Finde 2: drums in the park and Toledo

This is a long one so I divided it into to parts to make it easier to digest:

Part 1, Sunday, El Retiro

"There´s something in a Sunday that makes a body feel alone," croons Johnny Cash, and he´s right. Especially if your wandering around aimlessly in a city you´re just getting to know. And it´s that first cloudy, breezy day that let´s you know it´s definitely Fall. And everyone seems to be with someone else except you. And you just missed an appointment  to see an apartment that seemed really promising because you hit the snooze too many times.

So I rambled across town to what is at least for the time being my favorite café. It´s called Café Acuarela, and it has this great window that juts out into the street, so that you can people watch shamelessly with a pane of glass to protect you. And it´s just of Plaza de Chueca, "the gay plaza" to put it away I rather wouldn´t, so the people watching is good. Prostitutes with a wide range of gender identities, trendy young  couples of various orientations,  little old abuelas who have lived in the neighborhood since Franco kept these kind of vices in check but don´t bat an eyelash at the new neighbors. Journaled  a little. Read a little. Extremely loud and incredibly close which is phenomenal, and not exactly a pick me up, but kind of is because it makes you feel less lonely because everyone´s at least kinda lonely.

Then I rambled a little farther across town to el Retiro, "the Central Park of Madrid" to put it a way I rather wouldn´t put it.  And I´m midway through the gauntlet of dead white guys when I hear the unmistakable sound of a slap on a hand drum in the distance. Suddenly, my aimless wandering has an aim. I make towards the drum as best I can, indulging in the fantasy that it´s a group of Ghanians playing waka even though I know it´s not that likely. There are a lot of West African immigrants in Madrid, though. Finally I come across a lone drummer practicing with headphones. Slightly, disappointed I look for a bench at a safe enough distance that it´s not awkward, and I  hear another drum. I follow it to an artificial lake where I find another lone drummer banging away on a djembe-like drum, but I hear another drum and I follow that one. It´s more than one drum! I hear multiple parts fitting together in an intelligible pattern. Hand drums, rattles, stick drums. Following a call and response pattern! I dare to dream that it actually is West African, maybe even Ghanian. Finally, I come across a crowd behind a giant statue of a man in the fetal position. I climb up on top of a little wall-fence thing too see. They´re Colombians actually, but it´s really cool. The dancers are probably even better than the drumming. I watch awhile and leave satisfied. Go home, make some herbal tea, listen to some Johnny cash, write this and now I feel great.

Part 2, Saturday, Toledo

Okay, now rewind to Saturday, me and José go to Toledo and meet some of his friends. They´re married with kids, but  lot´s of fun. From the left that´s Manolo, a neighbor, Ismael, the co-worker who hooked me up with José, Manolo´s wife Cristina, me of course, Cristina and Manolo´s daughter Irene, and finally Ismael´s wife Ruth with their son Miguel.  I can´t say exactly why, but I really like Ruth a lot. She´s eager to make conversation and patient with my Spanish, but it´s more than that. In the background is the cathedral. Having one Spaniard to show you around is perfect,  but four is a little overwhelming. One of them would be explaining life under Franco, while one of them would be telling me how Queen Isabela sent Columbus to the new world (the one fact about Spanish history most Americans actually know), and someone else explained the difference between a Gothic and Roman cathedral, and someone else pointing out the view of the River Tajo. After a while I think they could tell I had had enough and they all chilled out a bit.

Toledo is magical, and therefore very toursity, but not so touristy that it ceases to be magical. The streets are even smaller than Calle del Codo. Sometimes the houses are built right out over the street forming a sort of archway called a cobertizo. Toledo was the capital until about 1600. It has a Jewish, Muslim, and Christian quarter each very noticeably different. While the Jews and Muslims kept the differences subtle, the Christians went out of the way to plaster huge crucifixes on every building just so it was clear. We´re talking life-sized with Jesus and the whole nine yards.

The irony of the layering of names in a town this old really struck me. One of the synagogues was renamed after the  Jews got kicked out: Sinagoga de Santa María la Blanca or Saint Mary the White´s Synagogue. Never thought I´d see that. Then another thousand years down the road the tourists brought another layer of culture: a vegetarian restaurant on Calle de la Tripería, roughly  Street Where We Sell the Innards of Animals. Yum.  This one-time vegetarian went ahead and tried the blood sausage. It´s not every day that you get to go back to the Middle Ages.

baffled by the nation-state

So me and José got to talking last night about traveling and stereotypes and national identity. He said that he was really surprised when he went to San Francisco, because he expected it to be more like Texas, even though he never had been to Texas. And then he met me and he said he was surprised by how socially conscious I was. I tried to say that if there was any such thing as typically American, neither I nor San Francisco are it, but he said that wasn´t the point, and he´s right. Both me and San Francisco certainly are inextricably American, and I don´t why I was trying to convince José that America sucks and I´m not part of it. Luckily, he was too smart for that. The best part about going abroad is that it reminds me that I do in fact love the U.S. of A., even in the midst of this torturous election year.
Then he asked me what Americans think about Spain. And I didn´t quite know what to say. I told him we don´t think that much about Spain, which I think is fairly true. Then I tried to sum up what I thought about Spain before I came here, but it´s hard to rewind like that. The first thing that came to mind actually was Ernest Hemmingway, bull fighting, basques drinking wine out of goat skin sacks, Carmen, flamenco, La Casa de Bernarda Alba, Don Quijote, chivalry, but also gay marriage and socialism. But I´m curious what other people think. Obviously, you´ve all been prejudiced by reading this, but I´d like to know what you think about when you think about Spain.
I hope that wasn´t too boring. It´s what´s on my mind right now. I´m working on getting more pictures up, but that involves getting my computer connected to the internet which is a little complicated since I don´t have wifi. Those other ones were from José´s camera.

