I get off the bus to the sound of two american girls saying something about finding their hostel. I got on the same bus as them, got off at what I am now assuming was the wrong stop and asked a bunch of people on the street for Calle Barroso, where my hostel was. Noone knew. So I went toward a park and ran into the same girls looking at a map. Having now put two and two together I asked if they were looking for the Añil Colours hostel. They were, and unlike me, had a map, so we set off to find it. I forgot their names already, I wouldn’t start keeping a journal for a few days, but one was actually graduated from college and teaching English in Burgos (NE of Salamanca). The other might as well have been mute and was just the other girl’s friend visiting from the States. Umm, I vaguely remember having an interesting conversation with the first girl, and after our chosen route was blocked by a Semana Santa procession, we still managed to stumble into our hostel. Turns out Calle Borroso is in the Judería, the old Jewish district which still has small winding streets like an old Moorish city.
So, about Córdoba: I finally found a “typical” Andalusian city. Typical is always difficult to describe, but by it I mean that there were still well preserved narrow streets like in an old Arabic city (most of what I saw were actually in the Judería, but that’s because Jewish communities were allowed to thrive during most of the period of Arabic rule in Andalusia (and most of current Spain and Portugal). There was also AMAZING ARABIC ARCHITECTURE such as the MEZQUITA CATEDRAL (forgive me for the caps, I’ll get to those soon). It was also very hot and sunny, I kept getting dehydrated and I’m sure my epic half tan/half burn I’m still sporting owes much of it’s existence to the one full day I was there.
I don’t know if I should bother to write much about the Mezquita Catedral (mezquita=mosque) before I can post pictures. Satiate yourselves with wikipedia for now. When a bunch of Christian kings “re”conquered Spain (this took hundreds of years; Córdoba fell in the 1200′s), they destroyed a lot of mosques and built Cathedrals on the ruins. THe mosque of Córdoba, however, was so impressive and so grand (after all, Córdoba was the capital of all of Moorish Spain (al-Ándalus) for a long time) that they instead preserved the majority of it, and converted it into a cathedral. The result is an ethereal mezcla of arabic arches and doorways (with a unique red and white stripe pattern), cathedral chapels and dome ceilings, arabic caligraphy etched into stone…you get the general idea. Usually I take very little interest in cathedrals and holy (christian) art, but I spent the better part of two hours walking around inside almost in a trance. I think I took at least 100 pictures (I took 700-800 the entire trip). The courtyard was also very nice, filled with orange trees and fountains. Afterwards I went to the Alcazaba, an old fortress later used to plan Columbus’s journey and the Inquisition (oh, irony!). The Christians were better at preserving fortresses than mosques because almost every city in Andalusia seems to have an Alcazaba. I guess they’re practical, and they were definitely well built. The Mezquita was way cooler though.
Maybe I should just write a post sometime about these Semana Santa progressions. Not to sound all jaded, but I got kind of sick of them eventually. I mean, they’re really all the same. Some guys in what look to us like KKK hoods (but they can be colors!) walk around with candles while some other guys carry GIANT floats with scary carvings of Jesus or Mary that weigh thousands of kilograms. All this is punctuated either by creepy spanish bugle and drum music (I liked it!) or more somber full band, religious sounding music.
Anyway there were plenty of those in Córdoba. I even got woken up by one in the afternoon when I had returned to the hostel to siesta. This was like 6 in the afternoon. I went back to the mezquita and watched a larger progression for some reason. (I’m gonna start flash-forwarding now) Went back to the hostel, met these nice Australian girls that were roadtriping through Spain. We went to track down more progressions cause they hadn’t seen a lot yet, but we were all tired and went to bed soon after (at like 11pm). Left early the next morning, on to Granada!
