Day 61: Granada the City

The next day I awoke not having quite enough time to go have breakfast. I made straight away for the bus station but did meander a little bit to see a little more of Córdoba before leaving it (hopefully not forever).

The view from my hostel's balcony:


I made it to the bus station and found that apparently paypal hadn't correctly processed my payment for the ticket; luckily there were still spaces on the bus and I got one. I had about 15 minutes to kill so I stopped by a breakfast bar in the bus station and got those old staples we now know and love, pan con tomate and café con leche.

Departing on the bus, we headed southeast to the magical land of Granada. The countryside of Andalusia (Andalucía) is absolutely amazing: beautiful greenery, at times wooded, and consists mostly of the occasional mountain or cliff surrounded by an ocean of olive tree plantations:


And then the towns are for some reason all painted completely white:

And on the roughly 2 1/2 hour trip, I passed at least 4 castles: on cliffs overlooking the plains or perched upon narrow mountain passes; this very area was the last foothold of Arabs in Western Europe and they defended it as well as they could for years, and the Christians fortified their gains as they progressed, leaving Southern Spain a thoroughly castle-filled land.

Finally arriving in Granada I made my way to the Albaicín, also spelled Albayzin (which, probably intentionall, has a more Moorish look to it), the Granadin all-white neighborhood filled with small, winding cobblestone streets. Actually correct that - most of the streets and walkways in the entire city are cobblestone, arranged in almost mosaic patterns. This isn't a great picture but if gives you an idea of the average street:


Here's the Albaicín:



And as I climbed to the top of it, I was greeted with these magnificent views of the city:


I headed back down and found my hostel, The White Nest, where I gladly deposited my backpack and rested up for a little while, having planned to meet fellow interns Dylan and Cassandra at some point. I texted them and we finally met, and we all went up the Sacromonte, a nearby hill the houses the Gypsy population of Granada. At the top we saw some of the Gypsy caves (yes, you read that correctly: Gypsy caves) and I felt disturbingly like I was in the Shire.

We looked around, decided not to go into the Gypsy museum area, and headed back down through the Albaicín, when the sunset happened to amazingly illuminate the Granadin plains below:

The building up on the cliff is the Alhambra, which I will explain in the next posting.


Because they hadn't gotten their tickets yet, Dylan headed off to go wait in line at the Alhambra (which I will explain in the next post) and Cassandra and I killed some time by going to buy ingredients for Gimlets, and then we stopped by another Arabic place, this time a pastry-and-lemonade spot that was really good. Cassandra headed off to go meet Dylan in line at the Alhambra and I went back to the hostel where I joined up with a Tapas tour. About 10 or so people from the hostel got together and, free of charge, a tour guide showed us to some of the better tapas places in the city. I ended up sitting with three girls: One from Ireland, one from the UK, and one from Zimbabwe, and we talked a lot about Ireland/UK/US/Zimbabwe similarities and differences.

The tapas were: first, a sort of beef and gravy with toasty-cracker things, second, little sandwiches (i forget if they were chicken or pork) and then at the next bar we got an entire tray of various things including a veggie-tortilla.

After this I left and met up with Dylan and Cassandra who had finished with their nocturnal stint at the Alhambra, we met up in their hostel/hotel room and went to the hotel balcony to share a few drinks, before we all turned in so that we could go to the Alhambra fairly early the next day.

Day 60: Córdoba

At 1 AM, I got on the bus to Córdoba. Intending to sleep, I reclined my chair, made a makeshift pillow out of my jacket, and closed my eyes. But as the bus pulled away and everyone turned off their overhead lights, I noticed that one solitary light was on: the one directly in front of me, for a lady was reading a book. Of all the seats in the entire bus, I had to get the one right behind someone who wanted to read. I tried to get past it though, and put my jacket over my eyes, but then an animal-like squeal pierced the air: a baby was playing with some guy (a peekaboo-type game) and every ten seconds, the kid would issue a demonic sound like the mating call of a dying pig/bird hybrid. The light combined with the ungodly banshee of a baby kept me from getting really any sleep at all on the four-hour ride, and I arrived at around 5:30 AM in Córdoba in an annoyed and exhausted daze.

