All the World's Indeed a Stage...

(I don't know if it's showing up on your screens, but some of the text in this post looks like it's been irrevocably highlighted.  For the life of me, I can't figure out why, but it's not intentional, so just ignore it.)

One of my favorite places that we visited in Alcalá de Henares was the corral de comedias.  It has a very interesting history behind it; apparently, it's one of the oldest theaters in Europe.  Unfortunately, the English language is kind of inadequate to describe what happened to this building.  In English, we really only use one word for theater and that's, well, theater.  However, it sounds kind of stupid to say that this building was once a theater, then became a theater, and finally was turned into a theater, and has now been restored to it's original function as a theater.

This place just really screams "theater" to me.

Let me try that again: Originally, the corral was an open-air theater, then it acquired a roof and became a theater-house in the 1800s and was later adapted into a movie theater.  The construction of a relatively new cinema caused the corral to be closed down until it was (very) recently rediscovered by three university students working on a thesis paper.  It has now been restored and functions much like a theater-house again: it's primarily a venue for musical concerts and plays, although they still unroll the projector screen to show a movie every once in a while.

I think my favorite part of the tour was getting to go backstage (which was actually under the stage).  I don't know why, but ever since high school drama, I've always enjoyed being backstage.  The tour guide showed us the secret trapdoors and the old machines with which they used to produce sound effects.

Another interesting thing that we learned was the Spanish theater equivalent of "break a leg" which is "mucha mierda."  Politely translated, that's...well, there's not really a polite way to translate it.  The phrase dates back to a time before the automobile.  In those days, horses were the primary means of transportation, especially for the rich, upper-class caballeros.  The idea was, if lots of rich people came to your show, there would be lots of horses parked outside.  And where there are horses, there will be fertilizer.  So if you told someone that their performance was "a ton of crap", they'd take it as a compliment.  Obviously, it meant that a lot of people (and, more importantly, a lot of rich people) came to enjoy the show.  Apparently, the phrase has remained fairly popular to this day.  

And yes, I actually did have this information verified by a couple of independent sources to make sure that they weren't just saying it to mess with the ignorant Americans.  

Don Cervantes de Alcalá

We had no class on Monday because it was Thomas Aquinas' Day.  Here's how it works: our program is housed in the Philosophy and Letters building of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and, since Aquinas is the patron saint of philosophy, we get the day off.  Whenever the day of Saint Isidoro (patron saint of letters) rolls around, we get another break from class.  I suppose it's kind of like how Vanderbilt students get a day off from classes to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day (the patron saint of tolerance, perhaps?).

Anyway, Mitch (the other student living with me) and I took a trip Sunday afternoon to Alcalá de Henares, a small historic village east of Madrid.  The village is basically famous for two things: it was the original location of the Universidad Complutense and it was the original location of a one Miguel de Cervantes.  So naturally, we stopped by his birth home while we were there.  You can tell it's his house because Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are sitting on a bench out front.  Here's a picture of me and the Don giving old Sancho a hard time:

Whassamattayou?

We also took a tour of the university, which was a beautiful campus with lots of interior plazas and gardens.  I mean, imagine walking down this hallway on your way to class:

Rainy days would be that much easier.

I have to admit though, it would probably feel a little strange to attend a school where your history classroom is older than the period of time that you're studying.  

Another thing that stands out about Alcalá is the superfluity of storks.  For instance, here's one of the towers in the city wall (I'm not sure whose bright idea it was to put the storks on sentry duty).

This guard job is for the birds.

Otherwise, it's pretty much just a quaint little town.  With an emphasis on little.  After lunch was over, we walked a couple blocks from the center of town and here's how packed the streets were:

"In restless dreams I walked alone / Narrow streets of cobblestone"

As the evening waxed on, we got us to a nunnery and acquired some candied almonds to munch on while we waited for a theater tour to start.  But more on that in the next post...

Manners and Mannerisms

This post is dedicated to all of you who are punctilious about the niceties of etiquette and other various cultural norms.  Which is to say, I don't expect it will be very interesting.  However, if you ever plan on travelling to Spain and wish to blend in like a pro, here are some things you should know:

Table manners--Naturally, you're not supposed to put your elbows on the table.  What I was slightly surprised to learn is that it's also bad form to have one or both hands below the table while you're eating.  So keep both hands above the table during meals.  Also, here in Europe they don't do that ridiculous thing where you switch your fork back and forth when you're cutting something.  Which is nice, although keeping the fork in my left hand tends to remind me how inept said hand really is.

