The Streets of Sevilla

I have spent the last two days getting lost in my neighborhood. The streets were never planned and it is a maze of alleys, passages, dead ends, and courtyards. The fun part is that one never knows where one will end up. Each street may have four or five names every few blocks. When the old part of Sevilla was built there were no numbers for houses and every block had a different name. That way the local people would know how to tell people where they lived without numbered houses. The multiple names for the same street persist to this day although the houses at least have numbers. Home postal service did not really begin until the last half of the 20th century so there was not much motivation to change one street to one name.

Another complication is that there are few street signs. With so many names for the same street I can see why. The streets are also so narrow there are no places for sign posts. They call the streets here ¨kissing¨streets. This is not where people kiss so much as the streets make the buildings apear to be kissing each other. Some streets are so close together that neihbors can throw kitchen items and food from one kitchen to the next if they need to share.

Classes are about to begin for me. Until the next time