As the semester begins, each of us starts anew. Some of us are getting settled in theme or greek houses, others in new dorms, while some enter a new mental situation living in the same dirty room in Dean.
The classes we are taking are more intriguing, or at least easier, and our digestive systems cleaned from mom’s home cooked meals. Wherever our semester starts, we hope to build upon ourselves and experience our worlds in different ways. For me, this involves finding a local bar and attempting to dance with 60-year-old women in a historically relevant city.
If it wasn’t obvious, I’m studying in Spain for the semester. It has already been… well… weird. Without making this a diary, I felt like I’d write back to the ‘ol stomping grounds to a) tell some stories that might help people who are thinking about studying abroad and b) brag about not freezing my ass off in Canton.
Our semester technically started with a lecture on Jan. 8 in Salamanca after a long day of traveling, but the real excitement began the next night when we found the Tio Vivo. For those of you who aren’t Castellano and getting grey hairs, the Tio Vivo is a nice, wholesome bar that hosts live music and sells cheap drinks throughout the week.
The performance that night was a beautiful, well-groomed Spanish man playing guitar and singing foreign ballads and rock while his pudgy buddy beat on the Cajon drum.
Watching the slightly tipsy duo perform were an entourage of chicas (including some from SLU) staring into their dark brown eyes. We befriended Johnny the bartender, learned some vocab (chupitos = shots, viejas= old women), and decided to come back for Saturday night classic rock.
Without going into too much detail, Saturday turned out to be a fantastic yet unexpected night. When Johnny told us about Saturday night classic rock, I figured he meant a somewhat youthful crowd coming to jam out to American hits.
It turned out to be a room full of men and women from the Classical Era swaying to whatever Johnny played on Spotify. These people were at least thirty years our senior, speaking a Romantic tongue fast and fluidly, not minding the American kids clumped together at the side of the room. That is, until I felt like dancing.
I learned that approaching a Spanish woman is harder than it looks. You should be cool, confident, but not American. As you can imagine, this is all very difficult for me under normal circumstances. In front of Spanish women who are 60, however, it’s (almost) impossible.
I directed my first attempt towards two viejas at the bar using the pick-up line ,“if I didn’t have homework, I’d ask you to dance.” Needless to say, both ladies rejected me. My second attempt, directed towards a slightly older pair of viejas in the corner, was once again shot down.
Despite these rejections, and my better judgement, my confidence grew. I decided to go big or go home. I swaggered over to a group of two ladies and a man and, completely ignoring the man, asked the women if they’d join me on the dance floor. They glared at me for a few seconds before asking, “seriously?”
The whole arrangement within that group of elders is still a mystery to me but, after a few awkward jokes, the dyed-blonde, slightly less wrinkled vieja with the sparkled, thigh-high dress decided to teach me a few lessons under the disco ball (yes, there was a disco ball).
We twirled and shimmied and raised the roof in what amounted to the best two and a half minutes of classic rock I’ve ever experienced.
Our four days in Salamanca went by in a whirlwind. We visited historical landmarks other than the Tio Vivo like the New and Old churches, the university towers, and the Plaza Mayor. We took two tours with half of us not understanding a single word the tour guides said.
We visited a room in the 500-year-old university called “glory” only because it was slightly less cold than the other rooms and the priests could take their shoes off and relax. We saw a frog, astronaut, and ice cream cone sculpted into religious landmarks. We even saw a 3×2 chunk of Gothic church roof that had collapsed and hit a dude.
All of this, however, was secondary to the people we met. There was the drunkard who stopped us, asking, “do you ever believe in the spirit?” or some bullshit.
There was that hotel manager with Anderson Cooper hair who gave some of us a heated Spanish lecture on not running around and losing our keys. There were those 50 people who I asked for fuego.
There were the tour guides, each in love with the area, each desperate to keep the tourism industry going. There was the 70-year-old man at the museum showing his family his exhibit of insane pebble art.
And then there was that old man at the Tio Viejo. He came up to me with a slight buzz in his eye with his wife of 30 years, telling me how amazing life is and that the world works in mysterious ways.
He took me through his journey for 10 minutes, concluding that, above all else, he loved his mujer and his country. So, as another SLU semester begins, let’s hope to find our loves and our countries like that old Salamanca man, whoever, whatever, and where ever they may be.