Al Txoko

First, the definition of a txoko.

From the Basque word for nook, or small space, a txoko is a closed gastronomical society typical across the Basque country. A group of friends will chip in money to buy a commercial space, outfit it with a full kitchen and eating space, (and nowadays a soundsystem and TV and all the comforts of home). The members then use the space to get together and cook and eat together, or with their guests. Traditionally, txokos were about serious culinary creation and experimentation ( and maybe a singsong after dinner), and were for men only. Nowadays, though the focus is still food, in all but the most traditional txokos anything goes, and women are allowed.

And a good thing, because half of the people at Xabi's txoko in Bermeo on Saturday were women. And we didn't really cook: we picked up some roasted chickens and some wine, and threw together a salad, and made some homemade french fries. And we didn't sing any traditional Basque songs, though we did watch the regattas. The txoko had an amazing view of the port of Bermeo and the open ocean, and we could see the news helicopters circling overhead covering the rowing races, we couldn't see the actual boats themselves for the high waves and rain. So we turned on the TV to watch the rowers up close. Urdaibai, the local team, didn't win. But later, as we were having coffee and ice cream in the centre of town later, the team came jogging along the port, and they were given a full cheering, flag-waving, song singing welcome anyway.

Vuelta a Bilbao

Montreal. New Mexico. Nova Scotia. Summer was a mix of business and pleasure in several places, and now I'm back in Bilbao. Which is also a mix of business and pleasure, in a different way. Business in that I'm leading a typical life of work and study. Pleasure in that, being in a foreign country, in some ways even the most mundane, everyday tasks become an adventure, and I can help but remember that I'm still travelling, no matter what I'm doing.

London

There were a couple of reasons I was looking forward to visiting London. Similar to visiting New York for the first time, I felt this great sense of anticipation, of finally getting to visit another of the world's great metropolises (metropoli?)--cities you know so much about before even setting foot within their limits. I was also looking forward to catching up with Jacqueline, an old friend from Montreal now based in London ( and who welcomed me into her East London pad.) Oh, and there were those meetings with my professors at the University of London.

But the most important was the food.

Nine months in Bilbao had seen me eat my weight in delicious Basque cuisine--steak, cod, rich sauces, ham and pintxos--but I longed for spice. Mexican salsas, Thai chilis, Jamaican jerk, curries from all over the Indian subcontinent--I wanted spicy heat of all kinds. I wanted to this one weekend to be the kind of international food mosaic that makes up the normal diet of young inner city dwellers in a large, multicultural city. In London like in Montreal, cheap, quick, late-night or take-out food is synonymous with "something new and flavourful from somewhere other than here", and every grocery trip to your neighbourhood immigrant-run corner market sees you throwing something new and unfamiliar into the cart.

And boy, did I get what I wanted. Spice, flavour, and treats simply not to be found in a smaller city like Bilbao: curries, roti, sushi, soupe tonkinoise, bubble tea, organic rhubarb/apple juice... In fact, most of my weekend was spent wandering around the different neighbouhoods and revelling in all the things London is but Bilbao isn't: huge, overflowing, teeming with people from every country imaginable, exhilarating in the sheer variety of types of people and personalities on the streets, in the shops, in the Underground.

Speakers' Corner, Hyde Park

International food market, Brick Lane, East London

Columbia Road Flower Market, East London

San Juan

In Quebec, June 24, Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day, is a party. Parades, big budget concerts, block parties awash in the blue and white of the fleur-de-lys. Canada Day celebrations pale in comparison.

Here, San Juan has no nationalist associations--it's a celebration of the longest night of the year. The traditional way to celebrate it, like so many traditions passed down over generations, is really fun, but really dangerous. Every neighbourhood sets up a huge bonfire, which is the centrepiece of the evening's celebrations; beer stands and music are secondary, though necessary. You write your regrets for the past year and wishes for the year to come on a piece of paper, and toss it into the fire. Burning of school books and notes is optional. Then comes the dangerous part: jumping over the fire. You have to do it in order for your wishes to come true.

but as one of my students put it, you start out the evening preparing the fire and drinking beer. Then, the height of the flames is inversley proportionate to your level of drunkness. By the time you feel courageous enough to jump over the bonfire, the flames have burnt down into coals. some municipalities have banned the bonfires, but some still have officially sanctioned events, and others still just continue the tradition anyway.

