add cordoba to mr worldwide post

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Brian Picciano 2018-09-24 14:19:15 -04:00
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commit fdd997de34

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@ -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.