhaustion, who knows).  Either way, the Cathedral is awesome, as you’ll note from some of the pictures below.

 Front view of the Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela.

But what would a weekend trip to a different Spanish city be without la marcha?  Don’t worry, I went out to the bars and tested how Santiago stood up to Ourense.  Julie and I stayed with her friends Amanda and Meredith, both gringos like us from the United States, and together we explored the city, both in daylight and under cover of darkness.  An added bonus to the trip was getting to meet Amanda’s boyfriend, and Julie’s past roommate (well, actually Amanda’s past roommate too, now that I think about it), Borxa (pronounced Bore-ha).  Julie and Amanda both taught in Malaga last year through a different program, and through Borxa’s insistence they decided to come back for a second year to his homeland, Galicia.  Borxa was in Santiago, coming from his hometown of Ferrol, about 30 minutes away by car, to visit Julie, Amanda, Meredith and I, along with a few of his childhood friends.  Together, we went out for a dinner of traditional Galician fare (I started off with a squid and vegetable stew, which was delicious, and had grilled tiburon – shark – for my main course), and then headed out to the bars.  The first place we went was called “Bar Orense,” so of course we had to go their first (it bore the name of my new city!) and sample their licor café.  It didn’t quite live up to my favorite licor café from Ourense, but was still pretty good.  After a while, the chicas got tired of being in a crowded bar and wanted to head out to another place, while I decided instead to stay with the native galegos.  Together we were Borxa, his friend Santi (short for Santiago), Camilo, and Camilo’s wife (who recently had their first baby).  After Borxa chased down the girls who had taken his jacket, we met up with the girls to head to a different bar, a larger one that resembled more closely the disco-pubs of Ourense, only much older and with a lot more Spanish music.  For one of the first times in my time in Spain, between Ourense and Granada, I felt like I was getting a first-hand look at a place that Spanish natives would consider completely their own.  Looking around, I felt that I was one of the only gringos in the place, and it felt great.  The girls tired of standing around, wanting to go somewhere with house music so that they could dance, and ended up taking off.  Once more, I decided to stay with the galegos, enjoying the atmosphere, the music, and the company.  Occasionally, a familiar tune would come on, including “Yellow Submarine,” at which time the entire bar broke out singing in unison.

 Borxa, Camilo, Santi, and me in the Spanish bar.

The next night, Saturday, went similarly, though we decided first to start with cheap drinks in Amanda’s apartment while the galegos went out to the bars to meet some of their other friends.  We met up with them first at a bar called La Cueva (“The Cave”), where we had a few beers and played a Spanish version of “Never Have I Ever,” before splitting up and heading to a disco, which was all decorated with Halloween garb for the holiday.  From there I was already feeling a bit boracho, but we moved on to one last bar where the galegos had ended up.  The walls were covered with graffiti and posters, giving it a feel I’d never really experienced before.  Words can’t really even describe it.  You’ll have to check it out yourself from the pictures that I took:

Top: Photo snagged of the final bar on Saturday in Santiago.

Bottom: Photo snagged of the graffiti.  It was all over the walls.

Hopefully I’ll encounter these galego friends of mine again.  Camilo spent some time studying here in Ourense at the Universidad de Vigo satellite campus here in my ciudad, so it would be a good homecoming for him.  Also, Borxa, Amanda and Meredith don’t live too far away, so it would be great to see them again.  The least I could do would be to return the favor, taking them out to la marcha here in Ourense.  That’s the beauty of living and having your own apartment: there’s always plenty of room for visitors.