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diff --git a/_drafts/mr-worldwide-pt-1-europe.md b/_drafts/mr-worldwide-pt-1-europe.md index aa99c89..0e2ef02 100644 --- a/_drafts/mr-worldwide-pt-1-europe.md +++ b/_drafts/mr-worldwide-pt-1-europe.md @@ -500,3 +500,53 @@ language and culture. I only spent one full day in Madrid, and afterwards took a bus, continuing south, down to Córdoba. + +## Córdoba, Spain + +It was on the bus to Córdoba that I remembered to actually book a place to stay +there. I quickly grabbed an AirBnB in town, though as it turned out messed it up +so that when it didn't go through. So there was an hour there, waiting at +the Córdoba bus station, where I was trully homeless. I spent it booking another +AirBnB, properly this time, and eating some bread and cheese from my backpack, +and watching some birds fight over a loaf someone else had dropped. + +This was the first AirBnB I'd gotten in Europe so far, up till this it had been +only hostels (and one hotel, in Ravenna). While I'd enjoyed hostel life +initially, especially my first taste of it in Milan, it had begun to wear on me. + +What I'd found is that, first and foremost, hostels were trying to hit a certain +feel. _Good vibes_ were words which I saw in many a hostel description and +review, though didn't often actually experience. It's in the public +consciousness that backpacking through Europe, going from hostel to hostel, is a +journey filled with new experiences, new people, and lots of partying. And while +that is _true_, a lot of hostels ignore hospitality in favor of playing up to +that fantasy, to their own detriment. + +A hostel's primary goal, like a normal hotel or AirBnB or whatever, shouldn't be +to provide you with experiences, or help you meet new people, or enable your +drinking and partying. These are certainly secondary goals it might have, if it +wants. But the primary goal should be to make you feel comfortable and at home. +And while the conceit of a hostel is that you are exchanging some physical +comfort for cost, by having shared bunk rooms and common bathrooms and all that, +comfort can be established through more than a fluffy bed. Some hostels I stayed +at got this, most didn't. + +If someone feels comfortable in a hostel they'll open up on their own, and +naturally want to meet the people around them, go out partying, and have cool +experiences. Or not. They'll do whatever the fuck they want to. But if a hostel +is too focused on being cool and hip and showing off how good its vibes are it's +neglecting the basics, and there is no partying and the vibes aren't good. + +So I was tired of party hostels, as I began calling them, having just been in +one in Barcelona a few days prior, and grabbed instead spent the night in what +turned out to be a brutally cold old building which had neither heat, sealed +windows, or cooking device with which to make a hot meal. So that's what I get +for being a snob, I guess. + +In the morning I visted the Mosque/Cathedral of Córdoba. This site has had the +odd history of having originally been a church, having then been converted to a +mosque when the Moors took Spain in the 700s, and then converted back to a +christian church in the 1200s when the catholics took Spain back, and has since +been designated a cathedral. It retains much of the Moorish architecture, but +with a church in the middle, and is an utterly fascinating place which I +neglected to take any pictures of. |