Stopover in Toledo (Excursion to Madrid pt. II)

Our first night of the excursion was spent in the town of Toledo, just south of Madrid. Like most cities in Spain, Toledo is old. Really old. Thought to be populated since the 7th century BC, it rose to fame particularly during the Reconquista (the period of constant war in which the Christians "reconquered" Spain from the Moors) for its guilds. By the 17th century, Toledo steel and swords came to be considered the best in all of Europe. I was excited to check out the sword shops during the few hours we had there that evening. I have to admit that I was disappointed, however. It's been a long time since Toledo has been making actual swords, and it shows in the sheer amount of cheesy crap that fills just about every "sword" shop there. For one, nearly all of the swords that are now sold in Toledo aren't made in Toledo, but rather in Madrid or, worse, China. Not only that, but these swords aren't actually forged any more, but rather are stamped pieces of steel (despite what any of the shop owners will tell you). And most of the swords are gimmicky movie replicas (Lord of the Rings swords are everywhere). We did manage, however, to find a shop that had a basement with real, forged, handmade swords. The cheapest one we saw was around 350 euros, which is about 300 euros more than I'm willing to spend on a sword. It was still cool to see, though.

Regardless of the gimmicky souvenirs that one can find there, Toledo really is a neat city. Its narrow, winding, cobbled stone streets makes the city feel its age. Sevilla is a wonderful place, but you definitely feel like you're in a big city. Toledo, which is much smaller than Sevilla, has kept that medieval charm.

But enough with streets and swords, what we were interested in was its famous dessert: marzipan. Behold:

I don't remember what this particular piece of heaven was called, but it was, well, heavenly. Marzipan, cream, and cake. Phenomenally good. Marzipan is basically sugar and almonds, made into a paste and then cooked to harden. We ended up going back to this shop four times that evening.

The next morning I woke up early for another unique-to-Toledo experience: the Mozarabic Mass. During the Moorish reign, the Christians residing in Toledo that didn't convert to Islam were allowed to continue holding Mass. Because they were isolated from the broader Christian community, their particular rite evolved distinctly to the rest of the world. The result was the Mozarabic Rite (Mozarab is the word for a Christian who lived under Moorish rule), which is preserved today in Toledo. Toledo, as it were, is the only place in the world with the permission of Rome to practice this Mass. The Mass was conducted in Latin, with long pauses for chanting, which was provided by a choir that I would imagine only does this liturgy. A fascinating experience. Afterward, we were free to explore the Cathedral of Toledo, which is stunning:

Unfortunately, we didn't get very long to wander around, as we were already late for the only group sight of the city: El Greco's painting The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, which was painted for, and still located in, a small church nearby.

Naturally, we weren't allowed to take pictures inside. But the painting itself was absolutely magnificent. There are times when you see a painting on posters and books, then see the real thing and are disappointed. Seeing this painting, which I first studied in high school, was the exact opposite experience.

While an impressive painting in pictures, the real thing is breathtaking. The colors are remarkably vivid, as if they were painted yesterday. There's something else about El Greco's style that I find intriguing, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Anyway, the Count of Orgaz, who is depicted in the painting being laid into his tomb, was Don Gonzalo Ruíz, a wealthy and very pious native of Toledo. According to legend, his piety was such that when he died, Sts. Stephen and Augustine came down from heaven to bury him with their own hands (they are the two figures dressed in gold at the bottom). The bottom of the painting, which has a darker tone than the top, is set in the mortal world; the top, the celestial. Although you can't see it in the picture above, El Greco actually depicts the man's soul being ushered into heaven, at the apex of the triangle formed in the middle of the painting. Books have been written on this sort of thing, so I won't delve any deeper. But it doesn't matter. One doesn't need to know the story or the analysis of this painting to recognize its brilliance.

All too soon, it was time to leave Toledo. There were a lot of things to see this excursion and although I could've spent several days in that city alone, we had to be moving on.

