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.

Pagasarri

Pagasarri is one of the many small mountains circling Bilbao. The 570m climb from sea-level Bilbao to Pagasarri's peak has always been a popular hike, and no day more so than December 21st. For the last 18 years on Santo Tomas day a group march leaves downtown Bilbao and walks up the mountain to the wine, soup, sandwiches, tortilla ( and scenic views) that await at the summit. ( Oh, and don't forget your free gift- a rugby jersey!)

I couldn't believe our luck. After a month and a half of rain almost every single day, the 21st was warm and sunny. I dragged my roomates out of bed, and though we missed the 9am start time for the official march, we figured that leaving at 10:30am we'd still make it up and down the mountain before dark.

The advantage of leaving later was that there were very few people going up at the same time as us. The disadvantage is that they were all coming down, and so we had to fight our way upstream through the crowds. (Ten thousand people were expected to reach the summit that day.) Old folks, spandex-clad joggers, and tons and tons of families braved the mud to walk half a kilometre uphill. I ran into a couple of co-workers on the trail - Bilbao's a small city after all, and even after a couple of months you start having smalltown moments.

Parking a la bilbaína

I live on the 10th floor of my apartment building, and I'm glad.

My building is surrounding by many others in a dense neighbourhood of mixed-use buildings--apartments upstairs and small businesses on the street level. If you have a car you park it in one of the deep, labyrinthine parking garages below most apartment buildings.

But not everyone's lucky enough to have underground parking. And parking street level is every man for himself. People park every which way, all over the place, double or triple parking, blocking others in, blocking the street. And if you come out and someone's car is blocking yours in, you lay on your horn with the hopes that the offending driver will come and remove their car. No matter what time of day. You keep honking...and honking... and honking..until...they... come...out...

Um, it's still not falling mainly on the plain

The headline of today's 20 Minutos (my freebie Metro newspaper of choice):

In November it rained 25 days out of 30, and the sun shone for a mere 42 hours

The corresponding front-page article goes on to give the stats that quantify the shittier-than-usual weather Bilbao's been having- litres of rain fallen, average drop in temperatures - and origin of the weather system that is causing it all.

I'm not a whiny wimp unable to put up with a little falling water! My feeling of having had it up to here with the constant rain is justified! I'm not the only Bilbaino that wants to throw herself off the Puente Euskalduna every morning when she wakes up to yet another day of bone-chilling heavy grey humidity!

The last line of the article? And December, as far as we can tell, will be more of the same.

Humid afternoons

It's cold, grey and drizzly, and I'm bundled up in a wool sweater and slippers. It's my nth cup of tea today as I sit at my computer, taking care of schoolwork, class prepping, and all the administrative tasks needed to keep my life running forward. I'm listening to CBC Radio streaming over the net, trying to keep up with the antics on Parliament Hill.

When you're abroad, you see that some habits are easily abandoned but others die hard. Tea, radio and wool socks on a grey afternoon, it seems, will only be put to the test if my next destination turns out to be Tahiti...

Chocolate caliente

Spanish hot chocolate. is. amazing.

Forget powder and hot water or mini-marshmallows. Chocolate here is a deliciously thick sludge that would choke the Nestle Quik bunny in seconds flat. It's made from solid chocolate grated and melted with hot milk or cream until it's just barely liquid enough to drink. Forget Starbuck-scale servings--a small mug is all you need. And remember to ask for a spoon, or you'll end up with a chocolately chin trying to get the last drops out of the bottom of your mug.

Biarritz, France

"There's no such thing as bad weather, only badly dressed," goes a Scottish proverb. Whether or not the Basques have an equivalent proverb, they sure take the sentiment expressed by this one to heart.

The French Basque coast is a popular tourist destination for the French and Spanish alike. In the summer. Why did we decide to go in mid-November, in the heart of one of the rainiest autumns this region has had for years? For the trip of getting away for a weekend, visiting another country, hearing another language, trying something new; basically, for the hell of it.

The French border is a little over an hour away by car on the highway. (Actually, make that lack of a border; in today's Europe, the only way you know you've crossed from one country to another is that the road signs change language.) And though Euskal Herria (Basque Country) straddles that border, the French Basque country has a flavour quite distinct from the Spanish Basque Country.

