More Wonderful Whimsy

So it´s definitely been a while since my last entry in this here bloggy thing. A couple things that I´ve come to realize about España:

1. Blondes do not blend in
2. Guys feel no hesitation whatsoever to stare at you if you for some reason catch their attention which sucks because (see no. 1) - which also means a lot of cat calls and for some odd reason, Spaniards also tend to hiss (why they think this will capture my attention in a positive way, I have no idea)
3. You´d like to think that all Europeans (and Spaniards included) have good fashion sense, which is true for a decent piece of the population, but the remainder of the population doesn´t seem to own a mirror or have the capability of differentiating between colors and textures
4. Spaniard (the men) automatically have something about their physical appearance that makes them just that much hotter than any guy you´d find in the States (too bad I´m currently disenchanted with them at the moment - ask me and I´ll tell you why)
5. Spanish college courses make my life because they´re so lax
6. Despite the fact that the streets of Toledo make no sense whatsoever, it´s impossible to truly lose yourself within the city - it´s just made frustrating by the amount of hills that exist within the city that cause a horrible burning sensation in muscles you never knew existed
7. There´s never a lack of new things to be discovered in this city - every vista off the edge of the city is beyond description

I´m sure I´ll come up with more over the rest of the time I´m here, but I just thought I´d share these with you for now. In the meantime, I´ll let you guys into my memory for a post that´s a little bit outdated at this point.....

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Sábado, el 7 de febrero 2009

Amor se mueve el alma.

So let´s see what I´ve failed to blog about over the past week and a half?

Maybe make that 2 weeks. I guess I kind of suck at this, but oh well.

Aside from my serious kick ass schedule that only requires me to go to class 3 days a week (granted the classes are awkwardly spaced throughout the course of each of these days) and gives me 4 day weekends, there´s been a couple new developments. Last weekend, I actually made it down South to hit up Sevilla and Córdoba, a trip that ended up costing roughly half of what the school wanted for a trip they have planned for march to Córdoba and Granada for 220 Euro. Granted, the cities may have been altered a little bit, but given how much traveling I plan to do after this semester is up, I´ll have to opt for the cheaper of the two.

I´ve definitely been finding that buses are the way to go as far as travel goes around here. This being said, we hopped a bus last Thursday night from Toledo to Madrid, from where we caught our midnight bus headed for Sevilla, but only after having had to sort through not having printed out our tickets ahead of time. With a little bit of confusion on my end and the ticket man´s, I managed to schmooze him into just looking us up and figuring it out for us. After which, two other obvious Americans asked for our help trying to get their tickets, as they spoke little to no Spanish at all, despite the fact that they are both studying in Madrid (an English speaking university…). So after meeting the two who turned out to be Joel and Brandon, we popped a squat to pass the time until we had to head out for Sevilla and them for Cadíz.

Our bus ride ended up being a 7 hour ride, which I failed miserably at sleeping during. It consisted of a first 3 hours with me sitting in one of the first seats, right across from the driver, during which he constantly would creepily peek at me every 5 minutes. He seemed friendly enough with the offer of changing the music to something I wanted, giving me a piece of gum, checking to see if I was cold and what not, but having a bus driver that interested in you when all you want to do is sleep is slightly upsetting. Especially when he blatantly asks how old I am, refuses to tell me his age, and then tells me I´m cute. Ok, so maybe I´m not giving him enough credit because he was on the younger side, kind of cute, really nice, but when all I want to do is sleep, it just doesn´t work that way. The other half of the trip was spent in a weird limbo after we switched drivers at a pit stop, where we ran into Joel again because Brandon was asleep on the bus, and after getting on the bus again, I couldn´t sleep – so at this point I´m running on 4 hours of sleep?

6 am rolls around and we get to Sevilla. Despite the fact that we´re all miserable, tired, hungry, and cold, the eerily foggy Sevilla definitely had a charm to it. A charm that I doubt can be found anywhere else in the states. We hit up an absolutely adorable café when it finally opened – we honestly managed to find it because we could smell them baking their bread and other delectable delights. So delicious. We hit up our hostel, that was actually an apartment, completely decked out courtesy of IKEA, tiny, but cozy, despite the ants that we later found were also sharing it with us for the 2 nights we were there.

4 hours of sleep and we spent the next 12 hours meandering the streets of Sevilla. We managed to hit up the Cathedral (the biggest Gothic church in all of Europe and the 3rd biggest cathedral in all of Europe/the world? Something like that at least), orange-tree lined streets, a little shop where you buy baked goods made by nuns, our local grocery store for some baguettes, the alcazar, a heladería where I got some amazing apple sorbet, the University of Sevilla (it used to be the tobacco factory/palace – absolutely an amazing place to go to school), and essentially all the other whimsical places you could possibly see in Sevilla.

