¡Mi Viaje a España!

The past few days have been pretty routine with them being weekdays; I have class in the morning and I have the afternoon free to do what I want. I’ve been using these afternoons to visit some of the numerous museums in Salamanca like the Museo de Historia de la Automoción and the Palacio de Congresos (Leonardo Da Vinci exhibit).

The class is going great! I definitely feel my Spanish is improving. However, every now and then I am also reminded that I am in fact, not a native Spanish-speaker, and that I am a student of the language. Well, maybe that’s softening it up a bit. Maybe it reminds me that I am pretty much a beginner.

Now, before I get to this illustrious story of how I was reminded that I had a lot to learn in my Spanish learning adventure, I’d like to explain the context and the setting of the story a bit. Tapas, in Spain, is pretty much a “snack” that the Spanish eat around 6 or 7pm to keep them filled from their 2pm lunch until their large late meal around 9 or 10pm. They’re pretty much the best invention since the wheel, since you can find tapas at almost any restaurant, and the tapas menu is always filled with different things like potatoes, fish, chicken, rice, etc. They’re smaller portions than a normal meal, but they are by no means smaller in value. Salamanca is well known for it’s tapas. An example can be seen below of three classic tapas that I ate, and which can be seen all over tapa bars in Salamanca.

Spanish Tapas: salad tortilla and meat tortilla

Spanish Tapas: chicken and tomato tapa

So, my friends and I, after visiting the exhibit of Leonardo Da Vinci (just because I’m not discussing it too much doesn’t mean it wasn’t great!), decided we wanted to grab some tapas at a tapa bar before we head back home to eat dinner. So, we chose a nice small place on a corner of a main street in a shopping area. The way it works with tapas is normally you are expected to get one tapa and a drink of your choice: coffee, tea, soda, beer etc. So, the lady behind the counter asked us what we would like to drink. I answered  confidently in Spanish,

“un cafe, por favor”

Great! Not bad, eh? What I wasn’t ready for was the reply:

“Café con leche o solo?”

Now, looking back on this, I obviously know she was asking me if I wanted coffee with milk or without milk. Now this part of the story is a bit fuzzy, and I’m not sure exactly how it went. However, it went something like this… for some odd reason I answered saying,

“para beber”

I have no idea why or what I meant by saying that, but my friends definitely got a kick out of it… and the lady behind the counter did as well. Turns out my friends later revisited the bar/café and the lady asked about me. Nice huh? Yea, except she didn’t know my name… she asked about “el chico del café para beber” (Translated, ‘the boy of the coffee to drink’) And yes, I understand if you no longer trust my translations…

Hey, at least now I’m leaving my classic, “no comprendo” line for the title of my blog and not for my conversations!

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 13th, 2011 at 5:39 am Filed under Uncategorized and. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.