Córdoba’s Golden Door

I once sat under an enormous golden door in Córdoba, Spain, and posed for a photo. An old-fashioned paper photo, the kind that you excitedly waited days for the shop to develop. Then you opened the envelope and revisited those moments and it felt like Christmas.

The Córdoba photo is still somewhere, I don’t know where, but it still exists. The colours may have faded or a corner may have folded a bit. But I’m still sitting there under that big door, looking very small – I was half my age. Thursday Doors didn’t yet exist and the door photo was just a door photo. I hadn’t heard of blogging and social media hadn’t been invented. I don’t remember crowds. I remember it was a hot day in August 2002. And the whole wide world was open, life was a big opportunity, and anything was possible.

This winter, I had the chance to go there again and I convinced my mum to join me. And suddenly, there we were, my mum and I, taking photos in Córdoba, Spain, with our digital devices. It was a beautiful winter day, the temperature was similar to early summer or late spring in Finland.

And so, to the important question: Did it look the same? Actually, did it feel the same? Well, yes and no. There were elements I remembered correctly, but time had faded the details and so it was like I was seeing it all for the first time. The details. The very things that bring the flavour, the ambiance, like red stripes in a famous mosque-cathedral or flower pots hanging from whitewashed walls.

Málaga in 2002 had been my first solo trip abroad. I’d received a generous scholarship from business uni due to my good grades in Spanish and was able to choose a Spanish language course anywhere in the world.

I was working for an airline back then, part-time while studying, and I’d just listened to a story of how my colleague had flown somewhere in South America on a beer barrel in the galley of an airplane, because the plane was full but they’d still accepted airline staff onboard. Looking back, the beer barrel was probably a metal box from the galley, but in any case, South America felt too exotic for my very first solo trip, and so I chose Málaga. Little did I know, some 20 years later I’d be choosing the very same destination for my kids’ first longer stay abroad using exactly the same reasoning: it seemed safe enough and easy enough to handle.

I still remember my first, uneasy impressions of the city: tall apartment buildings that had boxy air conditioning units protuding from their sides, like part of the inside hadn’t fit in and needed to be installed on the outside. I hadn’t known what to make of them. But the next morning, I’d felt better. There was a parrot on the neighbour’s balcony that whistled every time someone walked past. My German roommate rented a car on the weekend and off we drove to explore. Córdoba was one of those explorations.

I never really thought of whether I’d go back there again. Most places, I guess, we don’t revisit – once is enough. Why do we even do that, travel to places just to see what it’s like? Maybe it’s a way of window shopping for an alternative life. What would my life be like, if I lived here? Who would I be?

My mum and I visited from Málaga, too, and we had a nice day. I’d never realised there were private patios you could visit, and we managed to find a couple of them open, despite the main patio season being in May. The flowers were incredibly pretty and the owners were so proud to tell visitors about their prize-winning courtyards.

Córdoba’s flower pots were still there, hanging on the walls of buildings. The red stripes were still in place at the mosque-cathedral. And the enormous golden doors were a bit dusty, but they were still there, too. Still impressive as ever and now bearing a closer resemblance to my dusty old photo. A new addition was a street musician playing guitar on an empty plaza, like he was living in a movie scene. I’m sure he ended up on someone’s video stream.

We had a lovely outdoors lunch, unthinkable in Finland in February, and shopped for postcards to send home. They were not hard to find. It was nice to have my mum as company this time. She seemed to enjoy the flowers, as I thought she would.

Córdoba didn’t disappoint. The hours flew by, just like the years that had flown by since my last visit.

Hearing people speak different languages around me, I remembered what I had liked about working in the travel industry. Besides the benefit of having like-minded colleagues, it was great to get to chat with people from all over the world. Come to think of it, that’s one of the things I love about blogging.

My Spanish had grown rusty. I wonder if it has to do with my age, since languages were always easy for me. Can I still get them back, or is it too late, I wonder.

Whatever the answer, I slowly started to remember the old me and that was a nice feeling. A desire to start travelling again was awoken. Maybe I still am the girl in the photo.