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Published: October 6th 2006
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I’ve decided - against my better judgment, it should be noted - to take a day-trip to Toledo. Not that I have anything against the so-called “City of Three Cultures,” endlessly lauded in guide books for its singular heritage of Christian, Jewish and Muslim mores (to paraphrase). But I’ve spent most of the past few weeks sneering at those ambitious souls who - belched from the tour buses with their guidebooks and practical footwear - try to cover three days’ worth of sights in one frantic afternoon. Worse still, Toledo is Spain’s most infamous tourist trap, its narrow, medieval streets crammed with those who - like yours truly - are making the hour-long trip from Madrid.
It’s not hard to gauge where I stand. On the bus Spanish seems to be the only language in short supply. Two Belgian girls - Erasmus students in Madrid - are flashing the same guidebook across the aisle. A young Japanese kid in slick, high-end jeans is dozing on my shoulder. Up ahead, the Oakleys and goatees are a dead give-away that America is well-represented onboard.
There’s a determined air as we get off the bus and begin the uphill
march to the city walls. I fall in with a pair of young travelers staying at the same hostel in Madrid. I get the feeling that Gordon - a tall, bearded Aussie - shares my discomfort at being lumped in with the rest of the day-trippers. A laid-back med student heading to Africa by month’s end, he hardly strikes me as the type to stay up nights, planning his itinerary. He’s not entirely sure which sights in Toledo are worth seeing; you almost suspect he came to the city because he got on the wrong bus in Madrid. He walks along at an aimless pace, stopping to give a soft, happy exclamation when an impressive church façade suddenly rears up before us.
Tomoko’s done her homework: she’s clutching a small sheaf of papers she’s photocopied from a popular Japanese guidebook. After a summer studying drawing in Florence, she’s come to Spain for a last week of adventure. She’s spent the past four years getting a degree from Arizona State; by week’s end she’ll be back in Tokyo, facing the grim job prospects for a 32-year-old graduate with a B.A. in fine arts and virtually no C.V. Now and
then she scrunches her face up over her map - which, it should be said, hardly does Toledo’s tangled streets any justice. Despite the fact that we’re armed with my guidebook, too, we spend the better part of the afternoon backtracking down the same streets, looking puzzled and, after awhile, a bit grouchy.
Toledo disappoints me. Even on a mid-week visit in October, its streets are stuffed with a couple of Times Square’s worth of tourists. There are packs plodding up and down the hills, crowding the plazas and pointing their camcorders at each other. Young girls are circling us with clipboards, collecting money for some dubious charity based in Budapest. Everything seems to be for sale. The souvenir shops have taken up every last nook and cranny in town, selling ceramics and t-shirts and stuffed bulls and suits of armor made from Toledo’s famous steel. There are little figurines of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza on display in every window, and as cute as the little guys seemed the first dozen times around, I’m beginning to think the whole Cervantes thing in this town is going a bit too far.
The heat picks up late
in the afternoon. We stop for coffee as the city snoozes through its siesta. Tomoko worries about adjusting to life in Tokyo for the first time in years. Gordon has plans to look into Doctors Without Borders while he’s in Africa. It has a strong effect on me, this chance encounter of three souls at three very different points in their lives. Flies are buzzing and whirring in the air above us. I kick off my flip-flops to feel the warm pavement beneath my feet.
We head to the cathedral late in the day, misled by a certain guidebook’s suggestion that it’s free after 4pm. It’s not, and we’re forced to do some rigorous arithmetic to decide whether €6 will break the day’s budget. Eventually, I decide that passing on the most important cathedral in Catholic Spain for the sake of a few bucks would be silly; Tomoko agrees. Gordon - making anxious, pained faces as he studies the postcard rack - decides to wait for us in the Plaza Mayor. Afterward, we find him sitting in the cathedral’s long shadow, watching a group of boys play a pick-up game of football. At half-past six, the town’s started
to reclaim itself. Most of the tourists have already trudged back to their buses. Birds are chattering in the trees above us, making excited little trills to have the city to themselves again. For the first time all day Toledo grips me, and I decide that in the weeks ahead, I’ll remember the city as I left it, casting an early-evening spell.
After a few days of sobriety, the girls want to take me out. Ana - a sweet, boisterous girl from Leon - has been subletting a room with Kay and Bianca since the summer. A student at one of the local universities, she spends most of her afternoons padding around in PJ’s and watching astonishing amounts of television. On Thursday she ropes us into an Erasmus party - a drunken orgy of international students at a club in the heart of Madrid. When we show up at half-past one there’s a line snaking around the corner, the grumbling of complaints sounding like a very bad afternoon on the floor of the General Assembly.
If there’s a sure-fire place to forget the dizzying highs of mankind - that enigmatic creature who’s given us
The Inferno,
Guernica,
Tosca and
Iron Chef - it would be the European
discoteca. Here you can find urgent reminders that free drink tickets and bad house music are a lethal combination. There are spastic jerks and twists on the dance floor that shouldn’t have made it through customs; men make their way across the room with quick pelvic thrusts. Behind me two Italians are dancing in synch, snapping their necks and doing these strange little pogo hops. It dawns on me in a terrible, blinding flash that they think this looks really cool.
Still, the state of international relations is encouraging. I watch the English hit on the Spanish, and the Brazilians hit on the Americans, and the Italians hit on everything in sight. People are hooking up on the dance floor at unflattering angles, or making ugly sucking noises up against the wall. The language barrier is hardly an issue on Erasmus night, when the universal
idioma is spoken with sweaty, groping eloquence. By four, packs of disgruntled guys are circling the place, looking for that one drunk girl with low self-esteem who can salvage their night.
As they do the world over.
By
five we’re having
churros con chocolate at San Ginés - a late-night ritual that’s distinctly
madrileño. Deep-fried dough covered in rich, piping chocolate is hardly the most sensible night-cap, but you can tell from the hordes who crowd shoulder-to-shoulder to get into the place that these guys are onto something.
We wander the streets at half-past five, looking for another drink. Kay and Bianca are tipsy and nostalgic walking through their old
barrio. Most of their favorite places are closed: even in Madrid, there’s a time to sleep. We walk along Gran Via, where the homeless are curled up under blankets in the doorsteps, and drunk kids are wobbling their way down the street. It’s impossible to catch a cab in this city at 6am, but we luck out; we stumble into the back seat; and we’re snoozing against each other’s shoulders as the cab pulls in front of the house.
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Mina Forson
non-member comment
Nice place
Your info has helped me alot