I Heart Salamanca :) :) :)

It seems like just yesterday that I won this one-month scholarship to study for the summer at La Universidad de Salamanca, but.. sigh.. it was 3 yrs ago! Well.. not that the University gave me the scholarship, more like the Spanish Government on their www.becasmae.es website. The conditions were: we give you money for one month of study (to pay for tuition and lodge), and your return flight to Spain, and you find a University in any part of Spain (where they offer summer language classes) that you would like to go. My lecturers had pointed me to Santiago de Compostela (I felt that being northern Spain, it'd be too cold), Granada (I felt that being southern Spain it'd be too hot), Madrid (hmm.. too central), and Salamanca (since the castellano spoken there would be the most standardized). I bless the day I chose Salamanca!

Salamanca is a 3hr bus/train ride to the west of Madrid, and maybe a 1hr ride from there to the Portuguese border. It's mighty tiny (can be walked in less than a day, and has no metro. You'd get around a lot faster walking than by taking a bus). But, that's just part of the charm. Stepping into the shopping district of Salamanca is like taking a step back into time! Yeah, yeah.. Hans Christien Andersen's fairy tale village in Odense is time-warped, too! But.. SHEESH.. we're talking meDIEval, here! It's like you expect Caesar's great-great-great-great-great-great-GREAT grandkids to step out from behind a building and give you directions! Yet, many of the buildings are modern in terms of age and amenities, but there's this law that ensures that any new buildings are built the same height and with the same sandstone materials as the artifacts!

It was really cool walking along the same streets that Miguel de Unamuno trod, and my goodness, the caTHEdrals!! Most Spanish cities have THE cathedral, but no, not Salamanca, they've got TWO. Aptly named "The Old Cathedral" and "The New Cathedral", they're built side by side with very little divisibility, and only during my last two days what I able to 'see' the difference in architectural style: baroque vs gothic. Salamanca flourished during the height of the Spanish kings (Ferndinand and Isabel), and Spain was just flexing its architectural muscle, with oodles of building projects. It contributed platteresque (platerisco) art to the scene, and it's essentially making designs usually reserved for silverwork with plaster/clay. It's relief work, and the designs are made, then left for the clay/plaster to dry and harden. Salamanca is laiden with platteresque designs (i'm really not sure how it's spelt), and most of the public buildings have some kind of application (Casa de las Conchas, La Facada of the University, etc, etc)

The Roman Bridge is also fantastic. Sure, I don't remember seeing water under the bridge (Salamanca's kinda dry and arid), but.. sheesh.. the VIEW.. of the Cathedrals. The next cool thing about Salamanca is that it's a University town, so go for a walk around 10 pm (when Spaniards are going to have dinner), and it's like 2pm in the afternoon. Thousands of people mill around the streets, and everything is illuminated. The Plaza Mayor(swoon, sigh, faint:)) acquires this ethereal glow, and you can't help but be happy! But.. the CaTHEdrals! At night, they're even MORE breathtaking, especially when seen from the Roman Bridge (which is 'behind' the town), so you must go up through the winding, cobblestoned streets, cut through the Plaza Mayor, up and through more streets (up to the University), skirt the CaTHEdrals (sigh at them), go down another street, cross the regular (non-pedestrian) road, get onto the bridge, cross half of it, then.... GASP! You can see them!! :)

Well.. I guess you've figured that I love Salamanca! My husband's gonna scold me bout this post :D

P.S. I stayed with a host family. If you ever do a language study trip, stay with a family, and avoid people you know (from back home) like the PLAGUE! You avoid the temptation to think/speak in your native language when you're forced to interact 24/7 with the locals! :)