Travel

Madrid (2022)

Toledo

On Friday we made a last trip to Toledo, a city southwest of Madrid. The historic metropolis has many churches, monasteries, and museums. Like the day before, we took a bus there again. The bus station was at the foot of the village, while the town center and most of the buildings were on a plateau. Luckily, they thought of the tourists here and built an escalator that took us directly to our first destination.

First, we wanted to go to the art museum “Museo de Santa Cruz”. We had to wait just before it because we got there a little before opening time. Here we noticed a souvenir shop right next to it. It was still closed, but there were many medieval swords inside. It was interesting that you could have these sent to your home country after you bought them, because of course you couldn’t get on the plane with them. In the museum itself, we were again not allowed to take photos, but there wasn’t much spectacular to see either, since the exhibits were either old furniture or (probably as a current exhibition) abstract art, of which we understood little anyway. For example, some images only consisted of a single-colored square or something similar. Still very strange (and I took the opportunity to secretly take a picture here) was a slightly secluded room in which an incomplete statue of Jesus lay in front of a large string of pearls. Nathalie explained to me the symbolism, but for me, it just looked like a scene from the Neon Genesis Evangelion anime.

The next stop was the military museum “Museo del Ejército”. However, the main reason for the visit was not the museum itself but the building in which it is located. This was the historic Alcázar fortress, an absolutely imposing building that could be seen from afar. It took us a while to find the entrance because we were unlucky enough to walk around the entire block of the building. But we also noticed that there is even a library in the building on the side. The museum itself is huge and consists of several levels and stairs. In addition to various armor and weapons (also from other countries), there were many soldier figures. It was a bit difficult not to get lost in the many corridors and stairs and of course, there were again many guards who made sure that no photos were taken (but since it was so big we were still able to take a few unseen). A funny incident happened in the museum’s souvenir shop. I personally find camouflage quite interesting, but Nathalie was rather disgusted by all the soldier suits, war weapon figures, and the like. This was also due to the current situation in Ukraine, which Russia recently invaded. Nathalie said something like this: “Do you really want to buy any military stuff here when there’s a war in Ukraine? All the stuff here is totally glorifying the war… AWWWWWWW, look at that! That’s super cute!” but then her eyes suddenly lit up. On a display case was a small plush sheep wearing a Spanish military uniform. Suddenly the hatred of this souvenir shop was gone and this plush sheep with the new name “Oliviero de la Oveja” had to be bought. A photo of it is on the next page with the souvenirs of the whole trip. (Note Nathalie: I’m really not a fan of this museum in general as it didn’t really highlight the negative aspects of the military and war. The sheep was an extremely cute keepsake nonetheless)

After the two visits to the museum, it was already early afternoon, which is why we first went to a restaurant. Unfortunately, there was a lot of tourism in the city, which is why we first had to find something where we weren’t called in front of the shop. But then we found a restaurant where Nathalie had a salad and I had a hamburger.

Finally, we checked out the rest of the city center. What is special about Toledo is that three religions have come together here, namely Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and they live together peacefully. A really nice contrast to the military museum and a clear sign of peace. This can also be seen from the fact that there are houses of prayer for all three religions just a few hundred meters apart in the respective districts. We were also inside some of them, at least when they were open to the public. Another specialty are biscuits, which nuns made and sold in the monastery district. We also saw great cushions with embroidered cat motifs in a souvenir shop… but sadly, they were far too expensive.

Back in Madrid, we had the rest of the ingredients for dinner, which we still had as a leftover because of course we had to use everything up before we were supposed to fly back to Germany the next day.

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