House manners--If you're going to be staying in a Spanish home, bring a pair of slippers.  Seriously.  Everybody wears slippers and the señoras generally have a thing against walking around the house barefoot or in stocking feet.  They'll probably tell you it's because they don't want you to catch cold, but one of my esteemed professors has advanced the academic theory that it's actually because they don't want you to see if the floor is dirty.  Of course, this worked out well for me since I already wear slippers around the house anyway.  Other various things to do if you're in someone's house: turn off the lights when you leave a room (electricity is expensive here) and close the bathroom door when you're done using it (don't ask me why; it's just something they do).

Conversational manners--Something else that worked out well for me is that it's not considered very polite to stand there silently and listen to someone talk.  Interrupting shows that you're involved in the conversation and that you're interested in what the other person has to say.  This is something that our Conversation professor has been trying to teach us, with varying measures of success.  Fortunately, interrupting comes naturally to me (in fact, I've been told I'm a bit of a prodigy in that regard).  If you're not that fluent, or even if you are, it helps to have a handful of stock phrases memorized so that you can politely interrupt without having to think too hard about what you're going to say.

The siesta--It's the first thing that most people mention when they hear my name used in the same sentence as the word "Spain."  But here's a little-known fact for you: taking a siesta after lunch really isn't all that popular here.  I do, naturally, and I hear that it's a bit more common in the summer, but for the most part, people just eat their lunch and go back to work or class or whatever it is they do.  The lunch hour here is really long (make that two or three hours), so if you want to take a siesta, you can.  However, most people actually use all that time for eating lunch, which is not only the largest meal of the day but also a big social event.

Well, there you have it: a nice little list of things that you'd normally never know (or care) about.  But you never know; if you ever happen to be in the neighborhood, such things as these might come in handy.  And I'm sure there's somebody out there who likes learning this stuff for no apparent reason at all.  Like me, for instance.

Where the Streets Have No Names

Well, actually the streets do have names here, but it still took me a little while to figure out how to navigate them.  To show you what I mean, let's play a little game I like to call "Find the Street Sign."  I took this picture at the corner of the street where I'm living:

Oh where, oh where could it be?

If you're having trouble, increase the magnification on your browser window and look at the building on the right.  See the white sign with blue letters?  Well, just above that is a blue sign with white letters.  Congratulations, you found the street sign in much less time than it took me. As it turns out, here in Madrid they put the street signs on the corners of the buildings rather than, say, near the street.  Naturally, once I figured that out it suddenly became a lot easier to find my way around the city.

Despite my newly-earned (and self-awarded) title of "Expert Navigator: Madrid", I could not imagine trying to travel this city in a car.  Well, I can imagine it, but I try not to.  You can tell they didn't build Madrid with the automobile in mind.  The narrow roads here are mostly one-way and, depending on the neighborhood, many of them have a tendency to twist and turn like a snake in a washing machine (don't ask me how a snake gets in a washing machine; it's just a simile).

So yes, I definitely prefer to do my sojourning about the city on foot, and it seems like the majority of the city shares that opinion.  Something else I've noticed is that drivers here are much more deferential to pedestrians than drivers in America.  I'm told that it may have something to do with the gargantuan fines for hitting pedestrians, but I think it also owes itself to the fact that the culture here in the city is very pedestrian-oriented.  Many a car has actually stopped and waited for me to cross the street while I stood on the corner like an idiot (probably looking for the street sign).  Also, the precedence of pedestrians, combined with the narrow, one-way streets has made jaywalking the law of the land.  Pretty much the only difference between the "Walk" symbol and the "Don't Walk" signal is that when the people here see "Don't Walk", they take the time to look both ways before they cross.

The other thing that stands out here is the ubiquity of graffiti (sounds like a good album title).  I strongly suspect that some of it is commissioned by various businesses, which often have such a painting along the front of the shop.  For instance, here's a rather impressive picture of a snake on the front door of a pharmacy:

Notably absent: the washing machine.

However, most of the graffiti here gives one the general impression of freelance work.  That is, I don't suppose any of the various local entrepreneurs paid for this:

It must have been "on the house."

