Jerez is for sherry

The sun is setting on my last weekend of freedom. I think I made the most of it.

A group of friends and I decided to take a trip to Jerez de la Frontera, a little pueblo that’s a little over an hour south of Sevilla by train. According to our guidebooks it’s famous for its horses and its sherry, and like most Spanish towns, it has a cathedral and an alcazar (palace). It wasn’t very tourist friendly, so we spent most of Saturday trying to navigate through the winding streets with insufficient maps and lack of sleep. But it was a nice little town for a weekend getaway.

On Saturday the whole town seemed to be gathered in the commercial center of the city. All the shops were open and advertising rebajas like Seville, and there were vendors along the plaza selling veggies, clams, and buckets filled with live snails. Jerez is pretty close to Cadiz, which is right on the Mediterranean Sea, so fish seemed to be more available than in Seville. Right in the center of all this hustle and bustle of weekend shopping was a little stand that sold churros. Two guys working, and a line that was forever long. One of the workers poured the batter in big rings into two pans, while the other cut long strings of the greasy churros and wrapped them in paper for customers. They’re not fluffy, sweet or cinnamony like Disneyland churros, they’re salty and crispy, perfect for dipping in the thick hot chocolate drink for breakfast.

We then went on a tour of the Pedro Domecq bodega, a collection of storehouses for the different wines, sherrys, and brandys they make. The storehouses themselves were amazing; huge, cold, musty buildings filled with row upon row of wooden barrels on their sides and the scent of fermenting grapes. There were at least three levels of barrels, with the youngest wines on the top, and the oldest on the bottom. Every year or so they bottle wine from the bottom barrels and replace it with wine from the newer barrels. The tour itself was interesting, because the tour guide spoke fluent Spanish and very broken English. I was able to understand most of the Spanish, and check the gaps in vocabulary with the English. But as the tour guide was pretty much translating her speech directly from Spanish to broken English, there were gaps in my English understanding as well. Of course, at the end of the tour, we of course got to taste a white sherry, a medium brandy, and sweet mix of all the types of sherry while munching on tapas. I’m not sure if I have yet acquired a taste for exotic fermentations of grapes as I have for various preparations of pig meat, but it was interesting to try.

Nothing is open on Sundays in Spain except a few cafes and bars, and it was cloudy so we decided against visiting the alcazar again to see the camera obscura version of the surrounding countryside. Next to the alcazar, however, was a huge antiques/garage sale that seemed to have attracted the whole city. People were selling the most random items, and it was fun to look around though we stuck out like sore thumbs with our overnight bags on our backs.

It’s funny, even though as a group we can get along quite well in Spanish, people still insist on speaking very slowly and deliberately, and mixing in hand gestures and English words when they can. I guess it doesn’t help that when we walk around, we generally speak in English, but it’s annoying being treated like the foreigner I am even though this is my home until July.

Classes start tomorrow. My month of adjusting and learning grammar is over; it’s time to start with the real stuff.