There was one thing that I couldn't help but notice as I was out exploring today. Madrid has to be one of the youngest cities on earth. It seems as if the entire city is made up of "yuppies", those twenty and thirty-something white collar climbers. I gather from things I read and heard that almost no one in Madrid these days was born here. It's the place young people move to for opportunities, just as the students I teach move to places like the Twin Cities. The oldest generation (the old men in funny hats and old ladies in black scarves I remembered from seventeen years ago) have mostly died off, and many of the next generation down (the last group that really lived under the Franco regime) have retired to small towns in the provinces where it's cheaper and easier to live. That makes the oldest people in Madrid middle-aged-a very different mix than you get most places.
The schedule called for us to board the bus for a trip to Toledo right after breakfast. Unfortunately when we were gathered in the lobby, Cristina got a call on her cell phone from José. He was stuck in traffic (apparently due to an accident), and expected to be quite late. A half hour later, he hadn't moved at all. We ended up leaving a full hour late, which made this a very hectic day.
It was pushing ten by the time José finally arrived and we set off for Toledo. We drove around about a third of the M-30 ring road, which uses the cement-lined Manzanares River as its median. We then exited on a different six-lane highway and headed south for Toledo.
Just south of Madrid proper we saw a neighborhood that would make the Pan Bendito slum I saw yesterday look nice. It was basically a bunch of squatter's huts-the kind of thing that rings the edges of Mexico City and other Third World communities, but not exactly what I expected to see in Europe. Obviously there are some people that Madrid's economic boom has left behind.
South of the squatters' settlement we basically saw suburban sprawl. Just as American firms have moved from the "Rust Belt" to low-wage states like North Carolina and Texas, a lot of Europe's manufacturing and distribution companies have moved to Spain. More than a "polygon", I'd call the area between Madrid and Toledo an industrial corridor. You can see farmland off in the distance, but for about a mile either side of the highway, it's just one long industrial strip. You name a global company, and they probably have a location here on the central plateau. They seem to make everything here, and they store and distribute even more.
The actual factories tend to be quite substantial and attractive. Unfortunately the vast majority of the highway is lined with pole-building warehouses called naves. "Nave" (NAH-bay) is actually the Spanish word for "ship", related to English words like "navigator". No one could really explain to us why the word was extended to mean "warehouse"-perhaps because they all have peaked roofs reminiscent of a ship's hull, rather than the flat roofs you'd find on similar buildings in America.
Mixed among the factories and warehouses are "urbanizaciones"-that is, housing developments. White stucco rowhouses with red tile roofs march in neat lines toward the horizon. They are broken only by an occasional red brick apartment block. The rowhouses are as close to a private home as you get in Madrid, where the suburbs are as dense as an inner-city neighborhood in America. Everything is brand new, though, and while the Spanish word "chalet" doesn't really give the right connotation in English, they really look like quite lovely homes.
We crossed the "state line" between Madrid and Castilla-La Mancha. There was an enormous sign there that said "COMUNIDAD DE MADRID - ¡HASTA PRONTO!" (Community [i.e. state] of Madrid - See you soon!) A much smaller and badly rusted sign said "Comunidad Autónima de Castilla-La Mancha, Provincia de Toledo" (Autonomous community of Castilla-La Mancha, Toledo Province). The factories abruptly (though temporarily) ended at the border, and for about ten minutes we drove past corn fields. Then we reached Toledo's "polígono industrial", and before long we were at the walls of the old city itself.
While most of Toledo (tow-LAY-doh) is a modern industrial city, the central core is one of the best-preserved historic areas in Spain. Toledo was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Castille, and under Ferdinand and Isabella it became the first capital of a united Spain. While few people live there, the historic area remains a surprisingly active business center-both for locals and tourists.
Old Toledo is a walled city at the top of a steep mountain. When I was here back in 1985 our tour bus negotiated the narrow streets to the central square. Other tourists and most of the locals walked up and up and up to get from the modern suburbs to the historic city center.
Access to the city has changed. We ascended the to the top via the Millennium Escalator, which is actually a series of automatic staircases that runs from bottom to top. The escalator is literally built into the side of the mountain, and it's constructed so it doesn't spoil the view of the old city. It does remove the smoke of the tour buses, though, and I'm sure it's prevented some heart attacks or cases of heat stroke from people walking up the whole way.
We had a guided tour through the back streets of the old city. It was interesting, though difficult to do justice to here. While there are scores of guide books that will tell you Toledo is beautiful, really it isn't. The whole city is tan stone, much of it blackened with the grime of centuries. All the wiring of the modern world is exposed on the outside of the buildings. There is almost no vegetation anywhere, and the narrow streets give a rather claustrophobic feeling. Beyond that, though, what pervades Toledo is a feeling of history. It's amazing to think just how old everything around here is.
