I was so glad the bits of Spanish I knew came bubbling back up -- the last time I'd used it was maybe 2006? when I used to go to Latin America's budget meetings, before I worked on Brazil & was trying to learn Portuguese. Steve commented that people talking to me didn't seem to slow down (conversing in German with him, they did).
I was so glad Steve loves figuring out train & bus schedules -- all our transportation went smoothly & it's not easy navigating on strange systems in a strange town.
Maybe the Dogs of God wasn't ideal reading material? Maybe I was projecting onto the Spanish Baroque and the 16th & 17th centuries had more artistic richness than I gave them credit for? Even if they hadn't expelled the Jews from Spain, Spain's rule of its American colonies was brutal. I kept thinking of Fray Oviedo whose Historial General y Natural de los Indios (1535--I read him when I was doing my dissertation research) chronicles the first years of Spanish rule of Central America (even before epidemics killed millions):
neither paper nor time suffice to tell entirely what the captains did to destroy the Indians and to rob them and lay waste the land, if all was told as it happened, but...in this land of Castilla del Oro, there were two million Indians -- they were uncountable--and it is necessary that it be said how such a number of people ended in so little time.
(that quote from Oviedo is one of the few things I remember from my diss)
I think that even in those days for that time, this was an unusually brutal society, and in the places we visited, I just didn't see much awareness of history (I guess I should come out and say--remorse). But maybe a tourist to the US, who did nothing but visit the Smithsonian and the NY Mus of Nat Hist would think the same?
But in terms of Steve and me, it was a good time. We're good travel companions, and enjoy talking back and forth about new impressions. I hope we have many more years to travel together.
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