An aside: Spanish WiFi

Pictured: Spain's Technology Minister

Before I continue with the excursion, I’d like to comment briefly on one of my grievances with my second country. Free WiFi is almost remarkably difficult to find in Spain. Luckily, I have it at my host house, but if I want to go somewhere to do homework (I find it easier to concentrate in cafes) that requires internet, I’m in for an adventure. That’s because almost no place has WiFi. There are two main coffee chains here that are guaranteed to have it, however: Starbucks and a local chain called Café de Indias. But the internet at these places comes with a major catch; the code they give you when you make a purchase is only good for forty five minutes of internet. This is where I have a problem, on three main grounds:

First, this is a country, nay, a continent that is famous for not hurrying you once you sit down at a table in a restaurant. In the US, the waiters largely rely on tips for their living. Thus, lingering at restaurants after a meal without continuing to buy stuff is really looked down upon. Indeed, it’s not uncommon for a waiter to request that people leave if they’re taking up too much time at a table on a busy night. In Europe, however, I can go into a restaurant on the busiest night of the week, get a table, order nothing but a café con leche and sit there as long as I damn well please, without the waiter so much as giving me a second glance. Because here, once you sit down at a table, it’s yours for as long as you want it. The waiters here make decent salaries, and tips are not expected, so it makes no difference whatsoever to them how many tables they serve per night. The reason I bring this up is because I can already hear the responses I’ll get: “But Joe, if they didn’t limit the time, people would just sit there all day!” What difference does it make to them? Is my taking up a table to use internet (after making a purchase, of course) any different from a financial standpoint than taking up a table to read the paper/people watch/chat with friends/do nothing at all? Of course it isn’t.

 Second, it’s not like they’re paying for internet by the minute. These aren’t long-distance phone calls we’re talking about here. Nor do they have a finite amount of internet. They don’t have an “internet cistern” in the back to collect internet when it rains kilobits. The internet isn’t going to run out. Nor does it cost more for more people to use. It’s greed, pure and simple.

Third, WiFi is not a new technology. It’s been around for years, which in technology time makes it an old, old innovation. For those of you rolling your eyes and reminiscing about a simpler time before there was internet and making a sarcastic comment about how unfortunate it is that I have to go without WiFi, consider first that I rely on the internet to research and turn in many of my assignments for class, as well as to keep in touch with family and friends back home. So there is a legitimate reason why I need it. Further, I think it’s a legitimate complaint to not have WiFi available at all times, wherever I am, for however long I need it, because this it’s the year 2011, people! Those who think I need to be less dependent on modern luxuries, would you think differently if I was complaining that all the restaurants and cafes here were un-air conditioned? Or required you to bring your own coffee cup, because they still hadn’t gotten around to adopting absurdly sophisticated technology of disposable cups? At some point, it’s reasonable to expect a certain level of available technology. I’m not asking for 4G connectability in the middle of the ocean. I’m asking (reasonably, I think) for a readily-providable customer accommodation in a developed, western country.

It seems fitting that at the end of this rant, I’ve discovered that my log-in information that they gave me at the register no longer works. I didn’t use forty-five minutes of internet. I used it as sparingly as one might use the last remnants of their heating oil in the dead of winter (which, as mentioned above, seems to be the Spaniards’ attitude toward internet anyway), getting on for five minutes then logging off for long stretches. I know I didn’t misunderstand the forty-five minute limit to mean that I could use as much internet as I wanted for forty-five minutes from the moment they generated that particular log in, either, because I was still able to get on an hour after they gave me the code. No, what seems to happen is that they put an arbitrary expiration time on the code (two hours, maybe) because internet kept in reserves goes rancid? Because they have to maintain the validity of the log-in information by burning large amounts of fossil fuel? Because their system can only keep up with three randomly-generated, time-sensitive codes at a time? To spite capitalists? Hell if I know their reasoning.