Wait a minute, what's that I see down in the right-hand corner?

Well, what do you know...

Real Madrid vs. FC Bayern Munich

On Wednesday, a group of us went to the Real Madrid vs. FC Bayern Munich game.  It was really not much of a contest; Madrid blew Munich out of the water with a score of 111 to 87.  Oh, I did mention that this was a basketball game, right?  ;^)

And yes, the name of the German basketball team was FC Bayern Munich (for the uninitiated, FC means "football club").  Apparently, the franchises that own the Real Madrid football team and the Bayern Munich football team have enough money to finance their own respective pro-basketball teams, and I guess nobody thinks it strange that a basketball team has "football" in its name.  I'm told that the Madrid soccer players often show up to the basketball games, presumably because their salaries come from the same checkbook.  Before you ask if I saw any Real Madrid footballers, let me explain that we were so far up in the nosebleeds that even if Cristiano Ronaldo had shown up, I wouldn't have known him from Fuliano (that's the Spanish version of John Doe).

Needless to say, I would have rather gone to a Madrid vs. Munich football game, but the basketball game was actually quite fun and, more importantly, quite affordable.  For a mere eight euros (just shy of eleven bucks), we got to see a quality professional basketball game.  And yes, pro basketball over here isn't all that bad.

Of course, the Euro style of play is a bit different than what you see in the States.  There's a lot less razzle-dazzle and a lot more outside shooting.  But boy, can those guys shoot!  They're absolutely lights-out anywhere further than, say, six feet from the basket.  The funny thing is that both teams were pretty weak inside the post, but it didn't seem that important.  There were also very few dunks; I think each team had one apiece.  Even on fast breaks, players would chose a simple layup over a flashy slam every time.

Despite the differences, Euro basketball was more enjoyable than I thought it would be, albeit more for the snappy passes and sharp shooting than for the awesome highlight-reel plays we have in the States.  And the fans loved it as well.  The singing and chanting in unison that happens at European football games felt a little bit incongruous at a basketball game, but I guess old habits die hard.  Now if only I could get in to see a real Real game...

Forward to the Past

One of the most surreal things about Madrid (and Spain in general, I suppose) is that there are a lot of things here that make me feel like I've traveled back in time.  Which is pretty funny, since I'm actually six or seven hours in the future, as far as most of y'all reading this are concerned.  So essentially, I've traveled forward in time and landed squarely in the past.  "But how," you may ask, "can such a thing be?"  Or you may not ask it, but the wondrous thing about a blog is that whether or not you ask, I can give a long-winded answer and there's nothing you can do about it.  I suppose you could just decide not to read it, but that's the sissy way out.

Anyway, back to the real subject at hand: time travel.  After I arrived at the host-family's house, we went out to buy ingredients for our next couple of meals.  I felt like I had stepped into the past (somehow, I get the feeling I've said that before).  The streets are lined with small stores from a bygone era.  It's actually more like a dotted line, since there are also apartments, but you get the point.  Our first stop, the butcher's, was definitely larger than most closets.  Much more than that, I'm afraid I can't say.  The two guys behind the counter start saying  "Happy New Year" when you walk in and by the time they're done, you're already waiting at the counter.  Also, the various meats behind the counter bore a striking resemblance to the animals they came from.  Yes, I know it's supposed to be more hygienic for butchers to wear plastic gloves and plastic hairnets and to wrap all of their meat in plastic, but there's a lot to be said for buying meat from a guy who looks like he belongs in a butcher shop and not in a hospital.

Also, one-stop shopping does not exist here.  Our shopping list contained the following: sausage, tortillas, tomatoes, avocados, cilantro, and bread.  We went to 1 produce store, 1 "super" market (it was a little bigger than Kroger's produce section), 1 butcher, 1 baker, and 0 candlestick makers.  In case you weren't keeping track and are too lazy to go back and count, that's 6 ingredients and 4 stores.  We got half of our avocados and tomatoes at one store and half of them at another store just down the street.  But you can actually do that here since it's not uncommon to find, say, three bakeries on the same block.  I don't really know what to say about all this diversity and variety; it's so...un-American.

Just Sayings...

