To visit Spain is to immerse yourself in a different enviroment. Spanish customs and traditions have been practiced in Spain for houndreds of years. Spanish students from various universities located in Spain showed us during Spanis Nation to Nation evening their best of the best!
Noche de Espana brought us opportunity to try almost all spain's principal national dishes like pealla de pollo (pealla with chicken), amazing original tortilla espanola or Spanish patatas (a thick cake of eggs and sliced potatoes). We can not forget to mention delicious tomato gazpacho, which is one of the Spanish dishes, that has an international presence. A number of desserts and sweets have a national presence, we could try in the end of Spanish dinner vanilla-chocolate cake with Slovak ingredients.
After dinner, Spanish students showed us short presentation about their country and the most breathtaking places there. Moreover, we were part of the programme during presentation of very famous New Year's Eve custom in Spain. As the clock ticks down to midnight on New Year's Eve, revelers across Spain pack into their city's main plazas or into their family's living room to watch the clock chime midnight. As the hour draws near, every man, woman, child, grandma and granpa will be clinging to twelve green grapes. Each of these twelve grapes are said to represent each month of the year. With every chime of the clock at midnight, we were also eating one grape to bring one month of luck in the new yeat. It was a race to swallow all 12 before the clock stops chiming.
And what said about Nation to Nation the main organizers?
Alicia (21 years, University de Burgos)
I think the event is a good oportunity to enhance the relationships between different cultures, change our mind about stereotypes and give us a chance to show those things, of which we are really proud in our contries. About the food, we tried to show dishes from different parts of Spain. We prepared homemade Tortilla de Patata, then Salmorejo (type of tomato soup with garlic) from the south regions, Pisto (group of different vegetables) from the centre part of Spain, and paella (rice with vegetables and chicken) from the east part, mainly Valencia.
Isabel (21 years, University de Cordoba)
The Spanish Nation to Nation was realy good, because people could taste the traditional spanish food. I prepared Salmorejo a Cordoba's typical soup of tomato with Victoria. The preparation was a little bit difficult for us, because we should improvise without all necessary tools, but we did our best!
Victoria (21 years, University de Almería)
IT has been a pleasure for us to show the customs of Spain, and the best of the best from food. I am very happy and grateful that people enjoyed the evening with spanish team and liked a lot our master pieces.
Paula (21 years, University of Huelva)
Before the evening, I was a little bit nervous. We haven't enough time and we had not enough cooking utensils to prepare so huge amount of food. But during the Spanish night, everything was going on really smoothly, our friends appreciated all dishes, which we have done with lot of love.
We did really good job together. More hands, faster and more inspirative preparation for the evening. I was helping also with cooking and I left myself like a part of spanish team. I didn't have any problems with cultural differences of language obstancles, so I will say in the end just: ,, A different language is a different vision of life''. (Frederico Fellini)
Alicia, Isabel, Victoria, Paula (exchange students from Spain) and member of ESN SUA Team - Anežka Vargová.