Our first major stop was at the Iglesia de Santo Tomé, which is apparently still a church but basically functions as an art museum that houses a single painting, El Greco's famous Burial of the Count of Orgaz. We then visited Toledo's cathedral, the main cathedral of Spain. It's probably the nicest of the cathedrals we visited; only Notre Dame would give it much of a challenge.
After touring the cathedral we walked through the main business streets of Toledo, stopping for lunch at the Plaza de Zododover, a cement slab filled with umbrella tables and lined with historic buildings that are under renovation. One of those buildings housed the local McDonalds, and Paul and I (as well as most of the group) made our way over there. The place was absolutely packed-mostly with small Spanish children-but the service was very efficient. It was also a much better deal than the place we ate yesterday. I had the McRib value meal (which, interestingly, doesn't come with barbecue sauce in Spain), and it cost €3.95-pretty similar to the U.S. price and about a fourth of what I paid for lunch yesterday. As with everything, tax was already included.
After lunch we walked downhill to the new city and took the bus over to the polígono industrial. There we visited a factory that makes swords. Toledo has a long history of steel work, and it is especially famous for its swords and knives. When I was here in 1985 we actually toured the factory and saw how the swords were made. There was none of that today, though. We just made a quick stop in one of their many identical sales rooms where a few of the students took the opportunity to pick up some souvenirs.
It was well into the afternoon by the time we left Toledo. Traffic was absolutely horrible as we headed up the freeway back to Madrid. We apparently had timed tickets at our next stop, and it was obvious we would not get there on time. Fortunately Cristina was able to call on her cell phone, and she used the traffic as an excuse for our tardiness. We slowly retraced our steps, and eventually made it to the Royal Palace.
The Palacio Real (Royal Palace) is to Spain what Buckingham Palace is to England. The king doesn't actually live here-at least not normally-but it is the "official" palace, the place where state visitors are greeted. It has also been the site of treaty negotiations, apparently most recently one involving Middle East peace. We visited this place in '85, and I recalled it as very ornate, but rather dull. I was much more impressed this time. We had a very informative tour, where we actually learned the stories behind the rooms and their furnishings-rather than just marveling at how beautiful everything was. I especially enjoyed seeing some things we hadn't seen on the other trip, including billiard and cigar rooms that King Juan Carlos just recently finished redecorating.
After seeing the Royal Palace we had our official "city tour" of Madrid, which consisted of whatever we happened to pass on our way to our other destination, the Prado. We happened to see the Madrid Opera House, the Plaza Mayor (the heart of the oldest part of the city), and the Puerta del Sol (an oval of cement that is really the heart of the city today). Almost everyone on the bus had seen most of the highlights on their own anyhow, so it really didn't matter that the city tour was so limited.
The big thing I noticed from the bus was the temperature. All over Madrid there are time and temperature signs, which display their statistics on fluorescent green digital read-outs. Spain, of course, uses the Metric system, and this afternoon the various thermometers we passed ranged from 42o to 47o. That would put the heat anywhere from 108o to 117o Fahrenheit-or, as my father used to say, "just too durn hot".
Security at the Prado was tight, much tighter than they had at the Louvre. Our guide had made the group stop to buy bottled water en route to the museum, but they wouldn't let us carry bottles-even empty plastic bottles-inside. All the women had their bags searched, and everyone had to pass through a metal detector. In my case the pedometer I wear to count the miles I walk each day set the thing off, and the screener started rattling things at me in Spanish so fast I couldn't understand. I took off the pedometer and showed it to him, explaining what it was. He acted like he was going to confiscate it, which I certainly didn't want. I tried again to explain its purpose, but he just rudely snatched the pedometer from me. I passed through the machine (again setting it off, though no one seemed to care this time), and he did give me the pedometer back. I'm still not quite sure what the whole fuss was.
I was looking forward to going back to the Prado. In 1985 we had quite a bit of time to roam around its vast galleries at our leisure and see those paintings that interested us. It's a lovely museum, and it was definitely one of the things I was glad I would be seeing again.
Unfortunately, this was not a pleasant visit to the Prado. Our tour was entirely guided, and the guide was BORING! Skipping almost every gallery in the place, she focused on only three great Spanish painters-and those she showed us in almost painful depth. I've always rather liked Velazquez, but after this tour if I never see another of his paintings I think I'll be quite happy. Almost more frustrating than what she showed and explained to us was that she completely skipped over everything else in the museum. She walked between her pre-selected galleries as if she had blinders on-rushing past hundreds of paintings that struck me as fascinating, without even acknowledging that they existed. I got the feeling that she didn't ordain them as worthy enough of being admired since the "big three" hadn't painted them.