I have always loved and been fascinated by language.  I mean, that's a large part of the reason I'm studying Spanish in the first place.  So there will probably be quite a few posts dedicated to the curious little side-streets and back-alleys of the Spanish language, which I perpetually enjoy exploring.  In that vein, here's a couple of neat sayings that they have here:

"De perdidos al río": This is a fun one; it translates literally to "from lost to the river."  To get a picture of what it means, imagine that you're lost in the jungle or something like that.  Suddenly, you come upon a river, but that doesn't help much since it's not on your map.  Of course, even if it was, it wouldn't matter since you threw away the map a long time ago.  What do you do now?  You say, "Well, I'm already hopelessly lost, I might as well just jump in the river!"  It's the kind of saying that I imagine would occur often in a game of poker.  You know, when you're down on your chips, and you just got dealt an awful hand, and the guy before you just raised on a bet that was already too high for you, and you know you should fold, but you laugh and say "De perdidos al río!  I'm all in!"

"Por si las moscas...":  This one's a little harder to explain.  It translates literally to "for if the flies..."  It's what you say when someone asks you why you take a seemingly unnecessary precaution in order to prevent a very unlikely occurrence.  In English, it would be like saying "Well, you never know what might happen..." with a spoonful of "Better safe than sorry" sprinkled on top to make the justification a little more palatable.

"Padrino":  What's fascinating about this word is the fact that I can't think of a good English equivalent.  That doesn't mean that there's no translation; the word translates literally as "godfather."  And yes, just like in English, you can use it to talk about a very specific type of godfather, capiche?  But usually, the word refers to a man who is asked by a child's parents if he will be the baby's padrino.  The padrino is present at the child's baptism and other important milestones, he takes a special interest in the child, and he becomes a close friend of the family (if he wasn't already).  I know some American parents choose godparents for their kids (at least, my parents did), but in Spain it's a totally different concept.  And although it was originally a religious tradition, it still seems pretty strong in a country that has largely left its Roman Catholic roots.  Even my host-family's mother, an avowed Atheist, still chose godfathers for her children.

Which brings me to my favorite, and final, saying.  I learned it from Jesús, an older man who happens to be the padrino of one of the children in my host-family.  And this saying translates perfectly into English: "When you're young, you can't listen; when you're old, you can't hear."  Well-spoken, indeed. :^)

The Tourist Side of Toledo

Okay, so the last post about Toledo was basically a large, illustrated rant about medieval architecture in Spain, which was pretty, awesome, and pretty awesome (the architecture, not the rant).  However, not everyone is a history nerd, so I figured I'd do a post on Toledo from a more touristical (shut up, Spell Check) perspective.  I'll try to go easy on the pictures of beautiful old buildings...

...sorry, I couldn't help myself.

Anyway, Toledo, as a city, has been placed in a peculiarly pernicious predicament.  It's primarily a historic city, so its main industry is tourism.  However, it's so close to Madrid that most people who tour Spain book their rooms in Madrid and only visit Toledo during the day (which, incidentally, is exactly what we did).  This means that Toledo has a lot of empty hotel rooms come nightfall, which is a bit of a downer for the tourist industry.  So, if you're travelling Spain, have some pity on poor Toledo and spend the night there.  Also, it's generally a bit cheaper to stay in Toledo anyhow, so there you have it.

One of the first things that will stick out if you visit Toledo is that there are a lot of swords (hopefully they won't be sticking out of you).  It's a bit hard to see in this picture because the sun is reflecting off the display window, but this should give you a decent idea.  Also, imagine that every third store or so has a display window like this one:

I have a feeling you'd be quite happy here, Josh Gregory.

Apparently, Toledo is famous for its steel and has been since the Middle Ages.  In fact, they made some of the models for the Lord of the Rings swords here.  And of course, you can get a replica of just about any Lord of the Rings weapon that you want (have fun getting it through customs, though :^).  One of the shop windows even had a life-sized version of that huge helmet the Witch-King of Angmar wears, which would make for an absolutely killer Halloween costume.

Another building that stuck out to me personally was this cafeteria:

Sí, es un búho.

About this picture, I only have one thing to say: "El Búho siempre está mirándote."

Bricks and Stones: Architecture in Toledo

Today was the first day of "class" (we didn't actually have class).  Today's activity was a field trip to the city of Toledo (not the one in Ohio) to look at some of the historic architecture, so I have quite a few excellent pictures of some of the famous buildings.  But first, a picture of the city:

Definitely not Ohio.