The next morning after passing out after the best spaghetti dinner I´ve ever had, we caught the train to Córdoba. And much like mi mama said, there really wasn´t that much to it, minus the most amazing cathedral/mosque I´ve ever laid eyes on. The Catedral/Mequita de Córdoba is honeslty like nothing you´ll ever find anywhere else. It began as a Roman temple of sorts (there are still some remaining Roman mosaics to be seen), was turned into a church by the Visigoths afterwards, taken over by the Muslims when they came – destroyed – rebuilt as a mosque using some of the Visigoth materials, then taken over by the Christians after the Reconquista/Repoblación who then built a cathedral in the middle of it. So essentially what you have is a stunning example of a mosque with all the Muslim/Arab architecture, with a cathedral dome smack dab in the middle, numerous chapels throughout the building, Muslim arches that encompass Christian icons, artwork from 3 different eras of Spain, and just a perfect melding of Christianity and Islam. It´s something that´s existed for so much longer than the United States has even existed (like a lot of things have), and I honestly think that there was more culture melded into this one building than there will ever be back home. It´s just astounding some of the stuff you can manage to find over here that you can´t back home.

I love it.

The rest of Córdoba: the old Jewish quarter, trying to grumpily find a market to get some cheap-ass lunch, crossing the Roman Bridge, seeing the most astounding gardens/fountains I´ve seen in a while in el Alcazar, meandering the streets of Córdoba, and eventually catching the train back to Sevilla.

We actually ended up getting a call from our good ol´ buddy Joel on the way back, saying that they´d actually ended up in Sevilla for the night and wanted to meet up – this slowly progressed into one of the most whimsical nights I´ve ever had. After heading back to the apartment and cleaning up, we headed out to meet up with the two boyos (so painfully American, it ranged from being endearing to god-awful), to find out they´d already downed a fifth of vodka between the two of them. So while Joel could still hold an intelligent conversation, Brandon was boisterous, annoying-almost-sweet, and horribly American as sin. After we finally find a decent restaurant after bumbling around for what feels like forever, it begins to downpour like none other right as we start eating our Tapas. After having nitched the idea of going to a 30 Euro flamenco show, half the girls were dying to find this certain Flamenco Bar, which ended up being doomed from the start, as we spent the next 2 hours wandering the city aimlessly asking for a certain plaza, only to find it at the end and not find anything along the lines of what Rick Steve´s had said in his ill-fated passage of Sevilla.

We finally sat down at a little café for a drink before they closed and the other half of the group headed back for the night and Julia, Joel, Brandon, and I met up with some other Americans studying in Sevilla. With our now extremely large group we managed to discover possibly the cutest bar/café that I´ve ever seen (honestly just a hole in the wall). ¨hiding from the rain¨ ended up being Brandon taking 6 shots of some delectably sweet caramel vodka and trying to get everyone else to join him. And so we closed our second bar of the night and headed back out into the rain, which is where the whimsy started.

I don´t know the right word for it, but on leaving the bar we ran into a group of what can be identified as a Spanish-style Mariachi band, all of them with drink in hand and the most jovial of spirits. Without anywhere specific as our goal, we linked arms with the meandering musicians, and, sharing our umbrellas to hide from the rain, we walked until we found a plaza that was essentially deserted save for the bar in the far corner that seemed brimming with people. Essentially we ended up crashing someone´s party of some sort (we came to the assumption that it was an anniversary or sorts). There were people crowded in like no one´s business, all centered around another group of musicians who were already there. So whilst the band struck up all sorts of Spanish folk songs, everyone (I mean everyone) clapped and sang along, free drinks were passed around, old men engaged us in political talk and praise of Obama, Julia and I snatched free bananas from the banquet tables along the walls, and we got a taste of a real Spanish gathering as we danced, sang, chatted, and laughed at the ludicrousness of the situation. We didn´t belong there and we knew it, but at the same time it honestly felt like we were absorbed into the Spanish culture.

After having been awake for God only knows how many hours, Julia and I finally decided to sever ourselves from the gathering and managed to find our apartment in record time despite the flooding streets of Sevilla, our exhaustion, and the weird floating sensation that kept me from reality. So whimsical, I don´t even think I really did it justice here.

So as of right now, that´s the extent of my exciting stories. But with plans to go to Valencia, Barcelona, Cadíz for Carnaval, and the French Riviera for Spring Break, I have a feeling I´ll be putting up more tales for your entertainment.

You stay classy, Planet Earth.