Ibilaldia 2009

There's a certain predictability to many of the fiestas and festivals in the Basque Country. Whether they're celebrating a patron saint or a holiday, there are usually stands selling drinks, sandwiches and talo, maybe some traditional baked goods or food products or farm-fresh produce, and a stage with entertainment, all open-air.

The Ibilaldia, held last weekend in Galdakao, was all of the above, but with certain variations on the above themes. First, it's a yearly festival held to promote the Basque language, organized by a local ikastola, or Basque-language private school, who get to collect all the proceeds. Everything was in Basque, from signage to announcements, and most of the people at the event were speaking Basque too--not so common for an event so close to Bilbao. The entertainment--music, poetry, etc.-- was Basque-centred as well.

And the coolest part of the event is that it was spread out over 6 sites in and around the town and surrounding countryside. So that meant short hikes through the woods between beer tents, and different atmospheres happening simultaneously on different stages. It added a kind of outdoorsy note to what would have otherwise been your typical festival of light-hearted summertime debauchery.

Here's the promotional video for the festival. Conspicuously absent from this video are the hordes of drunken teenagers we saw in groups along the trail; I've been told getting together with your under-age friends to get drunk on kalimotxos at the Ibilaldia is kind of a rite of passage.

The national anthem scandal @ the Copa del Rey

A Basque team and a Catalan team confronting each other to win the "King's Cup"; the irony of the two Spanish peoples with the strongest nationalist/separatist sentiment playing to win a symbol of the Spanish monarchy, in the presence of the King and Queen no less, was not lost upon most. But football trumps politics, though a plan was launched among Basque and Catalan spectators to express their dislike of the Spanish state by whislting when the national anthem was played before the match.

But one of the stations broadcasting the match was the Spanish state-run TV station, rTVe. Mysteriously, before the game, viewers didn't see the national anthem being sung; they cut to a reporter live in Bilbao talking about the ambience in the stadium. And then, the video footage of the players standing at attention for the anthem was played at half time, without the sound. Here's a video that shows what viewers saw on different TV channels. ETB1 ( a Basque channel), TV3 ( a Catalan channel), and TVE.

The public cried Scandal! Conspiracy! TeleEspaña claimed it was human error, that they weren't trying to hide anything, and but their director of Sports programming still ended up resigning.

Athletic, Athletic, zu zara nagusia...

The Bilbao Athletic played the Barcelona Football Club in the Copa del Rey final this week. Picture the Canadiens in the Stanley Cup final times ten.

The Athletic are unlike any other football team in the league in that all their players are from the Basque Country, while big-budget teams like Barcelona recruit the best players from around the world. Athletic fans are particularly rabid, as their fandom is tied up in nationalism. Some even consider the Himno del Athletic (sung here by hundreds of school children), the unofficial national anthem of the Basque Country.

The anticipation of the Copa final was incredible. Thirty thousand Basques took time off work to fly to Valencia for the final. Here in Bilbao, storefronts and balconies had been flying the red and white Athletic flag for weeks. Kids and teachers alike came to school in red and white. Several huge screens were set up all around the city, and the San Mamés stadium was sold out for an evening of music and the game on the big screen. Thousands and thousands of people, dressed in red and white, filled the streets as of the afternoon for the 10pm game.

But they lost the game. The ecstatic buzz that was in the air before the game turned into palpable disappointment. But the pride that Bilbainos have for their team meant that most people partied into the wee hours in spite of the letdown, as if to prove their unconditional love for the Athletic. But unlike Canada or the US after such a stunning loss, there was very little violence: very few fights, no rioting, and only a bit of vandalism.

Friday afternoon the Athletic returned to Bilbao from Valencia. The crowd that came out to see the team give a speech on the balcony of the town hall, and the city-wide party that ensued, was almost as impressive as Wednesday night. In any case, more than you'd expect for the losing team, or, the sub-campeones as they were being called on the Athletic website.

