'Scuse the long interval. My theory is that writing several days after the fact will make for breezier accounts. Now to put that theory to the test:
Corrido de toros
When the opening group of toreadors (it's a team game, the matador is the captain) first pierced their bull, I felt a strong wave of revulsion. I spent the duration of the next five cycles of fights trying to "appreciate" the finer points of this traditional Spanish event. It's undeniable that it takes a lot of courage and skill to get in the ring with a very angry, very powerful animal and survive. I was impressed with the agility of the toreadors, especially when they would get up on their tip toes in the second part of the fight, taunt the bull, and then sidestep it as they placed barbed flags called banderilleras along its spine. (Forgive the graphic nature of the description, I'm actually sparing you the worst.)
I looked for signs that the crowd truly respected the beasts at the center of the sport. In fact, the matador who undertook the fourth fight was booed for needing to use two different swords to finish his bull. The aficionados don't like the bull to suffer needlessly. That's not to say they don't expect the bull to suffer. The end goal of the dance of the matador and bull is domination, consumated by the death blow.
Bullfighting is not modern; it does not belong to this age. That means that in part it should not be judged by our criteria out of hand (it's not simply about exploiting the bull for profit i.e. cynical capitalist spectacle, it has real, rich meaning for people) and in another sense that it should rightfully die out in the not too distant future. Spaniards under thirty don't attend the fights and are often embarrassed by them. Though I would want it abolished as much as anyone, I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to see it once, or that I regret seeing it.
PS. The photo below is of a statue of a bullfighter saluting the discoveror of penicillin. Before that wonder-medicine the death rate for being gored was extremely high.
Salamanca
The bullfight was two Sundays back. The following Friday myself and four other program-mates took a bus out to the city of Salamanca.
Right off the bat we managed to get a private room in a hostel located INSIDE the plaza mayor (central square), thought to be Spain's most beautiful. Credit goes to Lonely Planet for the tip. We felt like VIPs gazing down on all the citizens from our perch atop a second story balcony.
In brief, Salamanca was lovely. It was more peaceful and less packaged than Madrid. We paid a few Euros to be able to walk the upper stories of the stunning cathedral in the center of town. Some great views, as you can imagine. We also walked by the river (it was a warm autumn day with a slight breeze), crossing a bridge built by the Romans. At night we bought some awful beer on the down low (technically no place should sell after 10 PM but they always do if you press them), distracted ourselves from the taste of said beer by playing some drinking games, hit some cheap shot bars, and danced an hour or so away before sprinting back to our hostel in a drizzle. The five of us had goood chemistry. Everyone stayed laid back and showed enthusiasm for whatever we were doing. So important.
The photo below is of a curious detail in the relief around the cathedral's main door. The structure was built a few centuries back, so why is there what appears to be an astronaut in the mix?? A few other tourists and ourselves pointed it out and marvelled at it. Later I read that the figure was added during renovations in the 1990s, but this is a case where ignorance is a good deal more fun.
Second photo. Who should show up among the ring of busts of local heroes circling the Salamanca plaza mayor but Franco himself! Salamanca has a... complicated history with the now almost universally denounced dictator.
Caminar por la ciudad
The day after we got back, last Sunday, I met up with a girl I worked with over the summer (I was a server at a country club, for those out of the loop) and her friend. I budgeted three hours for eating and walking around but it turned out to be more like five. All the better, and I was proud of myself for not losing focus on being unfocused. The three of us walked up the Eastern edge of Retiro (Madrid's central park, once the king's private hunting grounds) and found a street cafe where we sipped drinks and ate a platter of jamon serrano/ cheese.
We then took a train down to Arguelles, the northwestern barrio I hadn't been to yet. It was a very leisurely stroll past the arch city promoters are trying to make Madrid's symbol (the image of a bear pawing at a strawberry tree, the current icon, doesn't mean much even to locals), along a park where residents were picnicing with their kids, skirting the entry for the teleforico (the tram ride over that part of the city which my friend told me is totally lame). One of the last things we happened upon was really strange: an authentic Egyptian temple, over 2,000 years old, moved to Madrid as a sign of gratitude from Egypt for Spain's intervention in preserving a more important Egyptian temple in Nubia. It was so out of place... but it was dignified all the same. Check out the photo.
PS. My friend/ co-worker, her name is Nina, is working as an English teacher here. She told me a story about how for one lesson plan she drew a venn diagram, one circle titled "Spain," the other, "USA." The students were asked to find common ground between the two nations. Predictably Nina was dictated a long list of brands and TV shows, although the funniest were the faux American things the students assumed to be representative of our country, like a novelty chain called Foster's Hollywood, which serves hellishly bad hamburgers, hot dogs, etc. We should be glad we don't have it back in the States, I'm told.
Eh, I'm losing steam already. Who's up for some bulletins? ... I finally visited the Prado (the most conspicuous omission on my tourist checklist, I live about five minutes from it) during its free hours at the end of the day and it was really very cool- high-ceilinged with lighting adjusted for the mood of each room's paintings... I'll be going back... This week I managed at last to do some of my reading, the classes don't really have deadlines and I wasn't making any of my own prior to now... My aesthetics teacher is a pretentious, sleazy, charming lunatic- he ranted for ten minutes last class about how the "supposedly open" society of Spain would frown on him coming to work dressed as Marie Antoinette (he described the costume in exquisite detail, down to the feathers twined into his bun)... The whole episode was only vaguely related to a lesson plan, the sort of thing he wouldn't allow to constrain him... Today I participated in a mini World Cup (mundialito) among the Erasmus kids... I played for the combined English, US, Dutch, Croatian team (we tried very hard to describe how our countries could be considered a unit, the best I could do was that all of us had been part of the "Coalition of the Willing" during the War in Iraq ground operation) and I was pissed when we lost in the finals to the Iraq-War Haters (a combination of Germany, Italy, Spain, and France)... I may have been an ugly American in the final minutes, I may have told opposing players I knocked over to "get up" when they asked for a foul...
Now a look into the future. I pitched the idea to a few Midd friends (others who go to UCIII, my university) that we go to Valencia this weekend. We'll divide our time seeing the tourist attractions in the daylight and watching my boys (pictured below: they don't know we have a relationship so don't say anything to them), Animal Collective, perform in a music festival at night. Not originally part of the plan: We have no hostel tomorrow night (all booked up) and it's supposed to rain. We hope to either find a hostel, miraculously, or to stay out all night at bars, drink a lot of coffee Sunday morning, and sleep in shifts at the train station until our ride back to Madrid arrives.
I will let you know how this potential disaster turns out. For now, I wish everyone well. Adios.
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