One step in the cold night air shook the daze right off of me, though. I walked around for several minutes trying to get my bearings, and at last found one of the main thoroughfares of the town. I proceeded down it towards the heart of the city, still not sure what I would do to occupy my time before my hostel check-in opened at noon. I weaved in and out of side streets looking for shortcuts to the heart of the city but kept ending up back on the same main road; whether it was the dark or the sleepiness, something had crippled my sense of direction. Regardless I finally made my way to a major landmark: the river. Having in mind a vague plan to take a picture of the city at dawn, I proceeded towards the Roman bridge that I knew stood nearby. I passed an eerie I-didn't-know-what:
Some sort of church perhaps? The blue light was eerie but it made for a very interesting photo.

So I kept walking, finally finding the Roman bridge, which I proceeded to stare at in awe and wonder at the fact that it had spanned this river for roughly two millennia:

I took a photo of the heart of the city once just before dawn:



The eastern sky was thoroughly red and yellow at this time, and I assumed that any minute the sun would creep up and illuminate everything in a wonderful orange. So I waited...

And continued waiting...

And after about 30 minutes of standing around in the twilight chill, I finally saw the sign: "Sunrise cancelled Nov 11." Actually, no, the sun finally came up, allowing me to take the pictures I was waiting for:

This one looking across the Roman bridge:

I headed across into the heart of the city:
And walked alongside what I now recognized as the Great Mosque, which is absolutely enormous: it takes more than a minute at an adult's pace to walk from one side to the other, and if you think about how far you can actually walk in over a minute, and realize that this building was built about a thousand years ago, you'll realize the impressiveness of it:
Normally there's a E8 entrance fee, but for some reason when I went in I didn't get charged anything. The mosque was built and expanded from the 700s into the 900s, and when the Catholic monarchs reconquered it in the 1200s they wanted to demolish it. The townspeople were horrified at the idea and considering that Córdoba was the largest city in Europe (and arguably the largest city in the world) at the time, the kings didn't exactly want to anger its entire population. Instead, they settled for putting a cathedral in the middle of the mosque. The resulting blend of architectural and religious themes is strange but powerful to behold:







After leaving the Mosque I headed over to a breakfast place I had read about in a guidebook (courtesy of Andrew Nguyen). It looked very close on my map, but after walking several minutes I realized that the same street will change names every 30 feet or so when it takes a slight turn or something like that. As a result, this is the time when I figured out that navigation in Córdoba was going to be extremely difficult. I ultimately found the place and ordered what they were serving: (I forget if I've already explained this but) "pan con tomate" or "bread with tomato", a typical Spanish breakfast dish. It's a toasted baguette-ish piece of bread, drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with salt, then covered with a garlicky tomato sauce (fresh - more like salsa than marinara). With that and a cup of cafe con leche I was set, and it cost a low, low E1.60, or about $2. You can't beat that with a stick.

Also about this time I realized something terrible. When packing the night before, I had waffled back and forth about whether to bring my computer and ultimately decided that lugging around another 5 pounds for hours was not in my best physical interest, so I left it and took out all my related electronics from my backpack. Luckily, I remembered to bring my camera battery charger; unluckily, I forgot my European-US electrical outlet converter, without which I would be unable to charge my camera batteries. I headed to the only place I could think of to find a replacement - El Corte Ingles, which is, after all, as omnipresent as Wal Mart is in the US. Halfway there, though, I ran into this:


It's a Roman temple built in the first century during the reign of the emperor Claudius.

Finally I found some converters and bought one out of sheer necessity, stowing it in my backpack for when I finally arrived at my hostel.

Heading back toward the city center I passed by a remarkably well-preserved Roman mausoleum:

Passed by the ruins of a Roman amphitheater:

On which were happily playing some snails.

I saw the old city wall:

And finally made it to a familiar site, Alcázar de los Reyes:


"Familiar" why? Well, the last time I saw that tower it was lit up with a blue light if you recall.