Ignored alarms, medieval castles, and Golden Age literature (Excursion to Madrid pt. I)

It was hard to believe that our last excursion as a group was already upon me. But such was the case on the morning of March 15th. Because of the drive we had ahead of us, we were told to be at the bus station at 6:30 in the morning-- sharp. We'd left behind late students on previous trips, so I wanted to make sure I got there on time. Because of a late night the day before, I decided to put off packing until the morning of. Factoring in the time it takes for me to pack, and that it takes roughly fifteen minutes to get to the train station (where we get on the bus) from where I live, I set my alarm for 5:30AM. More than enough time. Until I slept through my alarm. Well, sort of. I actually turned it off and went back to sleep without realizing it. When I woke up for the second time, I felt around my night stand for my cell phone (which I use as an alarm). When I didn't feel it there, I felt the beginnings of nervousness seeping through my veins. The only reason it's not there, I thought to myself, is because I've already woken up once and turned it off. If that's the case, then it should be somewhere here in bed with me, I continued. When I felt the shape of my phone underneath my pillow, I knew that I was in trouble. Knowing that I wasn't going to like what I was going to see, I looked at the time.

6:13AM

Keeping in mind the fifteen minutes it takes to get to the station, and that I wasn't even packed, I knew that this was about as close to being completely screwed as I could get. I jumped out of bed, threw everything that I could think of into my duffel bag, pulled on a pair of shoes (wearing the same socks I wore the day before and which I had slept in) and ran out the door. For the first tenth of a mile or so I did a sort of trail run maneuver, jogging along with my duffel bag and backpack pulling at my neck and shoulders. I quickly realized, however, that there were two main problems with this strategy. Number one, I'm not in good enough shape to jog the distance to the train station with that much stuff on me. Number two, even if I could somehow keep up a jogging pace for the entire way, I still wouldn't get there in time. I waved down the first taxi I saw and told him, "estación Santa Justa, pronto." The stars aligned and I got there just in time. My relief at making the bus was short lived, however; just as I sat down into my seat, I realized that I had forgotten something. I hadn't packed any socks. I was left with only the one-day-old pair that I was wearing. For a five day trip. Joy.

We were joined on this trip by a large number of family members. Because this is the longest excursion of the semester and it coincides with spring break in the United States, this has traditionally been the trip to take family and friends on. There are forty four students total here, along with three directors of the center, and three graduate teaching students. However, on that morning we set off with ninety-three people divided between two buses. Although my parents couldn't join us that week (they came a few weeks later, which will be a blog series in and of itself), it was still fun to hang out with everyone else's family. The more the merrier, but I have to say that the extra people, all of whom were on vacation (as opposed to the regular group who are here to study) made it feel like we were in one of those tacky, ubiquitous tour groups. 

I've never been one for tour groups. For me, so much of the experience of traveling is experiencing a different culture. You can't experience a different culture if you create your own microcosm of Americans within a foreign country, which is essentially what a tour group is. It's a nucleus of people like you that's carefully carried from place to place to see selected sights, eat food that's almost always designed to not offend our American tastes, you take a some pictures with some living statues and are escorted to the airport. Indeed, one can spend weeks in a country without ever really experiencing anything. Of course, this is all just one guy's opinion. Millions of people every year (not just Americans; in Spain most of the tourists come from the UK) choose this path, and they enjoy their time. And that's fine-- it's much better than not traveling at all. It's just not for me.

Our first stop in this trip was at a castle called Calatrava La Nueva, a templar castle and monastery dating from the 13th century. Situated atop a steep hill, it offered fantastic views of the Castilla-La Mancha countryside.

View from an archery hole in one of the turrets.

The castle was designed to be completely self-contained. This would've been important because no matter how well fortified, by land and walls, a defense you have, you're completely helpless if your enemy cuts off your food/water supply. To that end, this fortification, which was in use until the 19th century, contained stables for cattle, a granary, and a well. Fortunately for the knights who lived here, the castle was never besieged.


After forty-five minutes of wandering around, everyone boarded the bus again to continue our drive north. Our next stop was the small town of Almagro, famous for Golden Age theater and pickled eggplant. The Siglo de Oro, or Golden Age of Spanish literature began in 1492 with the publication of the first book dedicated to the Spanish language, a grammar handbook by Antonio de Nebrija, and ended with the death of the last great writer of the period, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, in 1681. 

