I wasn’t planning on writing another blog post before my Erasmus stay in Spain ended, which is in about three weeks. Then again, I wasn’t planning on being stuck in Ávila and spending the night here. Thank you, Spanish public transport.
Okay, so today was supposed to be the day that I flew back to Spain and then took a bus from Madrid to Salamanca. Badabing badaboom. But, of course, as my luck would have it, there’s some pretty heavy snow in Spain at the moment. This complicated my travel plans quite a lot. This is the story of how that happened.
Disclaimer: this post will be rather short and it won’t contain any pictures.
According to the original plan (plan #1), my dad drives me to the train station, I take two trains to get to Brussels Airport, where I catch a flight to Madrid. After that, a bus takes me from Madrid to Salamanca. By now, it should be clear that that’s not how it happened.
We had a family Christmas thing yesterday, so nobody was looking forward to driving me to the train station. Eventually, we decided that my dad was the person who had to get up at 6:30 to drive me. (Dad, if you’re reading this: thank you!)
So far, so good.
I managed to buy a train ticket before my train left the station, and I caught the train. Luckily, it was one of the newer trains in Belgium, equipped with an electricity socket. I say ‘luckily’ because – for some reason – my phone refused to charge last night. No harm done, because I was able to start charging my phone on this train.
I also watched two episodes of 11.22.63 (a show about an English professor who travels back in time to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy). I highly recommend you give this show a try if you’re into history and conspiracy theories.
This is where things started to go wrong.
Well, nothing too big happened. I didn’t miss my flight. It did leave about half an hour late, though. Presumably because of the bad weather conditions in Spain. This meant that the time that I had counted on for lunch (and to find my bus) was cut short, which started the avalanche of stress.
For lack of a better alternative, I ate at the first airport restaurant that I came across, which happened to be Burger King. Add to this the fact that I wasn’t even sure I was going in the right direction and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
I had booked a spot on a bus from Madrid to Salamanca at 3 pm. After losing half an hour on the plane, I finished eating my burger and fries at around 2:30 pm, which gave me plenty of time to find out where my bus was supposed to arrive. And I did.
I went to the bus parking, and I started waiting for the bus.
This is where the public transport system of Spain started to fail me.
After waiting for the bus until 3:20, I saw people start to leave the bus parking, heading back inside (where it wasn’t as cold and it wasn’t raining). I obviously found it rather odd that the bus still hadn’t arrived, so I decided to check Twitter for any news.
And that’s when I found out about the snow crisis in Spain. This was the Tweet that informed me about the fact that all buses in Castilla y León (which is where I had to go) had been canceled until further notice.
Great.
Información sobre corte de servicios y carreteras por temporal. Servicios AutoRes. Día 7. Todos los servicios Castilla Leon y Galicia están suspendidos en la AP6. Disculpen las molestias.
— Avanzabus (@avanzabus) January 7, 2018
This is when the “Googling for viable alternatives on my phone, which desperately needs to be charged again” started. I looked at taxis, buses, trains, Blablacar, hitchhiking, … You name it, I probably considered it.
In the end, I decided to go with an updated plan (plan #2), involving another buttload of public transport.
I take a bus to Terminal 4, I take a train to Madrid Chamartín, I take another train to Salamanca, and that’s it. Can you guess whether or not this plan worked? (It didn’t)
It started out fine, though. I feel like I owe you a bit of an explication as to what Terminal 4 and Chamartín are. Let’s see: Madrid Airport (full name: Aeropuerto Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas) consists of two buildings. The main building houses terminals 1, 2 and 3, and it is (obviously) the largest of the two. The second building takes care of terminal 4, and it’s smaller and newer (built in 2006) than its big brother.
When my plane landed, I was in the big building, and my bus was supposed to be there as well. Upon finding out that it wasn’t going to come, I found out that the train station was located in the other building, so I had to take a transfer train (which was free, thank goodness) to T4.
The transfer train took me to the T4 building rather quickly. This was when I was introduced to the wonderful world of Spanish trains, Renfe. I bought a ticket to get me from the airport to the main train station of Madrid, also known as Chamartín.