The guide was definitely in charge, though; we couldn't have gone off on our own had we wanted to. This became apparent when Vicki did leave the group. She had checked her purse rather than surrender that bottled water, and she had to go back to claim it before closing time. When she left to get her purse the guide was obviously very perturbed with her. There really wasn't any option, though, and Vicki agreed to meet us at the exit.
The guide had promised to leave time at the end of the tour so the kids could spend time at the gift shop. She had made a similar promise at the Royal Palace and then backed out of it at the last minute "because there simply isn't time". (Never mind that she felt there was enough time to insist that the kids buy that illegal bottled water.) She had to renege on her promise at the Prado, too, for by the time we had finished yawning our way past all the Spanish masters the gift shop had already closed.
We left the Prado through a different door than we had entered. Needless to say Vicki wasn't there, nor was Cristina, who had also arranged to meet with the group after the tour. There was quite a wait as people tried to find them and locate José and the bus. The women from Missouri recalled that there was a bookshop across the street from the museum, and they and a few of the kids wondered if they could go there since they hadn't gotten to visit the gift shop at the Prado. None of the other adults were immediately present, so I gave my permission for them to quickly go shopping.
Unfortunately I really shouldn't have let them go, though, for it turned out that while our group was in no particular hurry, José was. He was moonlighting by taking another group to the train station, and it was important that they get there in time to catch their train. Since I had been part of the cause of the problem, I volunteered to find those who were shopping and escort them back to the hotel by metro.
The group was in the middle of the broad boulevard that runs beside the Prado, milling through some open air stalls. The bookshop the Missouri women had remembered was apparently now a restaurant, so things had taken a bit longer than they planned. They finished making their purchases, and we set out toward the metro.
The Prado is just about the only thing downtown that is not extremely close to a metro station; instead it is about equally inconvenient (between a quarter and a half mile walk) to three different stations. We walked toward Atocha station, the place I had been yesterday when I tried to see the Reina Sofía Museum. We made it to where the station should be, but I couldn't see any entrances around. I ended up asking a passing pedestrian "¿Dónde está el metro más cercano?", and he responded by pointing and saying "Está a veinte metros." I was sort of amused at the concept of the "metro" being "veinte metros" away, both because 20 meters is a distance we would never think about in English and because the same phrase could be interpreted as meaning "twenty subways". I thanked the young man, though, and we made the short walk to the entrance.
The ride back to the hotel went quickly and uneventfully-until we reached our final destination. Everyone got off the train and through the station okay, but when we made it across the street Justin from Oskaloosa was missing. I knew he had been with us in the station, because I was talking with him as we went up the steps to the exit. Somehow, though, he became separated in the middle of the vast Plaza de España. Fortunately Justin is an intelligent young man, and while I sat fretting at the hotel, he walked in. He had simply made a wrong turn and ended up walking down the Gran Vía instead of the street to our hotel. He was about to summon a cab when he saw a familiar landmark. He never did say what that landmark was, but my bet would be a "Sex Shoppe" that occupied the lot one block north of the hotel. It was just about the only business in the neighborhood that totally closed during the strike, and I'm sure would stand out in the mind of any teenaged boy.
While it was already well into the evening, we had plenty of time before dinner. (Spaniards eat very late.) I went out exploring again. It was fascinating to see that lots of the strike-related graffiti and nearly all the littered brochures had already been cleaned up. It was almost as if nothing had happened.
It had been quite a while since that McRib at lunch, so I decided to tide myself over to supper by having a salad at a Burger King across the street from the Sex Shoppe. It took me by surprise when the clerk rattled off a question after I placed my order. I was expecting "here or to go", but that was not the question. On repeating, I discovered he wanted to know what kind of dressing ("salsa") I wanted. That's not something that's normally a choice in Spain, where oil and vinegar is what you get-period. Burger King is by far the most American of the fast food places in Europe, though. Much of their food is imported (as compared with McDonalds, which mostly buys locally in each of their markets), and they serve precisely the same menu worldwide. I'm sure most Spaniards have never heard of honey mustard or thousand island dressing, and they would certainly think "French" dressing would be oil and vinegar rather than glorified catsup. I decided to be Spanish, ordering the standard "aceite y vinagre" to the approval of the clerk.
A friend of mine who used to teach Spanish at Garrigan had asked me to pick up some olive oil for her in Spain, so I headed to Puerta del Sol and the flagship store of El Corte Ingles. I made my way to their basement supermarket and was taken aback by the vast selection of olive oil. There was literally an aisle full of the green fluid, together with additional displays. I had to choose from over a dozen brands, each of which made a range of sizes and qualities of oil. I assumed "extra virgin" (actually "virgen extra" in Spanish) was appropriate, and I bought a liter of what looked to be a good brand. It cost €1.87. I recently checked at Hy-Vee, and a smiliar bottle would cost about $6 there. I also picked up some Pepsi (mainly to add some additional stuff to my collection) and a bag of assorted cheeses that came with a souvenir pen shaped like a soccer ball.