This panoramic view was our first stop before entering the city.  It's kind of hard to see individual buildings, but the large spire just left of center belongs to the main cathedral of Toledo (which we visited) and the fortress-looking thing on the right is, well, a fortress called the "Alcazar" (which we did not visit).  Here it is a little closer up:

This is the place we didn't visit.

Below is a picture of one of the gates in the city wall.  This one is one of the older gates and it is one of the oldest examples of a uniquely Spanish style of architecture called mudéjar.  

A very old gate, indeed.

Mudéjar is a mixture of Spanish-style buildings with a distinctly Arabian flair.  When the Spanish Catholics came back into power, they decided to build new walls, gates, churches, etc. but the moors did most of the construction work.  So you'd get buildings that were part stone (very European) and part brick (since they don't have lots of huge stones lying around in the Arabian desert).  Or, like in the picture above, a gate with a combination of square European corners and rounded Arabian arches.  You also get buildings with strange-sounding titles like "The Mosque of Christ the Light," or "The Synagogue of Saint Mary the White," which were re-christened, if you will, after the city changed hands for the last time.  Speaking of which, here's a picture I took inside the synagogue:

If by "synagogue," you mean "Catholic church converted into a museum..."

And while we're on the subject of Spanish Catholic churches, let's re-visit that cathedral I mentioned earlier.

I took the first one from street level during the morning, when it was cloudy.  The second one was taken from the top tower of yet another cathedral in the afternoon, when it was sunny.  But how about we take a quick peek inside?

I'm afraid the picture doesn't quite do it justice...

The other two churches we visited were a Jesuit church (the name escapes me) and the church of San Juan de la Rey.  The Jesuit church had two large towers that we climbed, which is where I got my aerial view of the main Cathedral.  It's also where I got these two pictures:

I think my favorite place, however, was San Juan de la Rey.  Here's an interior garden, another example of Arabian influence on the mudéjar architecture.

Surprisingly green, given the time of year.

And a tower that overlooks the garden:

"All along the watchtower..."

The interesting thing about San Juan is that it was built shortly after the marriage between Ferdinand and Isabella, which united all of Spain into the country that we know today.  There's lots of neat symbolism hidden throughout the building, like the picture below, which is from a carving on one of the ceilings:

I guess it's kind of an inside joke...

In case you can't see it very clearly, the pictures in the middle alternate between a fasces (a lot of small sticks) and a yoke (one large stick).  The fasces were a symbol of authority in the Roman empire which signify the strength of being united (see: Ecclesiastes 4:12).  The yoke symbolizes two people striving toward a common goal (see: 2 Corinthians 6:14).  These images are surrounded by alternating letters: "F" and "Y".  Bet you'll never guess whose names (in Old Spanish) begin with "F" and "Y."  Also, anyone want to take a stab at what letters the Spanish words for "fasces" and "yoke" begin with?  (Hint: they're the same as they are in English.)  Nifty, huh?

Anyway, enough of me geeking out over the minutiae of medieval architecture.  The last picture here is the bridge by which we left the city after a long day of trekking up and down some very steep, narrow, winding roads.

Like a bridge over relatively untroubled waters.

Introduction

Welcome to The Aimless Pilgrim.  This post is an introduction to the blog and, like the introduction of a book, is entirely unnecessary to read since it consists of background information and a certain amount of self-indulgence on the part of its author.

Anyway, if you're still curious, I thought I'd explain the purpose of this particular blog.  The blog's title, "The Aimless Pilgrim," comes from a short story of the same name.  The thrust of the story is that not all pilgrims travel to a fixed destination; some people are pilgrims simply because they know that the place they're in now isn't the place where they belong.  To me, it's an analogy of the way Christians are supposed to live.  We may not know where on earth we're going to end up, but we do know that the earth isn't our home.  We're pilgrims on our way to the Celestial City, enjoying and enduring what the world has to offer, but never becoming overly satisfied or depressed by what we see along the way.  I hope to capture that feeling with this blog.

In a more immediate sense, this blog is also a travel journal of sorts.  I'm currently studying abroad for a semester in Madrid, Spain.  Since I'm notoriously bad at keeping in touch with people, I figured I'd start up a blog to keep everybody back home posted (pun acknowledged, but not intended) on what I'm up to.  Let's see how it turns out, shall we?