คืนค่าการตั้งค่าทั้งหมด
คุณแน่ใจว่าต้องการคืนค่าการตั้งค่าทั้งหมด ?
ลำดับตอนที่ #38 : Special Article : Valentine's ; The luckiest place to kiss
It was here
– where two, nearly touching balconies hang over a thin stone staircase – that
I encountered Alejandro Martínez and Paulina Acevedo waiting patiently for
their turn to kiss on the stairwell’s third step, which is painted red, to
ensure good luck in love.
“It’s her
20th birthday,” Martínez explained, smiling with his arm around his girlfriend
of seven months.
As a
birthday present, Martínez had brought Acevedo to Guanajuato from their home
city of San Luis Potasi, Mexico. “We heard about [the alley] through word of
mouth. A lot of other people had told us we had to come,” Martínez said.
When I asked
if they would follow the alley’s special kissing tradition, they blushed and
giggled, and then jokingly said “no”. Minutes later, they got on the red step
and embraced tenderly.
Like
Martínez and Acevedo, my girlfriend Paulyna and I travelled to Guanajuato for a
quiet weekend alone, and had come to the famous alley to kiss, as had so many
others. Couples of all ages – some holding hands and others with children in tow – stood in a long
line along the wall, as
pair after pair before them connected lips.
For a small
tip, local guides waiting at the entrance to the alley would tell the tragic
tale of Ana and Carlos, the lovers who made the alley famous.
“Ana was a rich Spaniard who lived on the
balcony on the left. Carlos was a poor miner who worked in the nearby mine of
Valenciana,” a guide explained. “One night, Ana’s father caught them kissing in
the narrow space between the two balconies. The father angrily said that if the
same thing happened again the following night, he would kill her.”
The next
night, the couple kissed again, and the father went up to the balcony and
buried a dagger
into his own daughter. Some stories say that as Carlos jumped to protect Ana,
he fell to the ground and broke his neck, landing on the third step.
Now, the droves of couples passing
through the alley must kiss on that step – where Carlos’ spirit is thought to
be watching over lovers – if they want their romance to endure. “If they don’t
kiss, then they’ll be cursed with seven years of bad luck. If they do kiss,
they’ll receive 15 years of good luck,” the guide said.
After
getting onto the step and laying a long kiss on my girlfriend, the two of us
entered the building where Ana and her father had lived. Upstairs was a small
gift shop in what would have been Ana’s bedroom and a doorway that led out to
the fateful balcony. Here, visitors had written their names, messages and
meaningful dates on small locks, which they attached to the balcony’s metal
bars. In honour of love, we did the same.
As we left,
we met Rosario and Maria Sauceda, who had travelled to Guanajuato from
Guamúchil, Mexico, with their two adult children. Married for 43 years, they
apparently didn’t need any luck – but wanted to add a little more anyway. When
it was their turn to kiss, the entire alley cheered.
VOCABULARY
Cobble stone
(n.)
a rounded stone used on the surface of an old-fashionedroad:
Colonial (adj.)
relating to a colony or colonialism
Colonial furniture or buildings are in the style of a periodwhen
a country was a colony:
(n.)
a person from another country who lives in a colony, especially as part of its system of government
roaming (n.)
the use of a mobile phone service that you can
connect to when you
cannot connect to the one
that you normally use, for example if you are
in another country:
attire (n.)
clothes, especially of
a particular or
formal type:
tender (adj.)
In tow (idiom)
If you go somewhere with a particular person in tow, they
are with you:
dagger (n.)
a short,
pointed knife that is sharp on both sides,
used especially in
the past as a weapon
droves (n.)
ความคิดเห็น