Córdoba.

The southern Spanish heat rises from the cobblestones in waves, lighting the ancient bricks of the castles and churches from the inside until a scorching orange glow permeates the town. Palm trees droop in complaint and small birds hide in window corners to escape the dusty forty-eight degree suffocation, shooting out from their cool hideouts only to sip and bathe from the fountains that dot the streets and plazas. It is all cobblestone and brick, a dizzying breathlessness in the narrow terraced calles where the street numbers are tiled and the tourists forget their names. Cars bump along the stones, tyres rumbling in incompatible technology. Horses clip-clop you back to fourteen fifty-five.


We red ghouls pour agua down our gullets and wander the closed shopping mall only for the cool relief and takeaway joint toilets. The Japanese look at spun silver, the Americans peer at flamenco costumes and flies the size of bees settle on foreign arms during the day while mosquitoes mix our blood into a modern milkshake at night. Postcards show pictures of La Mezquita from every possible angle except Allah's, reflecting sunlight into the eyes of passersby. The most important Islamic building in the West is reduced to card and plastic depictions. In reality, the red archways throw goosebumps down my neck, a humbling sight of precise geometry and re-written religious history.

Jamon serrano is covered in bread and wrapped in plastic; consumption comes in tapas, half or full size. At night the winds blow dusty clouds around the feet of hungry pedestrians, knocking over wine glasses and leaving shards for crisp white-shirted waiters to crush on their routes around the tables. The organ player's organ doesn't want to play as the waiter speaks English to me when I bid ciao in Italian, sling my Indonesian bag around my neck and think of the Shanghai sun.

Traditional guitar music rings out of the bodegas and tapas houses. Glimpses through the open doors reveal wooden walls and terracotta tiled floors, brick archways on the sides create small eating spaces where chatter fights for space in the air with the music. Souvenir shops sell enough multi-coloured plates to fill the world's kitchen cupboards, more aprons than there are cooks and more keyrings than there are keys. Córdoba is manufactured, represented, symbolised, captured, recreated and reinvented through a multitude of objects for walls, drawers, body parts, shelves, cars, windows and fridges. Any part of your life can be Córdobised for five Euros. Fly a flag on your chest. Wear the country on your head. Adorn yourself in an exotic language. Smell like a local.

I buy my knick-knacks, an oil painting and some shoes, and take away a piece of the city like every other sunglassed, wild-haired visitor does and every shop owner hopes we do. In Seville I will do the same, as in Granada, Amsterdam, Berlin and Sofia, and although grand things still move me to poetry and prose, and although I try to buy local products, I am left wondering whether I am selling out to something frighteningly bland and disposable. Paul sings that every fucking city feels the same. Is it that, or do we just get better at walking over and past the differences?