Our dinner tonight started with paella, the distinctively Spanish version of leftovers on rice. In Louisiana they call virtually this same dish jambalaya-the main difference being that yellow paella is seasoned with garlic and saffron while red jambalaya is seasoned with paprika and Tabasco. Both are prepared with copious amounts of strange shellfish, and just as I did in the South I ate the rice and barely picked at the rest.
The main course was called a "San Jacobe" (Saint Jacob???). It amounted to a deep-fried ham and cheese sandwich. They'd basically taken a slice of ham and a slice of cheese, breaded the two together, and then fried it like a tenderloin. It was served without bread or condiments. When they brought out plates of deep fried mystery, I assumed it would be fish and was prepared to pick at it even more lightly than I had at the paella. The ham and cheese, however, was really quite good.
One of the Cresco girls was having a birthday during the trip, and the teachers had all chipped in to buy a birthday cake for her (and anyone else with a summer birthday, for that matter). We had large slices of cake, accompanied by the same Neapolitan ice cream we had enjoyed the first night. All in all, it was a most filling meal.
It was again very hot at night, but eventually I managed to get at least a bit of sleep.
We were up at 6:45 this morning. I went out briefly to use an ATM and then came back to the hotel for breakfast. Promptly at 8:00 José showed up in the Plaza de España with the bus. We had been using a different bus while exploring the Madrid area, but now we were back to the same "Europullman" we had used in France. Interestingly, the cracked mirror was still there, unchanged from the accident in Tours.
Being a weekend traffic was very light today, and we reached the edge of the city quickly. We again passed squatter slums and the vast sprawl of industry that lines every highway south of Madrid. One interesting sight was the exit for "Warner Brothers Movie World", a theme park that brought back memories of the studio tour Margaret and I took last summer in Burbank. The sprawl continued to a mountain pass at Km 40 (about 25 miles from downtown Madrid). There we again crossed the border into Castilla-La Mancha, Madrid again wished us "!Hasta pronto!", and rapidly we were in an extremely rural area.
Spain was playing Korea in the World Cup play-offs (the semi-finals, I think) today, and José had the broadcast on the radio. If you ever thought an American sportscaster got excited, just listen to a Spaniard. Every play was reported as if it were life and death, and the basic cadence was to rush through the first two thirds of a sentence and then draw out the end for extra effect. It reminded me of an episode of The Simpsons where they show Anglo and Hispanic American sportscasters announcing a soccer match. The English broadcaster basically says "A passes to B, who passes to C, who passes to D, ...", with absolutely no intonation whatsoever-showing the basic feeling most English-speaking Americans have that absolutely nothing of interest happens in soccer. The Hispanic, by contrast says the exact same thing, but shouts out every syllable, as if it were a last-second slam-dunk to win a basketball game. I must say I share the Anglo attitude (there's almost nothing I would find duller than soccer), but it was certainly interesting to hear the Spanish sportscast.
We headed southward from Madrid on the "Autovía de Andalucía", a road that was built when Sevilla hosted the world's fair back in 1992. Nearby we could see the "vía vieja", the old road I had taken when we made this same trip back in '85. The contrast couldn't be more striking. While we still had some nasty grades on our four-lane route, it was nothing that slowed the bus below 80 or 90 km/h (50 - 55 mph). On the old road, it seemed to take forever to go just a couple miles through the mountains. I thought of the Spanish expression "se me bajó por la vía vieja", which is what you say when you're coughing or choking because food went down "the wrong way".
About half an hour into Castilla-La Mancha we passed a big factory out in the middle of nowhere, spewing smoke all over the place. This reminded me of one of the adult students I taught Spanish to at the college last spring. He was the manager of the Snap-On Tools factory in Algona, and his bosses in Kenosha had sent him on a tour of the company's European plants, all of which are in Spain. He noted (with a mixture of concern and jealousy, I think) that the environmental regulations were very lax in Europe, but no one seemed to care because the factories were outside of the actual cities and just polluted the countryside-sort of "out of sight, out of mind".