After the Alcázar, I finally headed to my hostel, got my room, and unloaded my stuff, but I encountered a problem. On attempting to plug my camera battery charger into the converter, I discovered that the converter had a little rim on it which allowed me to plug in normal power cords, but for something like a charger that has to be flush against the plug, it wouldn't fit. What ensued was a roughly hour-long struggle to cut the plastic rim off of the charger with a butter knife I borrowed from the hostel dining room, which ended up cutting me once and simply wearing out my hands from all the grabbing and wrenching and cutting to the point that I almost had blisters. Ultimately I gave up and went to the front desk, asked for help, and the guy went to get a saw and pliers and finally cut it off for me. The rim thing, not my hand.

After that I headed to another place I had heard about from Andrew Nguyen's guidebook, a little Arabic tearoom called Sala de Té (Tearoom). I entered, asked for a specialty of the house and a little plate of pastry-treats, and was presented a few minutes later with a tiny teapot full of a mint-eque tea, alongside a plate that was an assortment of little flaky Arabic pastries, dried apricots and plums, and tiny cookies, all for about E3 or $4. I ate this and headed back to the hostel for a moment to decide what to do next, and (this happened to me far too often) I thought that it was about 7:00PM, but was told that it was only about 4:00. Maybe the lack of sleep threw me off, I'm not quite sure. I was also getting to the point where, thought I really liked that I had the day to myself, I would now like some friends to go eat or go to a bar with. Regardless, I decided to head out and explore a little more.

Heading back over near the Roman bridge, I took a few more pictures, and - wait...wait a minute. It can't be.

I headed down the little rampart down to the bridge. "There's no way it is" insisted one part of my brain; "you only saw from the back, it could have been anyone." But just as I was fully doubting myself, BAM, I was face-to-face with Kevin, the intern from commercial services. We halfway circled each other in disbelief, exchanging a flurry of "no way what are you doing here!"s before deciding to split up for a while and then meet up for dinner and all that good stuff. He wanted to see the Mosque which I had already seen so I decided to hit up the Archeological Museum:



And after that we went to a couple of tapas places and had some good food, drinks and conversation, and I retired to my hostel room to die. I later looked up my path for the day on google maps and estimate that I walked more than 12 miles. And that's on essentially no sleep and carrying a ~15 pound backpack for half of it.

Well, time to do the same thing the next day in Granada!

Days Fifty-Six through Fifty-Nine

I'm going to summarize this entire week very briefly, because in the upcoming weekend I took a three-day trip to Andalusia, the southernmost region of Spain, and the wonders I saw there defy anything I have seen thus far. Nevertheless I must highlight a wonderful day I had this week:

Wednesday

Wednesday was a Spanish national holiday, and thus a day off at the Embassy. The Spanish day of "La Virgen de Almudena" celebrates the icon of the Virgin Mary who is the patron of Madrid. According to the legend, a medieval Spanish knight prayed for a sign in the recently-reconquered-from-the-Muslims city of Madrid, and a stone wall crumbled before him, revealing a statue of the Virgin Mary, and this particular sign of Mary became the patron of the city.

On this day I didn't really have any Almudena-related festivities to partake in myself, but I did have some stuff planned: first, I headed to Retiro to get some shots of the now-colorful trees:


After the park I headed to another meeting of the language exchange, this time absent teacher-Ana but still included the the other two, other-Ana and Alberto. This time we went to a coffee place and talked about things somewhat all related to geography, weather, and natural disasters. We discussed how Oklahoma already had tornados but now also had terremotos in the past month; Spain sometimes gets tornados but certainly not as strong as Oklahoma's.

Nothing much else to exciting happened this week except that Friday was Veteran's day, which meant I got a day off, which meant I was heading to Andalucía. After severe trouble booking all my stuff, I finally got my tickets and hostels, and so staying up, I waited on Thursday night for my bus to depart at 1:00 AM. Alone and not knowing what vast wonders awaited me, I braced for a weekend of discovery. And did I ever find it.

Days fifty-four and fifty five

Saturday

Our supervisor and office-mate Eric invited the political section to his house for dinner, so Romina, Zahra and I went together as did Elaine, the political counselor (which means the section head). Eric now lives in the suburbs several miles from the embassy, and passed the range of the metro, so he graciously offered to drive us to his house from the embassy as he was already working there all day anyway (on a Saturday no less!).