Biarritz is a tourist town, no doubt about it. And not a seaside fishing village-a NICE tourist town, with high-class hotels ( though thankfully some low-end ones too!), a selection of fine dining, and lots of quaint, yet expensive shops. The winding streets of its centre are clean and orderly. The beach is omnipresent, right in the centre of town, and there are several promendades that let you walk out on the rocks that jut out from the coast. Though it was by no means a ghost town during our visit, you could just imagine Biarritz must transform into another place altogether come summer.

The air in Biarritz was one of a pretention of classiness. Though I won't go as far as using words like haughty or snobby, there was definitely a contrast with the vibe in Bilbao, which is quite down-to-earth.

But one thing that we observed from Basques on both sides of the border was a willingness to continue with their lives despite the grey skies and windy rain that hung over the weekend. As we made our way home on Sunday the Basque coast from Biarritz through San Sebastian all the way to Bilbao was full of people making the most out of their Sunday afternoon. "What's some torrential rain to keep us from our family Sunday afternoon walk along the shore? All we need is head-to-toe raingear and a couple of humungous umbrellas."

Must be something in their genes.

¿Entrevista?

I was explaining an activity to a group of Grade Sevens the other day.

¨Prepare some questions, because you're going to interview your partner, " was greeted by raucous laughter.

"Wow," I thought to myself, "it's an interesting activity, but not THAT much fin."

Their teacher took me aside later and told me that the Spanish equivalent of Playboy is called Interview.

Vitoria-Gasteiz

If I had to evoke the landscapes of the Basque Country with one phrase, it would be red clay rooftops and lush green hills. While southern Spain chokes on dusty heat and dry plains, the north is a vibrant green.

Except in the fall, when those green hills turn yellow, brown and red. The colours aren't quite as vibrant as their Canadian counterparts, and the leaves turn about a month later than they do in at home. But fall colours are fall colours-you can't deny their prettiness

So that's why we took the back road to Vitoria-Gasteiz, a city of about 300,000 people, 45 minutes from Bilbao. The back road is longer than the highway but the extra time is made up for in pictoresque views as the hilly road winds through villages and farmland.

The road between Vitoria and Bilbao takes you uphill from sea level to about 500m, which isn't that much, but it means that there's a palpable temperature difference. On the drive into town we wondered out loud why people were walking around in gloves and scarves-and when we got out of the car we found out why. Brrrrrr. The only solution was to seek refuge in the finest of Vitoria's Chinese buffets.

When you visit most cities here, you go straight for the Casco Viejo. The architecture's medieval, the streets winding, and bars and cafes plentiful and atmospheric. Vitoria's old town surprised me in that it had a slightly different flavour than Bilbao's-much more wood in the architecture, and African and Mid-Eastern restaurants and groceries everywhere you turned. We wandered around for a long while before ending up in a bright, airy cafe that overlooked the Casco's expansive main plaza for a coffee to end off the afternoon.

The joy of Sunday afternoon day trips out of Bilbao is that they are as simple as that. There are so many sites nearby-you pop out, see what you want to see, have a bite to eat or a coffee, and you're back home by nightfall.

Canada's cultural embassadors

Simple Plan, a.k.a. the best fake-heavy, super cheezy pop-rock band to ever come out of Laval, are playing in Bilbao next week. There are posters all over the place.

I overheard two people having this huge argument in the metro over whether the name of the band was pronounced /sim-play plan/ or /sim-pool plan/. It was rally hard not to turn and tell them that the REAL pronunciation is actually /krap/.

Roasting on an open fire

I don't know what the link is between chestnuts and trains. I'd never even eaten a roasted chestnut before, but when I saw this train-shaped shack on the street the other day, I just knew that it must be someone selling hot, roasted chestnuts. Instinctively, my spidey sense just knew that's what was inside. Why a train? Don't ask me.

So I bought a dozen, in a little paper cone. I choked down the first in its shell before realizing that you remove the outside before eating. Mmmmm.

But then I had that damn song stuck in my head for the rest of the evening.

Hallowe'en in Las Arenas