The countryside of LaMancha is really quite dull. It's basically red clay that should be range land, but that is mostly farmed with irrigation. The agriculture has changed somewhat in seventeen years. In '85 we mostly saw olive trees. There are still a lot of them, but their numbers have been reduced. The European Union regulates farming in all its member nations, and they decreed that Spain should cut down some of its olive trees so it would improve market conditions for Italian olive growers. That doesn't sound like that big of a deal (not particularly different than all the various government programs farmers in Iowa participate in) until you realize that mature olive trees are often hundreds of years old; those same trees have brought in the family income for generations. They've replaced the olives with corn and salad vegetables, all of which require irrigation. The combination of bone dry land with lush irrigated fields makes the place look a lot like central California. In addition to the farms we admired the flowering bushes that lined the median through our entire trip and counted down distances on the frequent signs that lined the road. Interesting on these signs was that they used different font signs for places of different importance. A typical sign, for example, might look like this:
|
Villanueva 16 |
The distances are fictitious, but they make a point. Córdoba is an important city a long ways away. Puerto Lápice is a small town that is an important crossroads (more on it later). Villanueva is probably the most common town name in Spain. There's a Villanueva de _____ for every mountain, river, and what-not in the country. None of them are large or important in any way. "Villanueva" literally means "new villa", and I suppose it's equivalent to place names like "Newton" in English. It stood out to me mostly because the catcher on Brad Nelson's baseball team is a Dominican named Florian Villanueva. He's a good ball player-one of the names I got to know quickly on my trips to Beloit-so it was interesting to see so many towns of the same name.
At 9:30 we made it to Puerto Lápice, the same "typical La Manchan village" where we stopped for lunch on the way between Madrid and the South seventeen years ago. While it's not much of a town, it's pretty much the only thing between here and there, so this year too we stopped for a break. I bought some lemon soda and then killed time browsing through a grocery ad that was littered on the pavement. It was for a place called "Día Porciento" (Day Percent), and the prices seemed absurdly low by American standards-most things were about two-thirds of what they would be at home.
Back on the highway we passed a town called Llanos del Caudillo. While its name may have originated from other sources, I remembered that "El Caudillo" was the self-proclaimed title of Francisco Franco. If it is named after Franco, it would be just about the only thing in modern Spain that in any way acknowledges the former dictator. When I was in Spain in '85, there were still a number of streets that were named after Franco and his associates. Today, though, those are all back to their former names (in the same way that "Leningrad" is once again "St. Petersburg"), and there are no monuments in any Spanish city to the Civil War, nor much of any acknowledgement at all of the middle half of the Twentieth Century. It's really kind of eerie-almost like fifty years of history never happened.
The biggest difference I noticed as we drove southward was that there was much more agriculture now than there was seventeen years ago. They grow everything in Spain these days; it really is the California of Europe. One totally new crop was grapes. They've always grown grapes in the northern mountains (the region called La Rioja), but now there are vineyards all over the country.
The World Cup game was tied, so they went into a kick-off, the same thing that had happened in the game we saw at the Hard Rock Café in Paris. The announcer went into an absolute frenzy, and at every kick José and Cristina would either scream in pain or shout for joy. In the end Korea won, which the announcer blamed on faulty refereeing. Korea was hosting this year's World Cup, and the implication was that the officials were skewing things to please the home crowd.
The land became more rugged, and we hit serious mountains around 11:15 at the Andalucía border. It amazed me that we had reached Andalucía in just over three hours-including a stop. On the "vía vieja" it took the better part of a day to do the same trip.
Lest we forget about the vía vieja, though, we were reminded of it in the Andalusian mountains (the Sierra Nevada or Snowy Mountains). They had built the autovía cheaply here by just adding two additional lanes beside the old road-the same thing we often do when we widen roads in Iowa. Northbound traffic had the new lanes, which cut a somewhat steep but mostly straight path across the mountains. Unfortunately we were southbound, and we got the vía vieja. We wound our way up and up and then down and down and down, curving through the tightest of hairpins, often well out of view of the modern northbound lanes. The only thing that made this better than the original road was that it was now one way, so we didn't have to worry about oncoming traffic as we rounded the tight turns.
We passed another squatter settlement near the town of Navas de Torso. Andalucía has always been the poorest part of Spain, and it would appear this is still the case. We also began to notice signs, both billboards and official highway signs, in Arabic. While Arabic is not an official language in Spain, there is a large population of Arab immigrants, particularly in Andalucía. A lot of African people also travel through Spain en route to the rest of Europe, so it is certainly appropriate to have signs they can read. We even passed a rest area with a welcome center that advertised the staff spoke Arabic.
Beyond the mountains the autovía became a brand new concrete highway. It had a much wider median than the autoroutes in France, and both the shoulders and the median were lined with pink and white flowers called adelfas. At the side of the road we still mostly saw farms. The most common crop here is probably corn, followed by sunflowers and olives. They also raise a lot of livestock. Bullfighting is, of course, a major sport in Spain, and this is apparently the prime bull-raising area. The farms were broken by the occasional industrial polygon, and among those the most interesting sight was a warehouse with the name "Concepción Purísima" (Immaculate Conception).