Eric's house was amazing, decked out in all the accoutrements he had acquired through his years of travel, as well as some lovely furniture he acquired in Nicaragua (?).

And the meal was quite possibly the best I've had in Spain thus far. Eric's wife, who happens to be from Luxembourg, is a fantastic cook, and made the following, all delectable:

• Ham, tomato and cheese skewers
• chicken-stuffed pastry pockets
• cheese-stuffed fried peppers
• spicy-tomatoey chicken stuff
• beef and prunes
• mashed potatoes
• chocolate cake
• apple pie

And the apple pie was some of the best I've ever had - very tart and very appley.

Sunday

Sunday led me to the nearby park of Casa de Campo. Madrid has a lot of nice parks, and while Retiro was huge (see my first week of posts), Casa de Campo puts it to shame, stretching nearly the full north-south length of the city, and encompassing a zoo, an amusement park, and a lake - all within its southernmost quarter. See for yourselves:



There were also these annoying little blue-and-black-and-white birds that I have begun referring to in my head as anticamera birds, because they stand completely still - as long as I'm moving. Once I stop, to take a picture of one for instance, they fly away. I have, as a result, yet to take a good shot of a single one.

Days Forty-nine through Fifty-three

Monday

There is a second group of interns in Commercial Services, another branch of the government with an office outside the embassy. One of the interns there, Kevin, invited us to an event on Monday night (halloween) at a place called The Gin Room. I met up with Kevin early and we spent twenty minutes or so trying to find the place, but eventually Zahra, Abbey and Carolyn showed up as well. The bar was a high-end, classy place which specialized in Gin and Tonics, and the first one that night was free: fancy gin, fancy tonic, and a slice of apple made for a light but delicious and finely flavored drink that I would have paid several dollars for, but it being free made it even better.

After leaving, Carolyn peeled off back home and the four of us left went to look for some bar or club having a Halloween party. We eventually found one, and it was dark and creepy in a very smooth sort of way that's hard to describe. We got free drinks then headed home way too late as usual.

Tuesday

Tuesday was Día de todos los Santos: All Saints' Day, or as you may know it, All Hallow's Day, (As in "All Hallows' Eve", the origin of the condensed phrase Halloween. (Hallows' Evening -> Hallow E'n -> Halloween); for some reason Catholics celebrate the day itself whereas in America we came to celebrate the evening before.

Also, All Saints' Day being a Spanish holiday, we got off work. I used it (wisely, I think) to lay around and rest up.)

Wednesday

On Wednesday arose a very unique opportunity, and one which I need to provide some background for.

One of the things I do at the embassy is help my officemate/supervisor with something called Blue Lantern, which is a US program for monitoring the end use of US weapons technology. What do I mean by that? I mean that when a foreign weapons dealer (like at a gun shop or anything like that) wants to import US-made weapons or equipment, Blue Lantern officers have to go out from the embassy to verify that the business is legitimate and not a front for drug criminals or terrorists or what-have-you.

I won't reveal the details, but on this particular day, my supervisor and I had to go to a tiny suburb of Madrid, go to the house where a man and his wife operated an online ammo and equipment business, and my supervisor asked them all sorts of questions about the business, who was going to be buying the items in question, etc. It seems intimidating and he knew that; the first thing he said on walking in was "qué miedo, hay hombres en trajes que entran a vuestra casa," "how scary, there are men in suits entering your home" at which everyone had a good laugh, and he proceeded to tell them how everything was standard procedure and not to be nervous or anything.

The meeting lasted for about an hour, and we headed back, I with a very odd experience under my belt.

Thursday

The next day brought another strange meeting, this time with PNsD: Programa Nacional sobre Drogas: National Program on Drugs. We went to their office, which happened to be in the same building as CICO, and sat down at a table with three representatives: a middle-aged man who spoke very clearly and intelligibly, a similarly-aged woman who spoke with a very prominent lisp, and a 70ish-year-old man who mumbled completely unintelligibly. The meeting took way too long (I think we budgeted about an hour and a half and it took about two and a half) but afterwards we went to eat at a local cafe place, where at one point I fumbled with my wallet while attempting to pay. I thought nothing of it at the time.