(Author's note: For those who don't care for a mini-lecture about Spanish literature, feel free to skip ahead to the paragraph after the monologue)

Works from this period dominate the canon of literature studied by Spanish students. Don Quijote, Miguel de Cervantes' world-changing novel (the first and greatest modern novel, it is said) is the best-known work written during the Siglo de Oro, but Luis de Gongora, Francisco de Quevedo, Lope de Vega, and, already mentioned, Pedro Calderón de la Barca are also included among the literary giants of the era. The last one, Barca, is perhaps most famous for his play La vida es sueño, or "Life is a dream," which contains one of the most well-known monologues in all of Spanish theater. The play centers around Segismundo, a Polish prince who has been locked away in a tower for his entire life by his father, the king, due to a prophesy made before his birth that the new prince would someday overthrow the king. His imprisonment is the king's way of trying to escape fate (a popular theme in the day). The prince is not entirely alone, however; he has been educated over the years by a tutor who doubles as his jailer. One day, the king decides to do a little experiment in order to test the prophecy that his son would be a tyrant; he has Segismundo drugged and, in his induced sleep, has him carried to the royal palace and dressed as a king, with instructions to all persons present to treat him as if he had always been the king. His reasoning here is that he can always re-drug Segismundo and take him back to the tower and make him think that he dreamed the whole thing. When Segismundo wakes up, he is furious at realizing he has spent his entire life locked away instead of gaining his rightful inheritance. He takes his anger out on anyone who so much looks at him the wrong way-- in short, he acts like the tyrant the king feared he would become. True to the plan, he is redrugged and wakes up in shackles, as if nothing had ever changed. Naturally, this spurs some pretty hefty mental conflict. Was it all a dream? Could've been. But it felt so real. I think everyone who has ever had a dream that they swore was real could empathize. Segismundo's existential confusion is seen in his famous monologue, where he says that life itself is nothing but a dream. Kings are kings because that is what they dream. Likewise, beggars are only dreaming that they are poor. Segismundo concludes that he dreamt that he was a king, and now he's dreaming he's back in his tower:

I dream that I am here

of these imprisonments charged,

and I dreamed that in another state

happier I saw myself.

What is life? A frenzy.

What is life? An illusion,

A shadow, a fiction,

And the greatest profit is small;

For all of life is a dream,

And dreams, are nothing but dreams.

Which takes us right back to Almagro. One of the city's main attractions, as I mentioned above, is its Golden Age theater.

The main stage

This outdoor theater would've been the center of good times back in the day. Plays would run around four or five hours, including interruptions by the rowdy crowd that would've been standing around in the area directly in front of the stage (as opposed to the seated areas in the two balconies and around the ground floor). They'd usually do double features, meaning a full day of dramatic fun!

To conclude our visit, and to give us all an idea of what kind of stuff those riotous crowds would've been hearing, Dr. Scarborough, my literature professor, gave us a rousing interpretation of none other than the famous La vida es sueño monologue that I discussed above. 

After the visit to the theater, we had an hour or so longer in the town to wander about and eat lunch before the last leg of driving for the day. As any of you who have read my previous posts know, I'm a big fan of eating. So naturally, I went to the first bar I saw to get some of their famous berenjenas (eggplant). The damn things were so messy, though, that I wasn't able to use my camera to take a picture of it. Enter stock picture:

 
They're stuffed with other vegetables, mainly tomato, and are served with a skewer of bamboo through them to keep them together. I know, I know, they really don't look like eggplants. I'm guessing that they're baby eggplants (hence the need to pickle them). They're quite good, tasting (I know this will come as a shock) like pickled vegetables-- more like okra than pickled cucumbers, though. For those of you wondering, yes. I do get paid by the word.


After my meal of pickled eggplant, I wandered around the impressive town square, stopping in its various shops to admire the hand-sewn lace which is a traditional craft of the area. Before long, we were back on the bus, headed to our final destination for the day: Toledo. But that will have to wait for my next post...