Whoever said, ¨Life´s about the journey, not the destination.¨ clearly had nowhere important to be. I, on the other hand, had an unimagineably important date with the beach today. Sadly, I chose to wear flip flops my brother lent me, and which couldn´t have cost much more than a cheeseburger or a movie rental. oooooouch. I learned how to say ¨Band-Aid¨today. Anyway, I made sure I was on the 10AM bus out of Bilbao to San Sebastian (¨Donostia¨ in Basque) to dip my toes in the Bay of Biscay before leaving this wonderful country in a few days. The photo above...that´s San Sebas.
I made the capital of the province of Guipúzcoa by 11:30AM, explored the old part of town situated on its cozy little peninsula over the noon hour, had a nice bocadillo (baguette sandwich) with jamón and a beer at 1PM and was on the beach by 2PM, which gave me a wonderful three hours before I needed to get back to the station for the return trip. San Sebastian is gorgeous, as are the half-nude people who inhabit its beaches on sunny days. It´s a nice change. We need some of that mentality in the U.S... Maybe we could reallocate some of out military spending after G-dub is gone, perhaps to re-zone some of California and South Carolina to be beaches where people don´t give a sh*t if all anyone´s wearing is skivvies. (sorry. i digress.)
Yesterday was far less eventful, spent burning twenty photo CDs for the students. I spent quite a bit of time online, as well, trying to figure out housing for fall, which is still not firmed up. Uuugh. For part of the afternoon I decided to head back up the funicular for some panoramic photos, and I met a really hip, young Basque couple on the ride down. They taught me how to say hello in Euskera (it´s ¨kaixo¨, with the ¨x¨ pronounced like the ¨s¨ in ¨pleasure¨). I opted out of trying to catch a train to Logroña, the capital of La Rioja, this week...sometime in the future, perhaps. Last night, to celebrate another vice in lieu of wine, I enjoyed an evening walk to the Plaza Nueva and Siete Calles (¨seven streets¨) in old town Bilbao and I smoked a Partagás...hand-rolled in Havana.
It always seems to evoke a smile and tranquil contentment in me whenever I watch folks two generations my senior out having a good time. On the bench next to me were four or five Spaniards who, within the scope of their lifetimes, could very well have fought for or against Franco seven decades ago during the country´s horrific Guerra Civil. They were laughing, joking around with one another as the ladies fanned themselves and the men removed their black berets in gestures of disbelief, etc. The plaza was a happy place last night, lots of kids playing soccer and locals out for tapas and a ¨caña¨ (cerveza).
Other stuff worth mentioning:
- ever notice that half of the pleasure and enjoyment we derive from things and people and experiences in life is in the anticipation alone? It´s nice to look forward to things.
- my TV in the hotel has 14 channels, but boy are they exciting: two are in German, one is in Portuguese (i am getting the hang of that one, I think!), one in Italian, four in Castillian, and a handful in Basque. (Oh, and I get the CNN feed from the U.S., but the sound is really bad, so that doesn´t count.)
- the ladies and guys here do a nice job with the mullet. I´ve even spotted a good number of dread mullets. I was reading the City Pages the other day, and I noticed that Minneapolis´s own Diablo Cody is now bringing the look to the Midwest, straight from ...uh...
- Spaniards mop their sidewalks every morning
- 46,000 fans turned out for the music festival in Bilbao on the 12-14th of July...musicians included Guns & Roses (sort of musicians, I guess) and...drumroll...BEN HARPER! rock on. Tickets were 50 euros. Out of my budget.
- I still haven´t had gazpacho, Spain´s cool, tomatoey soup. Evidently north of Madrid, finding gazpacho is like finding lutefisk in Mexico City.
- the president of the U.S. is not, in fact, really a big fixture in the local papers (whew!)...except when he´s overheard telling Blair that Syria needs to tell Hezbullah to ¨cut this shit out¨. (at least, I think that´s what he said...the quote was in Spanish. His stupid grin, however, was still in Texan)