To my horror, I discovered later that evening as I was about to board the metro that I did not have my monthly metro pass that I had just bought the previous day. Assuming it to be forever lost but coming to the realization that I had probably dropped it when fumbling my wallet at lunch, I headed back to the cafe, flagged down the first waiter I could find and asked them if someone had dropped a metro pass. She looked in the lost-and-found cabinet for a torturously long 15 seconds and finally popped out; "aquí está!" she said, "here it is!" My fears of having to spend another month buying the 10x passes dissolved away and my month was salvaged.

Friday

On Friday, Zahra and I went to a meeting with Zahra's Spanish teacher at the Embassy, Ana, along with Ana's brother and his coworker. The event was a so-called language exchange: Ana was the "queen", as she is the actual language instructor; Zahra and I were the English Speakers there to learn Spanish, and the other two, Alberto and another Ana, were the Spanish speakers there to learn English. We talked for three hours about all sorts of things: language and culture, jobs, history, etc. - but it was all unique because we did it all with a distinct intention of conversing bilingually and learning each others' language.

After the language exchange Zahra and I went with Zahra to go meet Abbey's boyfriend Alex who was in town for the week. We spent the evening playing Risk which was an awesomely fun little detour back to American culture for evening.

Day Forty-Seven and Forty-Eight: The Halloween Night on the Town

Meet Zahra, Abbey, and Abbey's friend from London, eat mexican food, Abbey's afwul drink, delicious chilaquiles, drag-cabaret, wok to walk, meet other random group of people, carry around food for four hours as we go to another club, lots of free drinks on the house because that one guy knew the owner, then finally ate and went home. Or I waited outside the metro station for "a good minute" because I got confused on the time change.

As usual, I went to Abbey and Zahra's place, but this time we were joined by Zahra's London friend Amit. Our first stop was a Mexican restaurant, and there I found on the menu something I had not had since Mexico: chilaquiles, which are essentially Nachos smothered in a sauce (in this case green chili-chicken sauce) and topped with cheese and sour cream, the nachos becoming slight soft. My only wish is that I had found them sooner. Abbey got a drink called a "Vampiro" because she was dressed as a vampire and found it fitting, but on trying it she said it tasted like "sprite, bloody mary mix and pizza mixed together". I was skeptical of her assessment but upon trying it, she was spot on - it did taste exactly like sprite, bloody mary mix and pizza, plus the tequila base and the sprinkle of hot chilies around the rim. Maybe the description appeals to you all, but it was the worst drink I'd ever had.

After eating we got in our costumes and headed out on the town, first heading to a place that Abbey and Zahra had in mind but that I had no clue about. So we walked in to find a drag queen telling jokes and singing. It was some sort of drag cabaret, and it was when we arrived mostly empty, so we got good seats. We kicked back for a while, listened to the drag queen talk, and after a while s/he noticed us in the back and made mention of our Halloween costumes.

A note about Halloween in Spain: Halloween, as it is celebrated, is an American holiday. It is, however, rapidly becoming popular in Spain. We saw several people out on the streets in costumes, yes, but it's still quite common for someone to say "oh, you're dressed up to celebrate Halloween, that's cool!" implying that there is still definitely a strong sense of novelty and foreignness attached to it. But the darkness of Halloween, the novelty of being able to dress up, etc. are aspects which mesh very well with the Madrid nightlife/party scene, and thus it will definitely hold a secure spot in Spanish culture, though it may end up being a more teen/adult thing than a child-oriented holiday like in the US.

Anyway, after leaving the drag cabaret we were getting pretty hungry again (a few hours had passed since eating, and we hadn't eaten too much at the restaurant) so we went to the awesome Wok to Walk, which is basically a quick-service Mongolian barbeque: pick your items and sauces and then they cook it up for you. Tasty and healthy.

