Toledo

It was inevitable that eventually I would spend a day in Toledo, because every visitor to Madrid does. Eventually the monotony of the Madrid lifestyle and cityscape gets oppresive and it's nice to try something a little different. Particularly since it was raining in Madrid all weekend.

Toledo was once a major city of the Spanish empire, famous for its steel production. But when the national capital was established in Madrid, Toledo, which is only forty kilometres away, became a little redundant and stopped developing. Consequently, the medieval style Moorish influenced city remains just as it was the day it became governmentally irrelevant.

Just as it was, that is, apart from the myriad of tourist shops selling Toledonian steel fencing rapiers, samurai swords (?) letter openers and figurines of Don Quixote. Some of the medieval themed chess sets looked amazing, but would have been a bit difficult to carry back to Australia in a back pack.

If you can see past the kitsch souvenir shops and around the noisy groups of American tourists, the city itself is still really nice. It’s propped on top of a hill, surrounded by stone walls which are still intact. Inside the walls is a labyrinth of narrow cobbled streets, dotted with bars, souvenir shops, historical plazas and the occasional McDonalds.

The Toledo cathedral is a really impressive building viewed from the outside. Supposedly it’s magnificent when viewed from the inside (I checked out some post cards which suggest this is probably true) but it cost seven euros just to get in the door, so we kept on moving.

Taken altogether, Toledo was a nice place to spend a day, but there wouldn’t be much to do there for any longer than that. It was a nice change to get out of Madrid, and I would look pretty stupid if I went home having spent six months in Madrid and never visited Toledo.

Far from home




Garry with 2 Rs

San Isidro's Bane

Last weekend was the St. Isidro festival. Isidro is the patron saint of Madrid, and the locals like to honour his memory by dressing oddl… I mean … traditionally and putting on various cultural performances in the city.

Normally I can link the saints’ names with their Anglicised equivalents, like San Pedro (St. Peter) San Paulo (St. Paul) and Santa Kieda (St. Kilda). The most obscure one I’ve come across is Santiago, which is the Spanish derivative of St. James (more to come on that later, potentially). Something obviously went wrong in the English rendering of that one.

The closest English equivalent to Isidro I could come up with was Isildur. I’m not prepared to claim that it’s a direct cognate, just a possible conceptual link. Wikipedia suggests that actually Isidro is a form of the name Isidore, but I’ve discounted that because that’s obviously not a real name. Who ever heard of someone called Isidore?

Anyway, the celebration is a week long cultural festival. The only events I really had any access to were the Friday traditional festival of wandering around in strange clothes, and a public musical theatre number in the main city square on the Saturday night.

I came across a group of strange clothes wearers sitting around a table singing a traditional Madrileño song. As usual, I couldn't catch any of the words, but I am reliably informed by the internet that they go something like this:

Ai! laurie lantar lassi sūrinen
inyalemīne rāmar aldaron
inyali ettulielle turme mārien
anduniesse la mīruvōrion
Varda telūmen falmar kīrien
laurealassion ōmar mailinon.
Elentāri Vardan Oiolossëan
Tintallen māli ortelūmenen
arkandavā-le qantamalle tūlier
e falmalillon morne sindanōrie
no mīrinoite kallasilya Valimar.

The musical theatre piece was equally opaque to me. Normally it’s okay if you have no idea what the words are; the whole concept of opera is premised on exactly that principle. However, this wasn’t exactly classical art, and furthermore the female lead couldn’t really sing, which is normally a prerequisite for people making a living from singing. So I bailed on that one pretty early and went to watch some street chess, until they were shut down by the police for creating a public disturbance*. I did catch one particularly stirring soliloquy by the male lead, who took centre stage and boldly proclaimed:

“Miro en os ojos el mismo miedo que robaría mi corazón. Podría viene un día en que el valor de humanidad falte y abandonamos nuestras compañeros y rompamos todas las fianzas de compañerismo. Pero no es hoy día. Una hora de lobos y escudos destruidos cuando la época de humanidad se calla. ¡Pero no es hoy día! ¡Hoy día peleamos! Por todos que aprecias en eso mundo bien, os mando a quedarse en pie. ¡Hombres del Oeste!”

I need to get out more.

Far from home




Garry with 2 Rs

*I feel compelled to point out that, while this entire post is, more or less, complete rubbish, the street chess bit did actually happen, as did the police intervention. And you thought chess players were just geeks and little Asian girls. Hell no! ¡Somos bandidos!

Away in La Manga

I spent last weekend in a resort town in South East Spain called La Manga. It’s a little village close to the south east coast. The closest notable cities are Cartagena and Murcia (the regional capital). It was a bit of a hike from Madrid; I had to take a five hour train ride to Cartagena and then a twenty minute taxi ride, but it was a great place to kick back for a few days once I got there.

I was a bit out of place though. La Manga has the look of one of those southern Spanish villas that’s actually just a retirement village for British billionaires. It’s technically still under Spanish sovereignty, but as far as local culture goes, it belongs to England. And possibly also to the 20th century. Everyone speaks English and all the restaurants sell beef burgers and fish and chips and … whatever other stuff people eat in England. And all the prices are adjusted to suit the local clientele, so it’s not the sort of place a normal person could stay for more than a weekend or so, and not the sort of place you would normally find me at all.

So what the hell was I doing there?

Madrid Cricket Club was hosting a twenty-twenty tournament with a bunch of teams from Europe getting together for a weekend of good old-fashioned British culture, which seems to be what sleepy towns in south-east Spain are all about. And I was there in my freshly purchased MCC whites, ready to represent Madrid along with all the other ex-pats.

There were two other teams from Spain, three teams from England and two teams from the Netherlands. The English teams weren’t such a big deal (as is usually the case with English cricket teams), and actually the teams to watch were the Dutch boys. Amsterdam and The Hague were the strongest teams, since both teams had members who played for the Netherlands, and were fitting the weekend in between preparations for the world cup qualifiers. The English teams, like the Spanish teams, were mainly amateurs looking for a fun weekend in the sunshine.

I ended up playing most of the weekend as 12th man for La Manga CC, who hadn’t quite managed to bring a full team (despite the competition being held in their town) and needed to borrow some Madrid players. I wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that even the team that couldn’t field a full side didn’t want me in their first eleven, so in the end I decided not to make anything of it, and just ran around at deep mid-wicket for a while.

As you might expect my batting was nothing to write home about, and certainly nothing to write a blog entry about, so I won’t.

I did manage to sneak in a couple of overs for Madrid with the ball when we played against La Manga, and took figures of two overs, no maidens, one for six which wasn’t too bad. Especially since the wicket was a Dutch national player from The Hague who had been called in to take my spot (make of that what you will).

Over all Madrid finished fifth, behind the Dutch teams and two of the English teams, but ahead of the other Spaniards and one particularly unfortunate English side.

Far from home




Garry with 2 Rs