This was rather stressy, as I couldn’t find any way of finding out whether or not I was waiting at the right train track. Turns out I was.
Once I arrived at Chamartín, I started looking for a train to take from Madrid to Salamanca. The ticket machine told me that every direct train between those two cities had been fully booked, so that wasn’t an option any more.
My dad recommended that I take a train to Ávila, and then transfer to another train to Salamanca from there, which was what I was about to do anyway.
I bought a ticket to Ávila, and I got on the train.
Now, I’ve arrived here, and I’ve figured out that there is no way I’m making it to Salamanca today. All the trains had been booked again, the buses are still not driving, there are no Blablacars and a taxi would be way too expensive.
I informed my family, and they told me to stay here and take the train tomorrow. My dad booked a hostel room in my name (again, thanks!) and he gave me the address.
I’m now in my bedroom as I am writing this blog post. I’ve just gone out for dinner at a Chinese restaurant and I feel like I’m about to fall asleep any moment now.
I’ve booked a seat on a train bound to Salamanca tomorrow morning. It might be a little tight, because the train leaves at 9:15, and breakfast in this hostel only starts at 8:30. And it’s still about a 15 minute walk to the train station. We’ll see how it goes.
With a little bit of luck, I’ll be in Salamanca by lunchtime tomorrow. I’ll be sure to keep you updated.
Thank God for public transport. Right?
So it finally happened. I traveled outside of Europe. Admittedly, Morocco is probably one of the closest countries to Europe you could visit, but it was still a wonderful, exciting adventure. Being in an exotic country with a culture that is vastly different from your own can really make you think about life.
Disclaimer: this post will have a LOT of pictures. And their quality will be terrible, for which I sincerely apologize. However, I bought myself a decent DSLR camera for Christmas, so expect some very nice pictures in the following blog posts.
Let’s get this show on the road.
You might think getting to Morocco is easy if you’re coming from Spain. On the one hand, you’d be right. But, of course, on the other hand, you’d be wrong.
Getting to Morocco was easy in the sense that we didn’t have to take a plane to get there and we didn’t have a lot of problems crossing the border. The hard part was trying to get some sleep on a bus between 10 pm and 6 am. Yes, I do realize that’s a very easy thing to do for some of the more seasoned travelers out there, but believe me, it’s harder than it sounds.
The trip I took was one that was organized by SET (Salamanca Erasmus Trips), a company that specializes in creating trips for Erasmus students in Salamanca. I must say, they did a great job putting it all together.
Traveling with a group of 60 students implied that we had to take the bus to a lot of places. Although the long bus rides were one of my least favourite parts of the trip, I do realize that there was little to no alternative for getting everyone around at a reasonable price.
After eight hours of suffering in silence on the bus, we arrived at Algeciras, where we were to take the ferry down to Ceuta.
So, we finally reached the south of Spain. Algeciras. This is where the passport administration started. Each and every one of us had to fill out two very non-official looking forms to be able to enter and leave Morocco when we were supposed to. Luckily, there were no big problems here. Nobody forgot any essential documents and we eventually managed to board the ferry.
The ferry ride went very smoothly (aside from some people almost getting seasick because of the boat’s swinging) and we disembarked in Ceuta, an autonomous city along the north coast of Morocco which is still a part of Spain. Thanks to this, it was much easier to deal with the ferry first and the passports and border control next.
Either way, there wasn’t really much to do in Ceuta. We had some free time to wander around, went to a vantage point to get some good looks at the entire city and we ate paella and drank sangria. It was a jolly old time.
Well, now we are. Our first stop after leaving Ceuta (and spending another two hours on the bus) was Tetouan. During the bus ride to Tetouan, we met our local guide. I’ve forgotten his name, because I’m writing this blog post a week after the trip (as usual), but for the sake of the story, we’ll call him Mohammed.