So upon leaving Wok to Walk, we saw some other costumed peoples out on the street and decided to greet them, because we hadn't seen any in quite a while. The guy "leading" this new group seemed to be in the know about places to go around town, and we went to one club for a few minutes then he said he knew the "boss" at another club, and we went there for a couple of hours, him getting us lots of free shots and free drinks until we were too tired, and still very hungry because we had not yet eaten our food and had been carrying it around with us for two hours.

The next day was a day of rest and doing nothing of worth. How relaxing!

Days Forty-two through Forty-Six

This was undoubtedly a work-centric week.

Monday

Monday evening I ended up going to CICO, el Centro de Intelligencia contra el Crimen Organizado - Center for Intelligence against Organized Crime - which is exactly what it sounds like: a police and criminal database center which helps police to track down organized crime. I came with my officemate/supervisor Eric and a couple of DEA guys, and questions in hand we hopped in Rick's (one of the DEA guys) car and headed over in about a 5 minute drive from the Embassy. Rick ended up parking up on the curb as we made our very ceremonious entrance just as it started to rain (which, compared to the drought for my entire first month here, I was grateful for). The police guards welcomed us inside and we all four squeezed in about a 3'x3' elevator, less than comfortably. The CICO building was nice but not overly fancy, but we met up with our contacts in the conference room which was fairly fancy. One of our two contacts spoke very explicitly and clearly - the other, who was likely from Andalucía (the southern region of Spain) spoke with an accent best summarized as "yeah, I'm going to drop the last third of my words. I dare you to follow what I'm saying," and I had a hard time following through on that dare. Nevertheless we got some very valuable information on the drug situation in Spain which I will be more than happy to direct you to when my finished report becomes freely available on the US government website next Spring.

Tuesday

Another early night home and early night to bed.

Wednesday

Over to Abbey and Zahra's to cook dinner and hang out, but of course have to leave at a reasonable hour because it's a weekday. I cooked spaghetti-stuff in the kitchen while they kept yelling at me to hurry up.

Thursday

Thursday there was a "brown bag lunch" which means everyone gets their own lunch and then brings it to a meeting. This one was on foreign service and life in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, collectively referred to as API. The crux of the discussion was over how API service is completely different from any other aspect of the foreign service and the embassies there are completely different from any other embassies in the world. Service there was described as borderline Peace Corps - working out in "Provincial reconstruction teams" working with locals in, basically, rebuilding their country - putting in infrastructure or agriculture improvements, teaching, etc. But then there's the other type of position there where you're in the giant war rooms with the generals, meeting the heads of the Iraqi army on a daily basis, and helping make decisions that are going to affect the fate of an entire country for generations to come.

Either option sounds alluring to me. Probably deceptively so.

After work, Matt, a member of the management section at the embassy but also one of the people talking at the Brown Bag luncheon, invited some of the interns out for a drink and only Dylan and I decided to come. We headed to a nearby Irish pub (they're strangely everywhere here, and strangely all populated by actual Irish bartenders) and got a few beers, and at one point we were joined at the bar by a woman who happened to be from Nebraska, who sold her bar in Omaha to travel around the world and write a book about whiskey. She was also very drunk (having been drinking from her own flask in addition to her beer) and spilled half her drink all over Matt's suit. Lucky Matt.

After Matt left Dylan and I talked for a while, he being probably the last intern I wasn't well acquainted with. Pretty decent guy.

Friday

The embassy Halloween party was Friday night, and it was actually quite nice. Lacking really any costume whatsoever, I made some last-minute Macguyver moves: I made an origami gun and covered it with the gold foil wrapper from a candy bar, and took a regular black tie and somehow managed to tie it into a bow tie (don't ask, but it was impressive). Slicking my hair over, with suit, white shirt, bow tie and golden gun, I was a last minute James Bond.

Unfortunately the Marine bar didn't serve vodka martinis, nor did they even have martini glasses, and that upset me a lot because I was banking on that being an integral part of my costume, but everything worked out and I just ended up walking around with a wine glass instead of a martini glass.

It was a karaoke party, and I was roped into singing with the rest of the political section and I actually did a decent job with the US Embassy Political Section's choice, "Back in the USSR". Ah the irony!