Basauri, circa late 70's

Basauri, the town south of Bilbao where I work, had more marches, protests and conflict than most barrios in Basque Country during the tumultuous transition from dictatorship to democracy in the late 70's.

Police presence was constant, political activism the usual motivation for their harrassment, as the Basques were mobilizing and demanding political autonomy over Euskadi. One of my colleagues told me it was nothing strange to have the police raid the high school where she studied.

One day, they arrested a kid from her school, and held him in the police station overnight, for political reasons. The following day the whole school, students, teachers, and staff, marched to the police station, demanding to know what was going on. The police came out, told them to go away, or they'd open fire on the group.

My co-worker got trampled in the crush of students running away as the police threatened to shoot. "In the end I got hurt just as bad as if the police had come out and beat us up," she told me.

Intercultural fascination #560

Deodorant.

Sometime back in the 90's, when the anti-CFC backlash was happening in North America, they stopped selling spray deodorant. Chloroflorocarbons in the atmosphere for the sake of dry armpits? Switch 'em all to solids and roll-ons, the producers said. Except somewhere along the line roll-on deodorant disappeared too, and now for all intents and purposes, in a Canadian drugstore, it's solids or au naturel.

But not here. I'm happy to report that spray deodorant is alive and well.

I was reluctant to embrace it at first, but now I will never turn back. Not only is it less annoying for your skin and clothes, it's FUN to put on! Pppsssssshhhhhhtt! Pppsssssshhhhhhttt!

This is what intercultural exchange is really about.

Feria de abril at Cafe Iruña

I can finally have something to say when people ask me about all the flamenco I must be seeing here in Spain.

We all grow up with national stereotypes, and some people never outgrow them. Some friends are surprised when I tell them the Spain isn't all wall-to-wall sangria and tapas and "Olé" and running of the bulls and rain falling on the plains. Each region has its own culture and traditions. Think about it: Do kids in Toronto sing Barret's Privateers and Rita MacNeil in school? Do they eat pâté chinois in Whitehorse?

Flamenco just isn't part of the cultural fabric of the Basque Country. But Cafe Iruña in Bilbao, through it's architecture, menu and cultural events, is more evocative of Southern Spain than of the North. And for the last 25 years they have a series of events coinciding with the Feria de Abril, the week-long spring festival that happens every year in Seville.

Saturday night was a flamenco show. Three dancers, a singer and a guitarist performed a spell-binding show, bookended by willing (and less-willing) amateurs dragged onto the stage from the audience to dance by an enthusiastic member of the public in a bullfighter's suit. When the musicians left the stage, DJ'ed flamenco music gave the by then well-lubricated audience something to try out their own flamenco skills to. Thing were going strong when we left at 2.

Now all that's left is for me to see some bullfighting...

Casa rual in Asturias

Asturias. Paraíso Natural.

The Asturian tourist board's slogan reflects what people from all over Spain think of this long, thin province on the Cantabrian sea: Rolling green hills, quaint seaside and mountain villages, cider and fabada beans, and more cows and sheep than people.

It's a popular tourist destination, and though I'd just been there about a month before, I tagged along with a group of friends who had rented a casa rural for the May 1st long weekend. I wouldn't fault you for expecting a rugged country cottage when you hear the term casa rural--that what I did. But the place they lined up was anything but rugged: newly renovated house that slept 12, complete with jacuzzi, pool, outdoor terrasse and BBQ, sound systems and flat-screen TV, a big yard and a cow field right across the fench.





You'll notice the 11 people I spent the weekend with conscpicuously absent from these photos. I forgot my camera, and had to rely on someone else's photographic memories of the weekend. And the photos captured in one 4 hour stint of debauchery don't accurately represent the otherwise laidback weekend of chilling out, walks on in the country, elaborate multi-course meals, and visits to quaint seaside villages. So you'll just have to use your imagination...

Semana Blanca

A European appreciation of vacation combined with the leftovers of a once strictly Catholic society means that we civil servants get time off whenever a religious holiday rolls around. This week is Semana Blanca- Carnaval and the beginning of Lent- and so my high schools are closed all week! It would have been the perfect week to take off travelling, but unfortuantely the private sector isn't so generous with its vacation time, and at the language school where I work evenings it's business as usual.