The farmers here all live in villages and commute to work in the fields. Most of them seemed to ride to the fields on mopeds. The farm equipment looks quite modern, if perhaps a bit smaller than what you'd see back home.
As we rode along Cristina would periodically give commentary on the bus microphone. It was amusing to listen to her, because her English was so filled with unusual expressions and outright errors. A lot of the mistakes involved prepositions, which are the hardest words to master in any foreign language. For example, she described today's itinerary by saying "We go at Córdoba" instead of "We're going to Córdoba". The Spanish word "a" means both "at" and "to", so it's an easy mistake to make. She also used the verbs "to up" and "to down", as in "Do you want to up (the Eiffel Tower)" or "We down the bus and make pi-pi". These are direct translations of the Spanish verbs "subir" and "bajar", which mean to go up and down respectively. The idea of a compound verbal expression like "go up" seemed lost on Cristina, though (even though Spanish has many similar expressions, particular involving the verb "tener", "to have"). Cristina also spoke of "surrounding" buildings, as if we were making a military invasion (she meant we would circle them in the bus), and she made the classic Hispanic mistake of putting "no" before verbs instead of "doesn't" or "don't". Perhaps most amusing was her pronunciation of the English word "Spanish", which came out something like "ay-SPAIN-eech".
I spent quite a bit of time reading through El País (the nation), Spain's leading newspaper. There was a fascinating editorial about the U.S. government and the World Trade Center disaster, and after months of hearing the American reaction, it was fascinating to see a different viewpoint. El País is a businessman's paper, and it is hardly known for its liberalism. That made it all the more interesting when they strongly attacked the Bush administration. They were concerned, as I am, that the investigation into the September 11 attacks has been veiled in secrecy, and they felt the American government wanted its people to surrender their freedom in the name of security. There was even a subtle implication that the Bush administration might have played a behind the scenes role in the plane bombings, sort of like an arsonist who sets a fire so he can then be a "hero" by rescuing people from the burning building. While I really don't agree with that last implication, I agree with El País that our government is going too far in the name of security. Perhaps it's just a coincidence, but I find it most disconcerting that "Office of Homeland Security" is precisely what the Russian initials "KGB" stood for in the old Soviet Union. We've been in such a hyper-patriotic mood in our country the past year, that any opposition to Bush's proposals has gotten little more than lip service. It was certainly interesting to see a broader view in the opinion pages of Europe.
It was very warm as we drove along; thank goodness the bus was air conditioned. The heat was probably most noticeable because a large number of vehicles had overheated. They were stopped at the side of the road with their hoods up. You don't see that many broken-down cars in America these days, but there were certainly a number that had trouble getting up the mountains here.
To reflect that heat, buildings in Andalucía have traditionally been whitewashed, and that's still true today. Everything is white in Andalucía. In the old towns whitewashed stucco houses march up the hills, while in newer towns even a drive-through McDonalds will be painted all-white.
As we neared Córdoba we passed a regional prison. José joked about the place, saying it was a "free hotel ... but the only problem is you can't go 'de paseo' ". That would be a problem indeed for Spaniards, for the traditional evening stroll (the paseo) is one of the most established customs in the country. Everywhere you go the whole city is out at night walking-or perhaps "promenading" is a better term. It wouldn't surprise me if they even maintained the custom by walking around the prison yard in the evening.
We entered Córdoba in the middle of a motorcade. I have no idea what was going on, only that we joined a long of important-looking cars with their lights on. No one seemed to care, though, and we made our way through the new part of Córdoba and on to the walls of the old city.
I had never been to Córdoba before, and I was expecting it to be an interesting place. Frankly, I was unimpressed. It comes across as an artificial city that exists mostly as a tourist trap. There is a real city here, but tourists aren't supposed to notice it. Instead they're supposed to limit themselves to the historic region-where they can shop at scores of absolutely identical gift shops, eat at a number of uninspired restaurants, and watch the other tourists circle the main square. There's really no business in the old city other than gift shops and tourist-oriented restaurants-not a pharmacy nor a grocery store in sight.
We had lunch at a restaurant José recommended across from the mezquita (the mosque/cathedral), the main point of interest in Córdoba. The main part of the place looked like a nice restaurant, set in a pleasant courtyard. Unfortunately that was closed (actually it may have been fortunate, since it would almost certainly have been sweltering in the sun), and we ended up eating in the bar. Some of the food tended toward traditional Spanish favorites, which I avoided. Instead I had roast pork and mixed vegetables, which was toward the pricey side, but made a pleasant lunch.
The most interesting feature of lunch was observing a family whose child was probably being baptized. Four generations were dressed in what each generation considered its finest clothes, ready for a big family dinner to commemorate the rite of passage.
