At Home in Toledo

What’s most impressive about Toledo is that, even in this touristy area of shiny stores and restaurants, there is still a sense that people are living here. In so many historical places you feel like you’re in a special room, cut off from everyday life- even if it’s an entire section of a city! You can read the signs and learn about what the place was like when people did live there, but now it’s nothing more than a cold wall with sign in front of it and nothing behind it. Walking around these preserved sites is like taking a tour of a heart that isn’t beating. There hasn’t been a pulse there in a hundred years. The only “life” in these places is the steady flow of foreigners in one door and out the other.

But Toledo is different. Not only is there life here, but it seems to be coiled in upon itself so that it all fits in the maze of streets. The shops and restaurants are there in abundance, yes, but among these is something else. As you get lost in the tunnel-like streets and alleys (as I did) you don’t feel like you’re in some Disney-style artificial attraction. You’re doing your souvenir shopping and passing people who are on their way home from work or school. You feel like you’re in somebody’s home.

There is one image in my head that, for some reason, drives this feeling home for me. I turned a corner and saw a woman sitting in here car in front of a music school, waiting for her son to finish his lessons. She was just waiting in the car, reading a book while her son murdered some member of the brass family. I don’t know why a person waiting should make the city feel more alive to me, but it did. Maybe it was the contrast between the woman and me. I had just gotten off a train and was pining to explore every corner of the city before I got back on that train later that night. Everything was exciting and interesting to me, and here she was just sitting there, reading her book. I could have been in her living room. I guess in a way I felt like I was.

Son of Random Thoughts

Trivial things I miss about the U.S. - good pizza, American cussing, personal space when having a conversation, good beer.

Trivial things I'll miss about Spain- good ham, great cheese, good wine, Spanish game shows (or, as I refer to them, “Let’s try to figure out what the hell is going on here.”), Spanish titles for American movies/TV shows (Knight Rider = Coche Fantastico “Fantastic Car,” House = El Cojo “The Man with the Limp”), the Metro, horchata.

I think too much, and I’m okay with that. It’s better than the alternative.

There are more than 40 million people in living in Spain. Am I the only one who, at this moment, is listening to "Uptown Girl" by Billy Joel? More than likely.

If I were to wait tables in Spain, I’d be the best waiter in the country.

I’d also be the most overworked, and probably the poorest.

It is better to do something and learn than to do nothing and wonder.

I’m still young, which doesn’t make any sense because as far as I’m concerned I’m the oldest I’ve ever been.