Enter day trips. Northern Spain has a compact concentration of places I have yet to see, and the public transportation that will get you there and back in the same day. So I've been taking advantage of my week off and the unseasonably sunny weather we've been having to get out of Bilbao. (In Bilbao, when you see the sun, you'd better run outside and take advantage of it, because you never know when you'll see it again. )

Monday's destination was Santander with Kristine and an American friend of hers visiting from Ohio. Santander: coastal port city; encircled by beaches; summer tourist magnet but wonderfully quiet off-season. We took advantage of their free-use bike network and went from beach to beach and park to park on wheels, dodging old couples strolling on the seaside promenades. The Basque cities I've visited have these dense medieval centres of winding, narrow stone alleys. Santander's history doesn't go back quite as far. The streets are broad, airy, elegant.

Wednesday was a visit to Durango, 30 kms inland from Bilbao. My friend Julen's from there, and he showed me around the city, which has one of those dense medieval centres I just mentioned. Historically speaking, Durango was isolated for a long time, nestled between two chains of mountains, a river, and protected against invaders by a stone fort and two massive stone churches. When we left the city to go for a hike in Parque Natural Urkiola, history was put into perpsective. From the top of the peak we climbed, with mountains on every side, you could see how any army wanting to take Durango would have had quite the climb ahead of them.

Onstage at the Arriaga!

I've made my European debut as a non-speaking theatre extra, and at Bilbao's oldest, most prestigious theatre, to boot.

Cosmético del enemigo was playing last night at the Teatro Arriaga. It's a four-hander that takes place in an airport lounge. And how better to create the airport atmosphere than to have people sitting on stage throughout the performance?

An actor friend is friends with one of the actors in the show; they were looking for extras, and my friend asked me if I'd like to join him and his troupe on stage. I accepted of course. It was basically a chance the see a play for free, and up close and personal with the actors.

Here's the view from the stage:

The show was great. Good thing, because falling asleep on stage would have been pretty embarrasing.

Here are my partners in crime; the other actors on stage with me. ( It was Carnaval, hence why one guy is dressed up in a kilt and wig.)

Industrial history of Bilbao

With a few well-written exceptions, I don't tend to get much out of history books. Something gets lost for me-either in the transformation of real-life actions and events to the written word, or from the page to my imagination. I'd read bits of pieces of Bilbao's industrial history, but a boat trip down the Nervion on Friday has helped bring it all together into a soup of images and anecdotes that resonates much more than a list of dates and facts can.

It was a chilly grey morning, but at least it wasn't raining. The river was calm when I ( and a group of high school history students and teachers from Arrigorriaga) climbed onto a fishing boat the port of Santurtzi, where the river meets the ocean. The following hour, as we travelled downriver tot eh centre of Bilbao, was like a visit to a living museum. Historical houses that used to be the homes of rich factory owners. Functioning factories and abandoned ones. Shipbuilding facilities dwarfing the industrial warehouses-cum-artists' studios on the shore behind them. Rotting remnants of fishing docks that can't be removed for fear of stirring up the century-old toxic layer of debris on the riverbed. Old men fishing and joggers pushing strollers along the riverside promenade. The old warehouses and houses they're planning to tear down to build a Manhattan-esque island of luxury condos in the middle of the river. Scrap metal and cranes and abandoned train cars.

The students didn't really seem to care too much about what we were seeing, so I was the eager student the teachers were more than happy to share their knowledge with.

Liendo, Cantabria

Iratxe and Txema should be sponsored by the municipality of Liendo. They absolutely love living there and will tell you exactly why: the peace and quiet, the space, the green, it's proximity to a variety of beaches and mountains, hiking and biking trails...and it's only ten minutes from beach-town Laredo, and 30 from Bilbao! Their friends and family thrive on the convenience of city-living and therefore think they're crazy to live "in the middle of nowhere". City living in the Basque country means the butcher's, the baker's and the candlestick maker's all within walking distance from your house, and daily afterwork get-togethers at bar on the corner for catching up over a wine and a pintxo. Unless you're a farmer, why would you want to live in the country?

