Food is the root of both happiness and despair

Over the course of the past two months, I’ve noticed that Kyle and I spend a disproportionate amount of time planning our next meal. Besides going to work, deciding what to eat is our second most important task, and it can either be a big success, or a failure…

Telepizza – Since Kyle and I are Americans, we crave pizza from time to time (and by time to time I mean basically everyday…). In order to try to fulfill this craving, we turned to Telepizza. Telepizza is a Spanish company that tries to imitate Pizza Hut or Dominoes, but doesn’t quite live up to one’s expectations. Although the delivery men ride around on red mopeds, the pizza is expensive and it doesn’t have enough sauce. Nonetheless, it’s the closest thing to American delivery pizza that we can get here, so we invited a friend over to join us in our quest for Telepizza.

In our first attempt, we called the main Telepizza office and tried to place an order to our apartment, which is apparently too far away from one of their locations. So, instead, we decided to order two pizzas and have them delivered to a friend’s apartment – the friend we had just invited over to eat with us. We ordered a Bar-b-Que and a Hawaiian pizza, and the voice of Telepizza told us it would be there in 25 minutes. Not bad, we thought to ourselves. It takes about 15 minutes to get to the other apartment, which would leave us with 10 minutes to spare. However, what we didn’t account for was the fact that the most direct bus only stops by our apartment about once every 15 minutes. So, while we waited for the bus our friend sent a text message to one of her apartment-mates to tell her to pay for the pizza if it got there before us.

When we arrived at our friend’s apartment, we were devastated to find out that the pizza had come and been sent away. Apparently, our friend’s apartment-mate didn’t receive the text message about the pizza, so when they rang their doorbell, she told them no one had ordered a pizza. Disgruntled, the three of us decided to just walk to the nearest Telepizza location and try to either order new pizzas, or pick up our old ones. As we were walking, I told Kyle to call up Telepizza to try to locate our pies. He dialed his phone and was talking in Spanish for about 10 minutes before he muttered something in English and was given a response in English right back. The voice sounded familiar to him, and it turns out he had been talking to our friend’s apartment-mate for the past 10 minutes, asking her in Spanish where our pizzas were, instead of someone at Telepizza. Eventually, we got the right number, had them re-deliver the pizzas, and 2 hours later we sat down to enjoy the benefits and ease of delivery pizza…

Best Tapas Bar in Salamanca – A few weekends ago, Kyle and I went to Salamanca to visit my friend Pedro. I met Pedro when he was a language assistant at Claremont McKenna, and he was my teacher in a Spanish conversation class. I met up with him again when I studied abroad in Salamanca (Fall 2007), and then last year he received a Fulbright to come back to the Claremont Colleges to do research. Now, I’m back in Spain and it’s strange to think that I’ve spent more time (in the past 5 years) with a Spaniard from Salamanca, than with some friends from college.

Anyway, when Kyle and I arrived at the train station in Salamanca, Pedro picked us up, we dropped our things off at his apartment (which has amazing views of the two old cathedrals in the town), and then we started the “Salamanca Tapas Tour.” We walked over to Van Dyck street, where all the tapas bars are, and started eating and drinking. We had shrimp, pork, roast beef, potatoes, various other assortments of bread and cheese, and we washed them down with some Cruzcampo, Mahou, or San Miguel. The best tapas, by far, were found in a bar that is poorly-lit, cramped, and has tons of napkins thrown on the ground (which shows that it’s popular and is a sign of a good tapas bar). It’s run by an older, married couple whose specialty is pork (served on a skewer), which has been cooked on a grill for about 5 minutes. Man, it was delicious. What makes it even better is that the couple that serves you your tapas and beer is the most disgruntled looking pair of humans on Earth. They don’t like it if you speak English in the bar, they get annoyed if you ask for seconds, and they never smile. It’s fantastic and I highly recommend you try to find it if you’re ever in Salamanca. Also, they serve beer out of glass containers and you have to pour them at least a few inches away from your mouth to get the full, proper effect. I’m including two pictures from this bar because it truly merits them.

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