Mohammed was a very peculiar guide. His Spanish was very respectable for someone whose first language is Arabic (I know that because I heard him yell at someone for offering me drugs). He was a very kind man. He called out ‘familia’ when he wanted the group to get together and listen to his explanations. However, he did believe in some of the more extreme practices of Islam. For example, he believed that men were superior to women and that homosexuality was an illness.
When we heard him say these things in the bus, we were all a bit taken aback, but we realized that that was all this guy knew and that he’d be our guide for the next four days so we’d have to behave. I know it seems a bit backwards, but that’s the way it went down.
Ok. Now we’re 700 words into the blog post and you haven’t seen a single picture, even though I said that I’d show you a lot of pictures. Well, let’s see what we’ve got.
Spanish people refer to Tetouan as “la paloma blanca” – the white dove – because of the many white buildings in the city centre (Medina). We mostly strolled through the little alleys, passing street vendors and seeing some amazing architecture and some very remarkable things.
The houses in the Medina were very densely squished together and it seemed like they were stacked on top of one another in some parts of the city. It felt very fulfilling to see the way their life and culture differed from ours.
The first thing we visited was the Jewish neighbourhood, where the street was filled to the brim with people selling fruit, vegetables, nuts, spices and more.
(This ‘street market’ and more can also be seen in my Morocco travel video!)
Of course, seeing as it was a Jewish neighbourhood in a big city, there were also some streets that had an abundance of shops that sold diamonds and other gems – but we were told that the prices were similar to those in Europe.
One of the funniest things we saw on this first day was this street sign, prohibiting donkeys and other cattle from entering a street. This felt very strange to us, seeing as donkeys don’t normally walk on the streets carrying goods in Europe.
Either way, we went back to the hotel after this walking tour through the Tetouan Medina, allocated roommates and we got some free time before dinner. After that, everyone went to bed satisfied and happy.
Let me tell you. I had the most amazing night in Tetouan. I know people usually say that after they’ve gone out and had a lot of fun, but not me. I’m a lazy bum, so I thoroughly enjoyed having a good night’s sleep. I’m sure you can understand, given the fact that I’ve been sleeping in a pretty terrible bed for the last three months.
Anyway, moving on. We got up at 8, went for breakfast in the hotel restaurant, cleaned up, made our bags again and left for Chefchaouen at 9. This was the city I was most looking forward to, because after some research on the internet, I had concluded that it must be amazing.
Prepare yourself for an overload of blue-looking pictures, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.
As soon as you see one picture, you’ll realize why this city is a tourist attraction and why people often call it the Blue Pearl. I’ll start you off with what I think is the prettiest picture I took while I was there.
I mean. I know the actual quality is bad, but isn’t this magical?
Fun fact: nobody really knows why the walls of Chefchaouen are blue, but there are some theories. The most popular theory is also the most boring one: blue paint keeps the mosquitoes away. Other theories state that the blue came with the Jews when they were hiding from Hitler in the 1930s, and that blue symbolizes the sky and heaven and serves as a reminder to lead a spiritual life.
When I was expecting this visit to be the absolute highlight of our trip, I was not wrong. I loved walking through the blue streets, finding something new around every corner. The things people sold looked carefully crafted and actually high-quality.
As you can see in the photo gallery, there’s also a vantage point to see the entirety of the city. There’s an entire pathway carved out just to get people to it. Just head towards the mosque on the top of the hill and you’ll be golden.
Also, small bonus for animal lovers: there are literally hundreds of stray cats wandering around Chefchaouen. I’d be very impressed if you spent a day here and didn’t see at least one cat or kitten.
Our lunch in Chefchaouen consisted of tajine, a traditional Moroccan dish (which we ate in a traditional Moroccan restaurant). Hooray for traveling like a local!
After this, we were on our way to Fez, the last big city of our Moroccan trip.
First off, I’ll start by saying Fez and Fes are the exact same city. The reason why there are two different spellings is because the name of the city was transcribed from Arabic (فاس).
Right. Fez is the second-largest city in Morocco, second only to Casablanca (which boasts an impressive 3.3 million inhabitants). There’s a very lively debate about whether or not Fez is the most beautiful city of Morocco, competing for that spot with Marrakesh.
