knee-tremblers...

Girona, whilst undeniably dinky,
is full of steps and sudden vertiginous
views; bloody awful for such as me.
Cramp still with me and I got back
yesterday.

Oh, and everyone smokes cigarettes.
The only reason to go outside is to use a
portable phone, which don't work indoors.
So the sight of a crowd all chatting to themselves
is normal.













Many pluses, however. Joseph Beuys exhibition, the
Seychelles Diary, was on at the Fontana d'Or and
the Jewish Museum does a fine job of explaining
the 1495 debacle.

Which, since you ask, was when the Jews were expelled
from everywhere but thanks to some sensible planning
in Girona, only a handful had to go and bloodbaths were
avoided.

The Christians instituted a series of public debates
to try to convert the Jews by logic (really, they thought it
logical -) The BIG question was whether the Messiah had
come or not. If he had you were probably a Christian, if
you were still waiting you were a Jew. Complicated
somewhat by the Jews who thought he had indeed come,
as predicted in the Talmund, but was waiting in Eden for the
right time to pop up.

The reason this was important, as I'm sure you know, was
because Jesus couldn't come back again trailing clouds of
glory until the conversion of the Jews. So it was everyone's
duty to convert (or kill, depending on your position)

The cathedral is triumphalist, loads of gold and flummery
and over-the-top told-you-so ness, which irked. The town
is scrubbed to within an inch of its history.

I had to go to the University to find any graffitti and fear
it will not be there tomorrow.