We had lots of time to kill before our formal tour of Córdoba. I wish I had brought a map of the city, because then I might have done some real exploring. As it was I just kept circling and re-circling the mezquita, pondering how so many gift shops could survive when they all sold the exact same junk (things like "¿Dónde está mi cerveza?" T-shirts and little Asian-made troll figures that said "Spain" on them in English). After about three rounds of the plaza, I got thoroughly bored and went outside the walls of the old city. There was a pleasant little park along the Guadalquivir River, and I spent most of the rest of my time there. I wish I had gone there earlier, because it was really far more interesting than anything inside the walls.
Our tour of Córdoba was led by an ancient little gentleman who hobbled along in baby steps at a pace that forced me to take a step, pause, and then take another. (Meanwhile he had taken three or four of his steps.) While Paul and Margaret seemed to find his commentary interesting, I thought he mumbled to a point that he was almost impossible to understand. I had to ask Paul later to fill me in on just what the man had said.
Córdoba's cathedral was originally a mosque. It was built by the Moors, the Arab people who ruled most of Spain from the 700s to the 1400s. Probably the nicest part of the cathedral is its forecourt, where a grove of orange trees is planted. Inside the place is a forest of pillars, all intricately carved in the geometric patterns that are famous in Arab architecture. The center has been a cathedral for centuries, and its architecture truly fights with the Moslem base on which it is built. They've gradually been "Christianizing" the whole place by building side chapels around the perimeter. It's not really a beautiful church, but it is interesting to see.
After seeing the mezquita we went for a slow-motion stroll through the Jewish quarter. In Moorish times this was exactly what the name implies, the place Córdoba's Jewish population lived. In virtually every Spanish city we visited, the guides made a big point of how Jews, Moslems, and Christians all lived peacefully together in Moorish times. (They fail to mention the fate of the non-Christians in the Inquisition that followed.) Guidebooks describe the Jewish quarter as a "typical" neighborhood-"typical" coming from the Spanish word "típico", which really is closer in meaning to "traditional" or "old-fashioned" or "picturesque". It's full of two-floor whitewashed stucco on stone houses with wrought iron balconies overlooking narrow pedestrian-only streets. It is a pretty area, but again it basically comes across as a tourist trap. I suppose someone must live here, but not much of anyone other than tourists and those catering to tourists seemed to be out this afternoon. I might have enjoyed things more if it were a cooler day, but this afternoon the sun reflected off the whitewashed buildings and made it absolutely miserable to be out.
We made our way back to the bus, which was pleasantly cool. José told us with pride that he had managed to park in the shade. We left via the "real" city of Córdoba, a place of industrial polygons, shopping malls, and ten-floor apartment blocks that looks pretty much like every other city in Spain. Outside the city we saw fields of sunflowers with their blossoms turned away from the sun. With the intense heat we had today, I think that's what I'd do if I were a flower, too.
As we were driving Cristina called to confirm our hotel reservations for this evening. Her conversation basically amounted to the words "vale" (probably the most common word in Spain, and basically translated "OK") and "sí" (yes). At one point she responded "vale, vale, sí, sí, sí" as a single response. I guess the reservations must have been acceptable.
The industries here are different than they were further north in Spain. The largest part of the factories appear to make furniture (muebles), which seems surprising, given that there really aren't many trees around. There are also a lot of glass factories and brick manufacturers. You don't see the high tech or major assembly industries they have further north, though.
The crops continue to be quite varied: cotton, sunflowers, corn, wheat, and salad vegetables. It interested me that the farmers burned away field waste rather than plowing it under, feeding it to animals, or making it into fuel. (It also tells of their year-round growing season that they were dealing with field waste in summer.)
Just outside the city of Sevilla we saw signs for "OBRAS" ("works"-i.e., road construction). It turned out that it was not construction at all, but rather a roadblock set up by the Guardia Civil, Spain's national police. Our bus was stopped, and a young officer spoke briefly with José and Cristina. He mostly wanted to know where the group was from and seemed quite satisfied to hear that we were Americans. Sevilla was the site of the European Union summit, and I suppose they were expecting protestors and possibly even terrorists from various EU countries.
The EU summit would make this an interesting visit to Sevilla (say-BEE-yah, the place that in English is often spelled "Seville"). Everything in the city was closed, far more than had closed in Madrid due to the general strike. All the real stores had grates pulled down over their doors and windows, and even the ice cream vendors and lottery ticket sellers on the street corners had closed up shop. Many of the main streets were closed, so we had to take a round-about way through residential neighborhoods to get to our hotel.
We were supposed to stay at a place called the Hotel Fernando III, which is on Calle San José right in the heart of Sevilla's historic district. We did indeed check in at that hotel, but we were then directed around the corner to a place that was officially called the Hotel Alfonso Rey. Actually the two places appear to be under the same management; we had Fernando III soap and stationery in our rooms at Alfonso Rey. At any rate, the place we stayed was a very nice hotel. It was a historic building, but the rooms were pleasantly modern. It was almost overly air conditioned, and we had clean and modern bathroom facilities.
