This is our filmoteca

It is seven in the evening when we finally leave the house; Marcos has a class to attend at seven thirty for a couple of hours, for me to wander around in the still-bright sunshine. His university is inside the walls, we pass the Mezquita only a few streets away ("In Cordoba everything is centered around the mosque"). Marcos's house is only a short distance from the fortress, as we approach it he points to the wall; Cordoba was originally a Roman settlement, "the wall is the town's history, on the wall you find Roman, Muslim, and Christian".

Cordoba is nestled by nature. The mountains form a natural fortress and a protective cradle around it, and, like Sevilla, the Guadalquivir runs around the city, and forms a moat around its fortress. When you approach the moat from outside, you are at a point where you must ascend a series of steps to cross a thick stone bridge, when great big walls stare back at you from fifty feet across the river bank. Yet this statement of magnitude is restrained to just the walls of the fortress, because inside, in the narrow streets where pedestrians must stand up against the walls to give a car space to pass, things are small, the street is quiet, and it winds up and down slopes, turns and twists to reveal other streets, an intersection with a small square, a bench with a soft lamp glowing over it.

The sun has softened considerably, the cafe just past the wall has not opened yet after closing at three in the afternoon, people on the street go about their day's business quietly. There are a couple of buildings that now serve as hotels, and on one or two streets a quiet concentration of shops and cafes, but these streets are still primarily where people live. The houses are built close together and a series of houses will share walls, one house marking out its external boundary from the next only by a differing combination of colour along the lines of its windows and on the walls themselves. An old lady walks down the street back to her house. Are these the streets along which you will hear songs sung from the windows? I come to a square outside a building that says Auberge de Juvenil ('youth hostel') on a board outside, near the empty bench a man in a uniform wheels away trash, mostly fallen leaves, to a small van at the corner. I sit here for a while.

I meet Marcos outside his college, an old building with its paint peeling, with a plaque by its big wooden doors, Facultidad de Philosophias y Lettras. It must be the last class scheduled, this late in the day; there are hardly one or two other students coming out of the building. I look inside when the gate opens and they come out; the way inside is cobblestoned, leading to a courtyard. "Olmo, he studies in the Faculty of Electro-Mechanical, his faculty has a new campus, it is outside the town. And if he goes in the morning, he is just there, you know, on the campus till the end of the day. Mine is here, near the mosque, and near my house also, in this quiet place... it is a part of Cordoba. I like coming here."

We go to dinner, to a small restaurant a couple of streets away, still inside the walls that I am now seeing by night, when Mezquita has closed and the trinket seller sitting on its large steps has gone home. The entrance to the eating house is small and deceptive, for inside the seating area is a large, bare room with high ceilings. Two or three waiters in white shirts and trousers carry steel dishes to tables. Here Marcos orders us Tinto Verrano, the red wine drink served in a tall unadorned glass tumbler, Chorizo, the spicy sausage in a tomato gravy that I have seen at every cafe, and Flamenguin, a light-coloured dish the consistency of a batter. "This is the basic food in Andalucia", Marcos says when the Flamenguin comes. "It is bread. When it becomes hard, a little bit old, we soak it in water, till it becomes like this." It has tiny bits of tomato and meat sprinkled on top. It is cold, not warm, and light. "It is simple food", he smiles, "food that you eat at home."

We're back out on the quiet streets. It is night and there is hardly anybody around. Marcos keeps thinking of streets we can detour through: "Oh I will take you here", he will say suddenly, breaking out of thought. On one street I take a peek into an Arabic tea house with latticed windows in front, inside a small dark room with intricately embroidered cushions against the walls. "Maybe it is for tourists but still it is very nice", he says. "We can come tomorrow." The shops have downed their shutters, only some bars are open. "Oh you must see this street," he says again. Like all the others it is winding and narrow, but against the dark the lights are on in a few large windows, groups of women sitting inside. "Prostitutes. But all very old!" I look in through the window. Indeed, all the women sitting inside look in their sixties and seventies. Strange. A street or two away there is a large old building whose open gate leads to a front courtyard with, like all the others, potted plants hanging out of balconies. "This is our filmoteca", Marcos says. I follow him to the front door as he picks up a pamphlet with the schedule for the month. I take one too. "You know the movie The Good, The Bad, The Ugly? The guy who whistled the tune for the movie...", Marcos whistles the tune now, "...his name is Curro Savoy, he had come to the filmoteca!" "Yes he is Andalusian... he had come here to give a talk. After the talk, we could ask him questions and chat with him. The whole thing was great fun because there were only three of us in the audience."

A few buildings down we pass the gate of what looks like a house, "I must meet somebody, she is here", Marcos says as I follow him inside. We go around the building to the back, there is a Bar sign outside. Inside is a medium-sized room with a fire burning at one end, and people standing around talking. There is soft music playing and gentle yellow light, and now and then the girl standing near the fireplace begins to sway to the music. Marcos seems to know most people here, and is going to each of them in turn and striking up enthusiastically. As I stand here a little unsure of what to do other than get myself a glass of beer, the lady whom Marcos has just finished talking to comes up. She asks me how I've liked Andalucia, tells me about her struggle to learn English, talks about her work. She is a researcher in a chemicals company, she has worked in the field for a few years. "But after this summer I think I will not, anymore. I would like to do something else." Like Marcos most people here are in their thirties, men and women. As appears to be the norm everywhere, in cafes, on the streets, marijuana and hashish are freely passed around. Through this backdoor groups of two and three people arrive and leave; each group standing in their own circle, but everyone walking over to each other to chat. This is unlike a public bar, and more like a private gathering. "I am meeting them after a long time", Marcos tells me later. "Many have been away from Cordoba for some time. Some of them are going away again actually, next week, to study." "I like coming back to Cordoba", he says. "It is good to go outside, but when I come back I like living here."

It is past midnight when we get back home. I am tired, and try to choose between making notes about today or catching up on sleep for a fresh first morning in Cordoba tomorrow. On the wall across from the bed the man with the trumpet looms, on the table the handwritten cd labels are just out of reading sight. It is strange to be in a new country and new city and occupy the bedroom of someone who lives here. But somehow it all fits perfectly right now. I write two pages in my small diary with many sentences that end in exclamation marks, and fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow.