I think I last left off right before departing for the palacios/houses tour. It was pretty hot out, and a lot of walking was involved, so my memory of what I actually saw is pretty limited, and my pictures weren't so hot, either. The only visit that I remember with any clarity was La Casa de las Conchas, which gets it's name from all of the shells (conchas) that cover its façade. The shell is part of the symbol of a knightly order to which the first owner of the home belonged. Work is being done to protect the shells, so at this point they are covered by a green screen and are hard to see. To view what the home would look like without the tarp, click here.
The rest of my evening continued as usual, as I attempted to prepare myself for my first Noche de Fonseca. Las Noches de Fonseca is a series of outdoor summer performances held in the courtyard of a historic building. They don't start until 11:00pm at night! On the positive side, the temperature has cooled down quite a bit, to the point that you actually get chilly if you don't remember to bring a sweater (FYI: I didn't remember to bring a sweater).
This particular production was called El Asno de Oro, and was performed by an actor widely known as "El Brujo". The one-man show is an interpretation of an Ancient Roman novel, accompanied by modern comedic references to Spanish current events and culture. It lasted until 1:00am, and although I could tell that El Brujo definitely was funny, I didn't get most of the cultural references. Here is a clip of the show from when it was performed in a different location.
Getting back to my room at 1:15am made it a bit difficult to start my day yesterday morning, but I'm definitely not complaining. I was a bit sleepy in class but rallied in time for the tour of the historic University building. Our tour guide, Fernando, started by discussing various images on the fachada, including - of course - the beloved frog. He said that even though the frog has come to mean a symbol of good luck for university students, it was supposed to serve as a reminder to the students to behave themselves while at school.
We entered the historic building, which today is a museum. As you can see below, one of the original classrooms has been preserved. The professor would stand in the pulpit for anywhere from three to six hours and lecture, and a student would sit on the little seat below the pulpit and repeat everything he said. The rest of the students would sit at the uncomfortable benches for as long as the lecture lasted. In the bitter winter weather, they would often stomp their feet to warm them up in the unheated room, and the professors mistook this action as a sign of praise for the lesson. As a result, to this day many university students will stomp their feet instead of applauding to show their appreciation.
One of the things that I found most interesting about the classroom was that when the students got bored during the lessons, they sometimes carved their names into the benches. There are actually a couple of famous names on those benches, including that of Miguel de Cervantes! Unfortunately, his was too far from the velvet ropes for me to see.
After visiting the classroom, we moved on to take a look at this:
Apparently, this chest is where the university used to keep all of its money and important documents. Imported from Germany, it is equipped with the most advanced latching system of its time, and actually required three different keys to open it. The director of the university would give each key to a different trustworthy person, and he would be only one to know the location of all three. When someone came to him and asked that the chest be opened, he would summon the three people, take the keys, open the chest, and then redistribute the keys to three different anonymous people. Throughout its use, no money or documents were ever stolen from the university, so I suppose that this system worked pretty well.
Not surprisingly, the university has its own cute little chapel, where weddings are still performed. In order to qualify for a wedding there, at least one member of the couple must be a graduate of the university, and both must be Catholic. They also must be willing to pay the 2,000 euro required to reserve it. For this combination of reasons, only about 20 couples per year get married there. Our guide informed us that this will be the location of his marriage to Natalie Portman, but she just doesn't know it yet.
We exited the chapel and headed up the intricately carved stairs...
...and made our way to the university's historic library. The library is protected by glass, and you can only enter if you have special permission and are wearing appropriate shoe covers and gloves. That is because this library is home to many rare and valuable books, including one of the first known editions of El libro de buen amor, which is appraised at about 3 million euros.
The library is also home to a collection of "round books". When one of the professors had travelled out of the country with the specific purpose of purchasing books for the university, he came across a collection of beautiful globes. He knew that he didn't have permission to buy anything other than books with the university's money, so he sent a letter back to his superiors, asking if it would be alright to purchase some "libros redondos". Not wanting to admit that they had never heard of round books, the university agreed, and the professor took that as permission to buy and transport a serious of globes, including the one in the photo above.
Other sites on our university tour included this anatomy dummy that was used by medical students before it was permissible to perform autopsies on real cadavers:
As well as lovely examples of mudejar roofs:
In general, the university tour was probably the most entertaining - at least to me - of all the ones that we attended this week.
Following the tour, Ángel regaled us with more historic film knowledge in cinema class, including some examples of early musicals, which was fun for me. :-) It was also really interesting to see how greatly the topics and types of movies were influenced by Franco's dictatorship.
I was pretty tired by this point, but my night didn't end there. My friends and I had 10:00pm tickets for a flamenco show. As opposed to El asno de oro, this I really enjoyed. There were two lead singers, two backup singers and hand percussionists, four instrumentalists, and a dancer. Everyone was incredible, and the dancer was amazing. One of the most refreshing aspects of flamenco dancing is that mastery often comes with a bit of maturity, so the best flamenco dancers aren't likely size zero 20 year old models. The dancer that we saw maneuvered her hands - sometimes empty, sometimes bearing a fan or shawl - with such grace and fluidity, and at times it was hard to even follow her steps because her feet moved so fast. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a video, but this article contains a photo of the dancer and the group that accompanies her.
After two non-stop days, I was definitely looking forward to a more relaxing Friday. There were no tours, film classes, or performances scheduled for today, so after class and lunch, I was able to do laundry, make reservations for my eventual return bus trip to Madrid, and - of course - update this blog. Tonight, a group of us are thinking about taking a little break from the cafeteria food and going out for tapas. I see a pincho of tortilla in my future!
Ah...Cervantes! :)
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