Apartment search

So I´m watching some nuns on a cooking show on TV and thinking maybe I should just join a convent. Good simple food. Bells telling you when you have to do something. Sounds kind of nice right now. Looking for an appartment is hard. I never really did that before, I always joined the project after that step was already accomplished. Looking for a room in a shared appartment is even harder, but that´s my ideal: an appartment shared with chill Spaniards about my age. Living with José has been a great help, but I think I need to try and find something with people my age. The probem is it seems like most people exactly my age still live with their parents here, but I´ve been finding lots of listings with slightly older twentysomethings. I went to visit the first one last night. It´s a little too expensive but the location is perfect. Close to a bus station that will take me to my school and 2 metro stops away from down town. The people seemed really cool too, really chic young profesionals. Maybe too chic. I didn´t really get the impression they were going to call me back, but we´ll see.

Look I´m a tourist!

José Antonio took me an a walking tour down town today. First we saw the palace.
Then to the Plaza de la Villa, which was the central plaza of the city when the city was a village, and is home to the narrowest street in Madrid, Calle del Codo. Personally, I would call it an alley, I in fact did call it an alley, but José Antonio insisted it was a street and had the sign to prove it.

Then we went to the Plaza Mayor, the reigning central plaza of Madrid. Much like the streets and elevators and everything else in Madrid, José Antonio is small but cool.

I´d write more but you wouldn´t believe how long it took me to get the format to look like this.

Washingtondcdublinmadrid: or what the hell time is it?

Well, my stomach just woke me up at 1:30 in the morning (that woud be 6:30 pm in Chicago I think) and said, "That was a nice aternoon nap. Where´s dinner?" However, if I´m ever going to get back on track the most I´m willing to give to my poor beleaguered stomach is a midnight snack and a blog entry.

Yesterday evening I completed the epic mulitstop journey from Chicago to Spain. First, I stopped in D.C. to visit Ross. Higlights include: visiting a hipstery bar in a gentrifying neighborhood, getting proselytized by Evangelicals, trying Yuengling (America´s oldest beer), getting proselytized by Scientologists, and playing kickball on the Mall in sight of the Washington Monument. Plus a lot of hauling my entire life all over the place and clinging nervously to my passport.

Then Sunday evening I got on a redeye to Dublin, and barely slept a wink, but I had an 8 hour layover so of course i had to explore. I Stumbled out of the airport, tried to understand the bus system for a second, and then just gave up, took a deep breath and got on the bus everyone else was getting on. On the way back into the airport, I noticed the friendly person in the clearly marked bus information kiosk, but oh well the blindly following strategy worked and got me downtown where I wanted to be. Highlights include: the really old and beautiful Old Library at Trinity College and a cool little cafe I found with my lonely planet (thanks for the lonely planet, Grace). Then back to the airport for the two hour flight to Spain, at which point too much worrying and coffee and too little food and sleep had turned my stomach into a pit of acid.

But yay! I finally made it to Spain. I´m staying with Jose Antonio, the previously mentioned friend of a co-worker at least for the time being, but it´s looking more and more like I´ll stay here long term. I slept an incredible fourteen hours last night, and then Jose Antonio showed around the neighborhood and the downtown area by car.

Further assurance that I won't be living in a box!

The secretary at my school says that a friend of his has a room I can stay in at least until I find something better! This makes leaving a lot less scary.

3 reasons why I'm going to Spain...

3.After four years of too little sleep and too much reading, I'm afraid my brain has dried up on me and I just might be a little crazy.* It's time to stop deconstructing and go off tilting at some windmills! Nothing can get me out of my head like the sheer sensory overload of being in some new far-off place. So here I go: a year of less thinking/reading/writing and more experiencing/doing. Of course, I can't kick the over-analyzing habit cold turkey, so you, my adoring public, will get to read my musings here. yay!

2.Shortly after graduation I received a fortune cookie message that reads: "Your dreams will bring you into a profitable venture." This gives me carte blanche to do whatever the hell I want without fearing the possibility of living in a box.

1. I am the biggest Spanish nerd in the world. I salivate over bizarre archaisms, and yet I have the conversational ability of an 8 year old at best.

*For those of you monolingual gringos who give us all a bad name: This first sentence is a paraphrase of that quote up there and the very nerdy origin of the name of this very cool blog.
(Look at me writing foot notes as I swear off academia, I'm hopeless.)