We rested in our rooms and watched a bullfight on Spanish TV. Then I went out and bought some pop at a funny little grocery store (that looked like a general store from the 1800s) down the street. We had dinner in the basement of the Fernando III. It featured an intentionally cold cream soup, roasted chicken, green beans, French fries, and a fruit parfait. After dinner we went back to the Alfonso Rey, and Paul and I watched CNN's European service. There we learned that there had been a number of bombings by the ETA (Spain's Basque militants) today. Fortunately none was anywhere near where we presently were. Then we watched part of the movie Airplane (dubbed into Spanish), and we finished the night by watching a strange and rather risqué comedy show that explored the love lives of couples after varying numbers of years of marriage. We then just relaxed in the air conditioning and went to sleep.
It was late this morning (8:45) when I got up. I had a nice shower, and then watched a bit more of CNN on TV. The big news from the States was that the fires in Colorado were still burning; residents of suburban Denver had been living in school gyms for two weeks now.
We had breakfast in a different restaurant in the Fernando III. The chairs were all covered with cloth, tied with bows at the back, almost as if the place had been set for a fancy wedding reception. It was a bit much for breakfast, but I certainly didn't complain.
The bus could not negotiate the narrow streets by the hotel, so we had to walk to the main thoroughfare to board. A "maletero" (suitcase boy) took our luggage to the bus in a van. Our local guide joined us, and we had a pleasant tour of the main sights of Sevilla. Many of the points of interest are left over from the Ibero-American Exhibition, a world's fair that was held near the turn of the last century. Most notable among these is Seville's Plaza de España, the heart of which is a fountain surrounded by ceramic depictions of each of the provinces of Spain. That fountain was reproduced about twenty years ago for the New Orleans world's fair, and the reproduction still stands in front of Riverwalk Mall at the foot of Canal Street in the Big Easy.
We were given time to shop in the stalls that were set up in the Plaza de España. I didn't buy much of any souvenirs, but I did buy a "granizada", Spain's version of what American street vendors would call "Italian ice". It's really nothing more than a high-class slush, but it was refreshing.
We passed by the Giralda Tower and Torre de Oro (Tower of Gold), both of which I had seen back in '85. We also walked through the Murillo Gardens, which was both new for me and very pleasant. Unfortunately Sevilla's two biggest attractions were not really open to us. The European presidents were meeting at the alcazar (the old castle), and they were having Sunday mass at the cathedral.
We spent quite a while walking through Sevilla's Jewish quarter (the Judería). It's a lot like the equivalent area in Córdoba, but it seems to pull things off better. I got the feeling people actually did live in Sevilla's Judería (extremely wealthy people, but people nonetheless), and there's a wider range of businesses. We ended our walk at a gift shop that was probably run by our guide's brother-in-law. It was not a bad store though. The merchandise tended toward traditional Spanish crafts, ather than the tacky souvenirs they had in Córdoba. I bought a miniature guitar in imitation metal inlay (damascene or dimasquinado) that I plan to give my niece for her birthday as well as what amounted to a tile icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.
The group made our way to the square in front of the cathedral, and we were given quite a bit of free time for lunch. I wasn't really hungry, so mostly I went out exploring. The cathedral marks the boundary between the historic city and the new downtown, and it was fascinating to see the difference one block could make. Basically I liked Sevilla, though-both old and new.
After walking around a while I found the other adults, who were lunching at a sidewalk table in front of a bar. I joined them for dessert, which featured assorted ice cream novelties. Margaret implied that they were made on site, but they certainly looked pre-packaged to me. At any rate, my "requestón de miel" (honey flavored ice cream in a clay pot, topped by peanuts) was quite good.
We had a fascinating drive out of the city. José commented that there was extremely little traffic; indeed there was almost none. There was certainly a lot of police, though. On every overpass there were guards with machine guns patrolling the expressway. I assume that's how the EU presidents were leaving the city, but it honestly seemed a bit excessive.
We spent the afternoon just driving straight eastward on the autovía. The country is bone dry here. We saw a few olive trees, but there wasn't even much of the irrigated agriculture we saw earlier. It looks a lot like Wyoming or Montana-rugged, low mountains, but mostly just dry range land.
It was fortunate we were headed east. Shortly before we got to Granada there was a major accident in the westbound lanes. A truck had gone off the road, and it looked like it had exploded in a major fire. Traffic was backed up for miles headed west. We passed by things quickly, though, and before long we were in Granada.
The background music on this page is a flamenco guitar rendition of "Farruca".