An American in Toledo

For the longest time, I thought that the relationship between Spain and its American tourists was like a lichen.  A lichen is a composite organism that consists of both plant and fungus.  Using the analogy, it could be said that Spain is the plant, the part the gives color to the organism and produces food from the raw ingredients, and American tourists are the part that gives the ingredients to the organism for photosynthesis.  Although the Americans are necessary for the life of the organism, they are still a fungus and heavily resented by the Spanish.  (It came out in my head better than on paper).

figure 1: Lichen.
I hope you are taking notes.  The test is
 at the end of this post and will cover all
material in this blog from this post back.

Turns out that I was pretty wrong about the lichen thing.  And not just stylistically!  Spain does abhor tourists for the most part.  If you could listen in on a conversation amongst Spaniards, they would bad mouth tourists in general given the chance.  But though they don't really like tourists in general, they sure do love to help out tourists who come up to them and ask them questions in Spanish.  Case in point: Toledo yesterday.  I woke up at 7am with pretty much no clue of how I was going to get to Toledo from Alcala.  My host mom woke up at the same time to help me.  I didn't even ask for her to wake up, but she did.  She even gave me a banana for the road.  Malcolm and I got on the first bus that my Mom told us about, and I got to talking in Spanish to the guy sitting next to me.  He turned out to be Brazil and had only started living in Spain 5 months.  He needed to find work so he moved to Spain.  A little aside, Spain has a 20% unemployment rate.  It is 40% among the youth.  If you have to move to Spain to find work, you are in bad shape.  We got off at Madrid together, and I asked him what Malcolm and I needed to do.  He patiently showed us how to buy train tickets to the next stop.  He could have been late for work because he showed us how to find the ticket office.

Our friend from the bus who helped us out

Once we got to the new station Malcolm and I were completely lost.  Once again, we asked a Spanish lady for help, and she painstakingly navigated us through the train system to the equally confusing bus station.  While she could have just given us directions and left, instead she took the time to baby us through the ridiculously complex train system.  Without her, we would have been stuck a lot longer.

On the way back, it was the same problem.  American tourists lost in the train station.  Turns out they don't sell tickets in the return station.  We would have been walking home to Alcala had not a security guard came and showed us how to get out.  She was from Bulgaria and spoke 4 different languages.  She took us to the right stop, waited 10 minutes for the bus we got on, and told the bus driver to let us on even though we didn't have tickets.  Malcolm and I were pretty dumbfounded at how nice Spaniards are to helpless American tourists who can speak adequate Spanish.  I could keep going on and on about how kind Spaniards have been to me once they found out that I can speak pretty good Spanish.  The last two people who helped us out were also students going to Alcala.  They showed us the right bus station and walked us there.  I am exeedingly grateful for the largess of the Spanish people towards the helpless tourist.  Without them, Malcolm and I would still be in Spain looking for how to get back to Alcala.  I would say that the relationship between Spain and Spanish speaking tourists is like algae and really cool fungi.  That is probably a better comparison.

Oh, and Toledo was gorgeous.  Toledo was greatly influenced by Jewish, Arabic, and Christian culture.  As a result, the architecture is fantastic.

Not only were the people friendly in Toledo, but the
streets are made of pure silver and shine like the sun.

The second largest cathedral in Spain is locate in Toledo.  It was kind of hard to miss given that it is the second largest cathedral in Spain.  It took 260 years for the church to be completed, not including the artwork inside after the completion of the building.  The stain glass windows took 100 years.  So much time was put into the church.  It wasn't just the fancy stuff that took a while either.  The church had these steel bars separating one room from another.  It took 7 years for the master steel smiths to complete it.  Given all the massive delays, I think it was worth the wait.  The church stands today as a masterpiece of Gothic artwork.  Needless to say, the church looked pretty groovy.

The Cathedral of Toledo.  Very gorgeous.

If I had a dollar for every massive cathedral
in Toledo, I would have one dollar.
-Patrick Starfish

We also got to see some ridiculously big doors in Toledo too.  I'm pretty sure they are Muslim inspired.  The Synagogue in Toledo was beautiful.  I absolutely love Hebrew writing.  It is more like art to me than language. Most likely this is because I cannot read Hebrew.  The staff at the synagogue also let us in for free.  Definite props for that.

Considering that people back in the middle ages
were all 20 feet tall, this was actually a
medium sized door.  

Though the buildings were all so gorgeous, I think that my favorite part of the architecture was the city streets.  The streets were narrow and crooked.  When you walked through them, It was like going back in time to the medieval era.  Like giant works of art, the streets gracefully canvassed the city.  I have never seen anything like it in my entire life.

I could live here the rest of my life.

Malcolm chilling in the ridiculously
beautiful alleys of Toledo. 

Unfortunately for the people who there, the exquisite narrow street of Toledo are the same streets that they have to drive their cars in.  Whenever cars would go down the lanes, Malcolm and I would have to press up against the walls to avoid being flattened.  It was almost laughable seeing cars driving through the city.

Ouch.

One of the most memorable events in Toledo was the siesta.  Malcolm and I were dying by about 4 in the afternoon.  It just so happens that if you have to wake up early to catch a bus and walk around all day, you get tired.  We decided that instead of suffering for the rest of the day, we could just get a siesta and be reenergized.  We thought of this idea while sitting on a museum bench.  Malcolm and I were sorely tempted to just go to sleep in the museum, but instead decided to go to a park.  We took a trip to the park in Toledo and napped for about 2 hours on the bench.  Not too many people came by and gawked at us.  I just hope I wasn't snoring.

Figure 2: Malcolm and I dying one the museum bench.
I hope you have been paying attention.

Looking back on Toledo, I am pretty spellbound by the beauty of the ancient city.  I could come back again for years and not know all their is to know about the gorgeous city.  It was one of my most interesting days here in Spain.

After I get my first million teaching English as a
second language in Korea, I'm definitely buying
that house.

Did I mention that I liked the streets in Toledo?

Test
Write your answers below and turn them in to me tomorrow.

1.  How many times has the phrase 'Turns out' or any functional equivalent been used to start a sentence in this blog?
2.  In a gentle yet firm letter to the author, describe how bad the lichen simile was.
3.  What is the difference between a simile and a metaphor?
4.  If you are canoeing down the street and all the wheels fall off, how many pancakes does it take to roof a doghouse?
5.  Did I mention that I liked the streets in Toledo?

It is 3 in the morning and I have class tomorrow.  Why do I always finish writing my blogs at ridiculously late hours in the night?  No clue.  Thanks for stopping by and reading this!

Hasta Banana!
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