I must say, Fez did not impress me very much. It was a fun place to wander around and get lost in the 9,000 tiny streets, but the blue streets of Chefchaouen were a lot more impressive to me.
Of course, I’m not saying you shouldn’t go to Fez. It’s definitely worth a visit, and I thoroughly enjoyed visiting little shops where products were still carefully hand-made. We visited three shops where the owners/workers explained to us how they crafted various products.
We also visited the Chaouwara Tanneries, where top-quality leather is produced and coloured. When we got to the rooftop, where we had a vantage point to see how it all went down, we were all given a strain of mint, to keep the smell of the hides away. (I didn’t really understand the concept of this mint, and I didn’t hear the explanation. I ate the mint.)
One of the main tourist attractions in Fez is the royal palace. That’s to say, the entrance to the royal palace. The grounds themselves aren’t actually open to the public, but the entryway is impressive enough.
We got an afternoon off in this city, and we used it to wander around the Medina and discover the countless street markets. It felt like the entirety of the city centre was made up of people selling clothes, food, spices and other various things. It was an experience that you probably wouldn’t find anywhere in Belgium.
That night, we had the option to experience a traditional Moroccan dinner with a folklore show, involving a belly dancer, four men playing music, and a magician with very questionable entertainment skills.
After this show, we went back to the hotel and prepared for our last day of the adventure.
We left Fez at 8 am, to make sure that we still had some of our day left to experience Asilah. Well, that didn’t happen. Our bus was a little late and we arrived in Asilah later than we were supposed to, which meant that we had an important decision to make. Either we used our free time to explore the city, or we used it to have lunch. We decided to go for the latter, seeing that we’d spend the rest of the day – and the night – on the bus.
My friends and I went into the first decent-looking restaurant we encountered, and it turned out to be a good call. We all had tajine or couscous (both typical plates for Morocco) and it was very tasty. The only problem was that we didn’t all get our food at the same time.
After having dinner, we all met at the bus – which left a couple minutes late again, because how else could it have gone – and went on our way to the camel outpost.
Well, yes. We didn’t go to the Sahara desert, but we did get to see camels and dromedaries (you know, camels with one bump).
I actually got to ride a camel as well, but I’m not going to do that ever again. Not because it wasn’t fun (because it was), but because I could very clearly see and hear that the animals were in pain from constantly having to kneel down to carry people.
That being said, I’m glad I’ve had the experience of a camel carrying me around. You can see this in my travel video as well, by the way.
Sadly, this was the last stop of our adventures in Morocco. After our time at the camels, we hopped on the bus again, prepared for the long journey that was still ahead of us.
Luckily, everything from here on out went smoothly. I even got my first stamps in my passport, even though I was told I wouldn’t get them.
We took the ferry back to Spain, drove from Algeciras up to Salamanca and arrived around 6 am.
In conclusion, even though I was only there for a couple of days, I feel confident saying Morocco is a beautiful country you should definitely consider visiting sometime. Their culture is so vastly different from western countries that you’ll see some eye-opening things.
I’d consider adding the Sahara desert to your itinerary, though. I wasn’t there myself, but I’ve heard from my friends who were that it was very much worth it.
I hope you all enjoyed reading about my time in Morocco and I’d like to apologize for the long wait between my actual holiday and the release of this blog post.
Thanks for reading!
-S
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If you don’t live in Salamanca or know anyone who lives there, chances of you having heard of the Barrio del Oeste are pretty slim. But hey, isn’t that what I’m here for? In this post, I’ll be showing you the beauty that is this neighbourhood, with its funky graffiti and cute coffee shops.
After some careful planning, my friends and I got together for an afternoon of wandering around the Barrio del Oeste.
The great thing about this neighbourhood is, obviously, the graffiti. There’s at least one piece of graffiti on every single street (or, at least, so it seemed). That’s the main reason why it was so much fun to just wander around. You don’t even need to have any idea as to where you’re going.