But from a North American perspective, they live no farther from the major amenities than most drive-to-get-a-loaf-of-bread suburban communities. Except, well, you can buy fresh bread everyday at the general store in the centre of the village (this is Spain, after all). I'm all about city living myself, but at the end of an idyllic weekend at their place, I was ready to move into the spare bedroom and stay put.

My visit coincided with a mid-winter warm snap, and we sure took advantage of it. We biked around the winding roads of the valley, up the mountain, down to a secluded rock beach. We saw houses built in the medieval stone houses, expansive hilltop views of the Atlantic, and at different moments had to stop to let a donkey, and a herd of sheep cross our paths. They showed me various beaches, parks and lookoffs around Laredo. Sunday it was even warm enough to eat lunch outside on their patio.

CanCon, pt. 1

I was taking questions about Canada from a bunch of grade sevens the other day. They wanted to know everything about Canadian food and animals. We had a computer in the room, so every time they would ask about an animal, I would quickly Google image search it and put a picture up on the screen so that they could see it.

Did you know that if you Google image search "skunk", you get 2 pages full of pictures of marijuana buds? And that amongst the search results for "raccoon" you get this picture of a dog screwing one?

Neither did I. Or the grade sevens. But they do now.

Santa Águeda

February 5 is the feast-day of Santa Águeda, a martyred Italian saint from the third century, and apparently patron saint of married and breast-feeding women (because as part of her torture Águeda had her breasts cut off.) Groups of children (in the morning), and adults (in the evening), go around in traditional Basque dress singing songs specific to the occasion. The choirs stand in the round and pound sticks on the ground to keep time as they sing. You can listen to audio and read the words to the songs in Basque and Spanish here. As accompanies the majority of traditional festivities in the Bilbao, there is some drinking and general carousing in the Casco Viejo of Bilbao tonight after the groups have finished singing.

Santa Águeda is nothing major; apart from school kids that visit the neighbourhood old folks' homes, only choirs or groups of friends that like to sing take part. But having my otherwise routine evening interrupted by singing on the street below my building was a pleasant surprise.
One of the most interesting parts of living in the Basque Country is observing how people relate to their roots and how seemingly every couple of weeks I get to be part of a different tradition.

Really?!!??

This random British guy at a party congratulated me the other day on being a McGill grad. "Wow, oh my god, it has such an amazing reputation! It's one of the top 50 in the world, I'm so impressed, you should be proud."

WTF???!!!!!! And he wasn't even drunk!

Is a rose still a rose?

Basque language was completely banned under Franco. Until his death in the mid-seventies, you could get arrested for speaking in in public. Basque-speaking kids would get beaten at school when they'd show up to kindergarten not knowing much Spanish and without realizing a few words of their mother tongue would slip out.

This I knew. But I recently learned that Basque names were banned too. So, little Julen or Agurtzane or Karmele would show up at school and be told by the teacher that their names were not acceptable and they would now have to answer to their Spanish equivalents: Julián, Rosario, or María del Carmen. Same thing when you went to have your national ID card made. So when Franco died, everyone ran to the public registry and finally got their REAL names put on their ID cards.

Lack of 'recul'

In some ways I suck as a blogger, for the same reason I suck as a photographer. I'm not referring to my lack of technical know-how, but about the hard time I have stepping out of the moment to be an observer. I could be at a parade, and the floats could be vivid and picturesque, and the atmosphere palpable and it could be a people-watching paradise, but I'll probably end up opting to leave my camera in my bag and keep enjoying the show. And sometimes later I'll regret not having any photos of the moment. But sometimes I'll be content to have absorbed the moment into my memory.

And it can be the same with a blog. When life's full and fun, sometimes it can seem like if you sit down and write about it, you'll miss out on something. Which is why I have a huge list of draft entries from the last month that will soon be filled out with the details on my birthday, Christmas and New Year's, and my recent trips to Madrid and Barcelona. Now that life's slowed back down into the ease of routine, there's lots of time for a little stepping out of frame.