The beach @Gexto!

I spent the end of last week and the weekend working on some freelance work. It was torture sitting at my computer all day Saturday while the sun shone outside. When Sunday rolled around and it was sunny yet again, my roommate Javier and I split for the beach.

This week we hit up Getxo, a well-off community downriver from Bilbao. We sat in a cafe, hung out on the beach for a bit, and then wandered around the old town. Oh yeah, and played around on their outdoor moving sidewalks a bit.

When we went into an Irish pub to get a beer, we accidentally sat down in front of the TV, not knowing that a soccer game was about to start. The local team, the Atlético de Bilbao, were playing, and, well, if we had gotten upa and tried to leave during the game and blocked the TV, there would have been a riot. So we stayed until the first half was over.

Walking on, walking on broken glass

Small yet notable cultural difference # 4567:

I think kids that grew up in my generation in North America were one of the first to be indoctrinated about the evils of litter. At one point in elementary school, "Litterbug!" was the worst insults you could call someone. I've talked to friends my age who have traveled outside of North America, and it always immediately catches our attention and pains our souls the way people in many places litter like crazy.

The Spanish don't have a problem with litter. Outside.

Inside? Well, I've been in several neighbourhood bars and cafes here where people just chuck everything on the floor. Wipe you face with your napkin? Throw it on the floor. Finish you cigarette? Crush the butt right there under your foot. Get your receipt? Drop it right there on the floor in front of the cash register. The guy who sweeps up at the end of the night has his work cut out for him.

I kind of thought it was something limited to cafes, until I went to a nightclub last night. And it was the same! Except instead of throwing your napkin on the floor, people would set down their glasses or beer bottles on the floor by the wall, and they were constantly getting smashed. Or on the dance floor someone drunk would drop their beer bottle right there and just keep on dancing. The whole dance floor was this crunchy mix of broken glass and alcohol.

I have to say I was glad to have worn boots and not some sexy open-toed sandal.

Barcelona vs. Gijón

When we went to the old men's bar on the corner to watch the soccer game I hadn't been expecting to come out with a newfound appreciation of the positive aspects of the sport.

My roommate wanted to watch the game and the bar around the corner was showing it on the big screen. Simple. Beers were ordered, seats facing the screen were found.

It was Barcelona versus Gijon; one team from near-ish here, one from the other side of the country. When Barcelona scored their first goal, cheers went up from our table, while the rest of the bar stayed silent. And that's how it started.

First the bartender, this young guy with a faux-hawk that was practically bouncing off the walls, yells over a comment with a friendly smile. At each goal, it was the same - another comment followed by some impassionned discussion with my roommate about the greatness of some player, or how bad some team were doing this year. Then this couple sits down between out table and bar, and then the discussion turns into a roundtable debate. I sat, ears wide open, absorbing as much information as I could about Spanish soccer. The Spanish and English soccer leagues are the best in the world! The sports press in Spain is too Madrid-centred! You don't know how hard it was for me to come out to my friends as a supporter of San Sebastian when all of them are fans of Bilbao!

Outside of North America, the passions that soccer arouses in people anywhere are unbelievable. any Joe ( or Jane) Blow on the street, should you stop them at random, has THEIR team, and the common knowledge of the teams and players is quite encyclopedic. And when you put people that don't know each other together, soccer gives them something to talk about, something to connect them together.

The beach at Sopelana

Ever since I found out you can get to the beach by metro, I've wanted to go. So as soon as I'd taken care of finding a place to live and moving my stuff, I was on my way.

My roommate Xavier came along. He's from Barcelona, which also has metro-accessible beach, so he didn't quite have the same level of excitement as someone who'd been landlocked in Montreal all summer, but thought it sounded like fun. It was a gorgeous, sunny day.

There's quite a surf scene on the coast around here. The waves are surfing waves, not swimming waves, and the fact that it's late September meant that most beachgoers were content to tan or play around on the shore. As were we.

A cold beer and a kebab ( the Spanish version of a shish taouk) tided us over for the metro ride back to the centre.

Some first pictures of Bilbao

I went out in the mood for a monster picture-taking session. And then my camera batteries died. Here's what I managed to take before they did.

Sarriko : a.k.a Home Sweet Home

If I haven't really been in full blogging mode since I've arrived it's because I've been preoccupied with settling in-getting things like a phone, apartment, bank account and my papers in order for my stay here.

The phone was easy, the papers somewhat so, and the bank account is still to come, but the detail that was giving me the biggest headache was the housing. The routine- scanning the ads, noting numbers, making calls, leaving messages. I realized early on that e-mail was NOT the way to go, as no one answers them. But even when I switched to phone, very often the room would be taken by the time I called, or not available until October 1. Frustration!

Last night I was freaking out because I was having trouble setting up visits. And then, I got a bunch of calls to set up visits, and then, a call from an apartment I had visited the day before and really liked, offering me the room! ( I accepted right away.)

So today I went and picked up the keys for my new place. It's in Sarriko, a couple of metro stops outside of the centre, near Bilbao's universities. We've got tenth floor views of the river and hills around the city, and two balconies. My roommates are Xavier, from Barcelona, and Florentino, from Bilbao, who study economics at the Universidad del Pais Vasco. There will be another roommate to come.

We spent the afternoon redecorating. We're subletting the apartment from this old woman, and let's just say all her throw rugs, collages of her dogs, and framed velvet pictures of Jesus feeding the lambs got thrown into the cupboard pretty fast. Even the candy in the crystal candy bowl was about 50 years old.

Tomorrow I move in!

(Above is a picture of the Sarriko metro station! The Bilbao metro's only 10 years old and very high-tech.)

Pintxos!

I took a break from apartment hunting yesteday to meet up with Hannah, an American from New York who's been here for over a year. She did the program I'm doing last year, and she found me on Facebook, where I've been asking her all the questions the officials from the Basque government don't seem to want to answer for me.

Though learning the do's and don'ts of any new place by trial and error is half the fun, it is sometime nice to have someone who shares the same cultural background as you fast-track you through the process.

Hannah (and Leslie and Lewis, two Californians also living here), took me out for my first pintxos. Pintxos are particular to the Basque country, and they go something like this: You go into a bar, go up to the bar and order a small glass of wine, or beer, or clara ( a drink I discovered yesterday which is beer mixed with lemonade..mmm!). The whole bar is covered with plates of different hors d'oeuvre-type snacks. Anything to simple ham on bread, to an artichoke covered in cheese and deep-fried and toothpicked to a piece of bread, a dollop of a mayonnaise-y vegetable salad with a shrimp on top, small sandwiches, or Spanish tortilla (kind of like a potato omelette), and the list goes on. Different bars have different pintxos. Because half of the things no one really knows what they are, including people from here, you just go and point and the bartender will put whatever you choose on a little plate for you. There are also bigger portions of dishes that you can order to share amongst a couple of people.

These were my first pintxos, but will not be my last, I guarantee. It's kind of a huge part of the culture here.

Estoy en Bilbao!

The last couple of days since my arrival have had me running around, trying to find housing and get settled. I wrote a couple of blog posts last night on my computer, but my hostel doesn't have WiFi, and I forgot to transfer them to my USB key to post them from an internet cafe! They will be coming soon. I'm going to visit 3 apartments today. Hopefully in my next post I'll have found somewhere to live!!!