Córdoba

                We had another awesome week of activities in our program!  A group of us on Saturday went to Xanadu a huge mall with an indoor ski hill!  The hill wasn´t very impressive, but it was cool that it was indoor.  The mall was so huge!  Therefore I got bored after about an hour.  Oh well.  It was cool, but too many clothes stores.   That really dominated my day.  That night a small group of us traveled just two stops down the train to a town called Torrejon.  They have a park called Parque Europa, and it has small replicas of major land marks in Europe such as the Eifel Tower, a few famous castles, and other similar things.  Well during the summer they put on a twenty minute water light show.  We went and saw that and it was really cool!  They shot the water up in many different forms and then light up the water with light from behind and some parts were like movie clips and other parts just fancy lights.  It was all done with music too!  It was really cool!

          I want to insert another couple interesting facts about Alcalá de Henares.  Before I showed you the dumpsters they use in the city, but I didn't tell you that some of the those dumpsters are put underground, and so a dump truck with a crane on it comes and lifts the dumpsters out and dumps it into the truck.  kind of inefficient system, but cool nonetheless. 

Dump truck crane

A modern rendition of Quijote and Sancho Pansa

                Sunday evening there was a charity fútbol game at the Real Madrid stadium.   I got to go and see a game in the stadium watching many retired Real Madrid players play!  It was very cool!  Them being older now, and it being a charity event, the game wasn’t very intense but still cool to be there.  Monday I took a group of people to go see some abandoned tunnels and ruins left from the crusades.  Not really the crusades but close enough; it was the Muslims fighting the Christians outside of Madrid.  Kind of cool pieces of history, right in my back yard in Alcalá de Henares!  To get there we had to take our shoes off and cross the river and it is a fun hike out there.   The ruins are falling apart but both the tunnels and ruins were used to station soldiers preparing for attacks on the city.  

Inside the ruins

                Tuesday, our entire group did a tour of the Real Madrid stadium and learned a lot about how trophies are awarded and got to see the inside of the locker rooms, press rooms, and got to sit in the dug out area!  Pretty cool stadium.  Built to hold about eighty-five thousand people.

Different types of trophies, the shoe is the greatest player in spain, the ball is greatest player in Europe, and the square one is greatest player in the world

                Thursday morning we headed out early on our way to Córdoba.  On the way there we stopped in a small town called Camuñas.  They celebrate the Corpus Cristi on Thursday every year and so we got to stop and see the celebration.  Very strange and actually we all got a little board of it after the first half an hour.  It is a procession that starts from the chapel, and the performers all wear masks and there is dancing and music in the form of a skit or play.  It consists of the seven vices or sins, and seven virtues. All of the vices wear strange evilish masks, and the virtues all are dressed in a very recognizable ways that reflect gifts or righteous acts.   At one point in the procession, each of the vices run at the the front where the bishop is standing and where the Crustodia is, while screaming.  Pretty strange but has a lot of symbolism I believe.  The purpose is to remember the resurrection of Christ and all of the pass over.  

                 The city was all decorated for the celebrations. The sidewalks were painted, rugs were hung on everything, the children participated in the procession, and they all had tambourines.  Interesting view into the culture.  When we were leaving, some cars had parked in front of our bus and made it impossible to leave going forward, so the bus driver backed up several hundred feet through the narrow streets with cars parked on the sides!  I swear the bus drivers are crazy here!

The red mask is a common theme for the dancers

Banners

                After that we stopped at a town called consuegra to have lunch and then we got to see the famous molinos de Quijote, or the Quijote windmills.  They are the windmills that were written about in the adventures of Don Quijote when he attacked them cause he thought that they were giants.  We read that chapter out of the book don quijote underneath one of the windmills.  There was a lot of wind! No wonder they put so many windmills up there!

Me, Neil (profe's son)

                We got to Córdoba that afternoon.  It is a beautiful and ancient city.  The streets are very narrow, with flowers hanging from the buildings on either side of the street.  We got to see an ancient roman temple.  All that is left are the columns and other stone ruins that have fallen down.  It was very cool, and they are trying to restore it piece by piece.  The ruins are from the first century! Holy cow they are old!  We had a buffet dinner that night which was pretty good, lots of Italian food which was a nice change.  After dinner, a group of us went and explored some more and saw one of the main plazas of Córdoba all lit up at night with a beautiful fountain in the center.   At the hotel before bed we all played a few games of monopoly deal.  And that was very fun and relaxing.

                The next day we saw the jewish synagogue  built in 1350 A.D. and saw a statue of Ben Maimonides.  Known as a figure of wisdom, theology, philosophy and medicine.  They say that if you rub the shoe of the statue that his wisdom will rub off onto you, so of course we rubbed the shoe!  We also saw el Mesquita, or the Great Mosque that Córdoba is famous for.  The site was first used for a Christian chapel, but when the muslims took over they built there huge mosque where the chapel was.  Then when the Christians conquered again, they decided to remodel part of the mosque into a cathedral. This is an amazing piece of history because most of the time when the Christians reconquered they destroyed anything muslim!  It is the only mosque-cathedral in existence today! 

Each of these archways is a double arch, you see it better below

Amazing architecture

The whole mosque is a huge open room with columns and double arches supporting the roof.  Some of the muslim sacred prayer rooms are still in side on the outskirts of the building, and in the center of the mosque is were the cathedral has been built.  They had to take out many columns and arches and then build up with a vaulted ceiling all in the typical shape of the cross that the catherals are built.  A most impressive construction marvel!  Every columns in the mosque is unique with the capitols (top of the columns) each having different designs.  It was very very impressive.

Sacred prayer room for Muslim faith

The Vaulted ceiling of the cathedral in the mosque

To get into the city you have to cross a beautiful roman bridge, with huge towers on either shore and archways all along it to cross the river.  We left Córdoba en rumba a Sevilla, (in route to Sevilla) and stopped at one more place on the way called Madinat Al-Zahra.  It is a small city-state/palace were the caliph (Islamic viceroy sort of) lived.  Ruins are all that are left today.  The city was built in 900 A.D. and only lasted for 80 years. 

The roman bridge with the mosque in the background

Ruins of ancient Madinat Al-Zahra

We went ot Sevilla next and I am going to put that and Granada in another post!