I think one of the worst things about being abroad is stifling your fear of things that are new and different.
My strategy is to throw myself at them and pray I don’t break something.
That was certainly how this past weekend shaped up. We were given plenty of free time to explore Madrid and Spanish culture, which is an entirely different world from the United States. They don’t even have Oreos.
We also had a group trip to Toledo to learn about the influence of Arab culture in Spain.
It’s most obvious there, where there’s a tight mix of Judaism, Islam and Christianity in a city no larger than Indianapolis.
But first, we tried out a Spanish market, which I imagined would be a pleasant experience where I could pretend to be a fairy tale maiden on her way to buy bread, basket under her arm. Instead, it was a hotbed of weird meat and people screaming at passersby to try eel. And it was crowded.
But there was something fairy tale-esque about it. We went to the Mercado de San Miguel, an old and famous market near the heart of Madrid.
There was something primitive yet sophisticated about buying food the way people have done for centuries — from local farmers, fishermen and bakers and trying to haggle for the best price.
I’ve found that even in the strangest things abroad there’s a kind of beauty that comes with centuries of ?tradition.
This was even more true in Toledo, where the sometimes peaceful and often violent intermixing of religion and culture resulted in a city with a tangible identity.
Toledo is a historical site for Spain. Nothing in Toledo has been changed for a very long time, nor can it be changed without the permission of the Spanish ?government.
That means the Toledo that exists today is the Toledo in which El Greco lived and worked, in which the Spanish king had his court before moving it ?permanently to Madrid.
It also means Toledo has a very confusing layout, and the heating doesn’t really work. These are the sacrifices we must make in the name of preservation.
Toledo is like a movie set. It is built on top of a large hill and is surrounded by a river, which means that it was perfectly positioned for defense.
Because Muslim and Moor labor was cheap, nearly all of the buildings were built by Muslims. As a result, everything from houses to synagogues to Christian churches, barring the Catedral, look like mosques.
The Catedral de Santa María de Toledo is the second largest cathedral in Spain. It’s also considered the most important because Toledo was, for a while, the Catholic capital of Spain, according to Trip Advisor.
It’s absolutely enormous and decorated head to toe in paintings. Its influence in Toledo is tangible.
Tangible identity is probably the best way to describe Spain and Spaniards. Each region and person seems more powerfully made by what is around them than the average tourist or passerby. It makes you want to find your own identity, too.
ewenning@indiana.edu