The fact that all of this graffiti was made by young artists – with permission of the city – just makes it even better. The project even got its own website, on which you can see every piece of graffiti that makes a part of the project. (It’s in Spanish, but that shouldn’t stop you!)
For anyone who’s too lazy to check out the website, who’s not coming to Salamanca any time soon or who just can’t be bothered to do anything other than scroll, here’s some pictures we took while we were there.
As if all of that wasn’t enough yet, there are quite some works where you can interact with the art. If you need any really cool pictures for Instagram, look no further. (Be creative: find new ways to interact with the graffiti and send them to me on Twitter or Instagram!)
All in all, we had a fantastic day at Barrio del Oeste. I’d say it’s definitely worth coming to Salamanca for this. As if you needed any more reasons. I’ll be sure to show this neighbourhood to my parents and my sister when they visit in December.
While I hadn’t even heard of this place until a couple of weeks ago and it was definitely not on my Spanish bucket list, I’m very happy I visited Barrio del Oeste (it’s free!).
There’s also a video!
I know this was a short post, but there really wasn’t much more to write about when you’ve seen the pictures. (I did promise a lot of pictures in my last post, didn’t I?)
As always, thanks for reading!
-S
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Everyone always says that a semester abroad is a life-changing event. After living in Spain for close to two months now, I’m starting to understand why. And I want to share it with you. Here’s a list of things I had never done before living in Spain.
I always thought that the cultural differences between Belgium and Spain were relatively small – and I was right. Nevertheless, living on your own in a foreign country can make you experience things you never thought you’d experience.
I know this list of events might seem trivial or unworthy of receiving any kind of attention, but to me, they’re special things. So, without any further ado, here are the things I did for the first time during my semester in Spain.
I still live at home with my parents, so laundry isn’t really something I usually do. I have to admit, the first time I did laundry here, I Skyped my mom to be sure that I was doing everything correctly. (Mom, if you’re reading this: thank you!)
Extending on the previous item on the list, a couple of weeks ago marked the first time I hung out my clean laundry after a night in the city. You might be thinking “Why would anyone do that instead of just going to bed?”, but I had my reasons.
You see, in that batch of laundry was one of my shirts that I needed the next day. When I came home, I suddenly realized that I would need the shirt, so I started hanging out my laundry, in the hopes that it would be dry by the time I woke up. And it was.
The climate where I’m staying is kind of special. It’s really hot in the summer (all the way through to the beginning of October), but then it gets really cold after that. So, my first month or so here, I experienced the best weather I’d ever experienced. It actually didn’t rain for a whole month. In Belgium, we’re lucky if we get a week without any rain.
In Belgium, I go everywhere by bike or by public transport. Here, things are a little different. Before I arrived in Spain, I was planning on renting a bike for the semester so I could get everywhere faster. Upon my arrival, I quickly realized that there were barely any bicycles going around here, so I decided to hold off on the whole renting a bike thing.
Now, I’m walking literally everywhere. I can get anywhere I need to be within 15 minutes, so I really see no reason for any other mode of transport.
I mean, yes, I have friends in Belgium and I love them with all my heart. It’s just that, here in Spain, everything is different. I don’t go home in the weekend, I have to be 100% independent. I think that’s part of the reason why I meet up with my new friends here more often.
There’s always something to do. An Erasmus organization planning trips to neighbouring cities. A group of friends getting together for dinner. Some promotion at the local movie theatre. I don’t want to miss out on all of this, so it feels like my social life here is way more lively than it was in Belgium.
The stores here are mostly the same as in Belgium, with one big, obvious difference: everything is in Spanish. Asking an employee where I can find red beans, communicating at the checkout, … My Spanish is pretty good, but I don’t feel confident enough to live my entire life speaking it.
Also, there is literally not a single store here that sells sour cream. I need sour cream, people.
This may seem like a stab at the people I know back in Belgium, but I promise, it’s not. I’m intensely happy here. I’m not saying my friends and family in Belgium aren’t good enough to make me happy, but hear me out.
