Toledo y otras cosas (Toledo and Other Things)

This past weekend I went to Toledo with Caroline. It was great. The entire city of Toledo is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I have been to other monuments, museums, and neighborhoods that are UNESCO sites, but never an entire city! The architecture was amazing in the old city, situated on a hill, and there were still a lot of very well-preserved old buildings. The architecture was also very different. Toledo is near Madrid, in the center of Spain, which has a very different history from Andalucia, where Sevilla is. It was a great place to go for the weekend (we used the ave, the bullet train from Sevilla to Madrid).

Toledo has a large Jewish history and has two old synagogues. They were very interesting to see. I liked it a lot, but it was also weird. There were a lot of jews between 700-1492, but then they were all expelled. There was a museum attached to one of the synagogues, and the way they wrote the descriptions and the commentary did not sit well with me. I imagine I felt like how Native Americans feel when they go to a Native American museum made by people who aren't Native Americans. The tone of everything was sort of like "hey, look at this old, strange culture that used to live here, but then they left" and it was very obviously from a Catholic perspective. It didn't seem like they consulted Jews about much when making the museum. Caroline and I had both gotten the little audio guides to listen to, but by the end we didn't even bother because we were both kind of disgusted by the way the museum chose to describe and portray the past. Caroline is not Jewish, so it wasn't just me, but we both realized that we've had much more interaction with Jews than most Spaniards who come to view the museum do. It really was made for people who know absolutely nothing, so I guess it makes sense that we found it condescending and uncomfortable.

Toledo was small enough that we saw it very adequately in a weekend. We saw 2 synagogues, the main Cathedral (with plenty of El Grecos and a Caravaggio), a smaller cathedral with an incredible El Greco in the front, and went on a long walk outside of Toledo to get a view of the city on the hill as El Greco painted it back in the day. Toledo is known for marzipan. I'd never had before, but quickly fell in and out of love. All in one weekend. I ate way, way too much. Anyway, Caroline and I also had time to just walk around and take in the curvy, unique side streets and awesome architecture, which was nice. Our Hostel was incredible -- it was basically a hotel. Really great. And now, for a few photos:

Catedral de Toledo by night. Or better said, by dusk.

Caroline with a hunk of marzipan in a window that says "Toledo."

Cool lighting under a mudejar arch in one of the climbs up the hill (let it be known that Caroline and I were both very, very aware that we have lost our Cornell legs this weekend. Those hills were steep)!

The view of Toledo from our long walk.

On the edge of Toledo. Acting, well... like myself.

The old entry to Toledo and a church. This was very close to our hostel.

Caroline has all of the pictures of the two of us, so if she puts up any good ones I may add them to the blog. That's the problem with traveling with just 2 people... it's harder to take photos together!
Overall, though, another good weekend!

In other news, there was a strike at the end of last week and all of my classes were canceled. Well, not really canceled, per se. No one showed up except the foreigners, including the professors, so it was just assumed among the locals that there was no class. The strike/protest/march was taking place at all the major universities in Andalucia. They made a lot of noise and went all over. Their main sign read "school is a right, not a privilege." I'm pretty sure Spain is trying to make them pay about $1,000 more a year to go to university and is also trying to make the process more selective. It was very interesting to see... I can't imagine American culture without overpriced, selective universities. We're trained so differently in some ways.

Today I was reading on the grass under the sun, blue sky, palm trees, and orange trees. Sun, blue skies, palm trees, and orange trees have all become normal aspects of my life. They absolutely should never be normal! I try to continue to be stunned by the scenery here. It is pretty unbelievable.

And, lastly, I had a surprise in class essay-exam thing in Anthro of America last week. That was not fun. We had a prompt that we had to analyze and discuss. The first sentence in the prompt was "The problem with Mexican Anthropology is that it is too ___ and spends too much time focusing on ___." I didn't understand the words in the blanks. I didn't have my dictionary. Yeah. It was not fun. I think I managed to scrape something together, but it wasn't the best. I used context clues in the rest of the prompt as best I could and that's the best I could do. Oh, the joys of being a foreigner.