Virtually everyone who has ever gone on a semester abroad says it was the time of their life. I feel like I’ve been in Spain long enough to understand what they’re talking about.
As an exchange students, it’s ridiculously easy to make new friends. After all, you pretty much only hang out with other exchange students, which means that everyone knows how you’re feeling and everyone is in the same boat.
The fact that you’re sharing unforgettable experiences with people you’ve only known for a couple of weeks is honestly mind-blowing to me. It feels as if you’ve been friends for ages, for some reason. It’s difficult to explain.
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I know it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything on here, and I’m very sorry for that. It’s been incredibly busy here, and I haven’t really had a lot of time to update the blog.
I hope this post can answer some of your questions and maybe even entertain you a little bit. I had a lot of fun writing it, so I’d be a tad disappointed if you didn’t enjoy reading it just a little bit.
There are no pictures in this post for obvious reasons, but the next post will have images again, I promise.
In case you haven’t seen it yet, check out my new video of our trip to Segovia and Ávila!
As always, thanks for reading!
-S
I’m living in Spain now. I’m not going home until Christmas and in this post, I’m going to tell you how I feel about spending the next couple of months in Salamanca.
Disclaimer: I still don’t have a decent camera for pictures and I probably won’t for some time. I’m sorry about the crappy quality pictures, I’m working on it. Also, if anyone knows of any good cameras, feel free to let me know.
I’m just going to jump right into it. I love it here. Salamanca is the city I never knew I’d always dreamed of. On the one hand, the city centre is small enough for it to feel like a tightly-bound city of young, vibrant people. It’s also small enough for me not to need a bicycle, a car or anything else. After 10 minutes of walking, I can be just about anywhere I need to be.
On the other hand, Salamanca is big enough for it to feel like an important city in the landscape of Spain. On that note, there are tonnes of students here. I’ve been told that of its 140.000 inhabitants, 30.000 are students at the University of Salamanca (which was founded 800 years ago, by the way!). That group includes about 7.000 exchange students, so it’s easy to feel at home and make new friends here.
I’ve been here just short of a week, but I can already tell that the urban life in Salamanca is exactly what I’m looking for. To me, it feels like a low-key version of New York City – the city that never sleeps.
No idea if this is only for these first weeks or if it’s always like this, but it seems like there is always something going on. Food trucks, salsa classes, bull fights or pick-nicks in the park. I might not even get to do the things on my Spanish bucket list. Oh well.
To give you some kind of idea of the kind of things that happen here: this is what we came across on our second day in Salamanca.
These people were casually parading through the city centre, playing what I assume to be Spanish music. It was fun.
Oh. My. God. The food. The food is so good. Everything you’ve heard about the Spanish cuisine is true. Unless you’ve heard that it’s bad.
When my parents were still here, we went out to a tapas bar (yes, just tapas for dinner). In case I still haven’t made it clear yet, let me spell it out for you. D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S.
Here are some pictures of our tapas night out.
The city centre of Salamanca is not only lively and vibrant, but it’s also beautiful. Most buildings are made of some sandstone-ish stone, giving the city a very uniform but soft look.
Sights like this plaza are quite common throughout Salamanca.
Moreover, Salamanca seems to be very much based on its heritage, while it’s also a pretty modern-looking city. By ‘based on its heritage’, I’m referring to the old cathedral, university buildings and monastery (see picture below).
As far as nature goes, I have yet to see anything VERY impressive. I went to a park at about 10 minutes from my new home, there’s a river, and there are quite a lot of small green spots in the actual centre, but other than that, nothing really jumps to mind.
View of the river Tormes from the Puente Romano (Roman bridge)
Salamanca is the city of dreams. I’m incredibly excited to spend the next months here, because a semester abroad is basically like a very long solo trip (but you have to go to school as well).
I think I’ve made you all jealous enough for one blog post, so I’ll just call it a day here. I don’t know when I’ll upload my next blog post, but I’ll be sure to announce it on my Facebook page, so keep an eye on that.
P.S. Check out the travel video I made of my first few days here!
Thanks for reading!
-S
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