Beautiful Barça

I arrived in Barcelona by bus in the afternoon, and even though the bus ride from Bilbao via Zaragoza was long, it wasn't too much effort since the bus left so early in the morning that I spent the first three hours fast asleep. And once awake, the Spanish landscape is quite a marvelous view, so no need to feel bored.

In Barcelona a very dear friend of mine from Sweden came to stay for a few days, so we rented a room in an apartment inhabited by a quiet couple. After the first day's steady and very heavy rain, we enjoyed two wonderfully sunny days as Barcelona - as always - lived up to the expectations of a good vacation. When food is good, easy, everywhere and (at least for a Swedish traveller) cheap, and the same goes for beer and coffee, you can be happy with or without large events or tourist attractions. If feeling inclined to enjoy those, they are everywhere and most of them even accessible by walking in between.
When the rain poured down, we made the best of the day by spending some time at the food market hall next to La Rambla, a feast both for tongue and eyes.

And after walking a few blocks getting soaked, there's always a bar around the corner serving delicious drinks... I made a little bit of a fuss about the choice of name for this bar's sugar-free cocktail alternative. The poor bartender (who had no responsibility for naming the drinks) tried to calm me down by saying that Swedish girls were so sweet already we don't need any sugar...

Next day the sun was gracing us with its presence, so we spent a couple of hours in the always amazingly impressive Parc Güell. Discovering both the highest point of the park and marveling at the views over the city from its different hills, and also strolling along the secret little paths between trees and bushes on the backside of the hill, it was truly a peaceful start of the day.

Apart from Parc Güell, Gaudí is super famous for the crazy church building Sagrada Família. I have seen it before and found it ugly, but being there again I have to admit it is quite impressive. The weirdest thing is probably not the almost disgustingly overworked millions of details, but that it is actually located in a street corner with houses and buzzy streets creeping almost all the way up to the entrance. It is at the same time a praise to and a disgusting display of abundant art and the human creation of a palace not for those who need one, but for a god who already has his heaven.

Another really famous Gaudí building is the more simplistic yet wonderfully playful La Pedrera, a house to live in (though a bit too luxuriously designed for most people).

But most art and architecture in Barcelona is beautiful and interesting, so for those of us who like buildings, monuments and streetlights, the whole inner city is a large treasure-chest.

Evening sun and a walk along the former Olympic site and La Barcelona was a good way to wrap a sunny day up before having a late paella for dinner.

On the Saturday at lunchtime I was picked up by car by a Spanish man who passed Barcelona on his way to Valencia, which was my next stop for the three weeks in Spain. How that was different to Barcelona in many ways, you'll get to know next time.

Bohemian Bilbao

I arrived in Bilbao by bus from San Sebastián, and like always in Basque country it was raining... I soon learnt that it always and never rains in Bilbao - it seldom pours down, but there is almost always microscopic drops of water hanging around in the air. So it is quite grey, but you never get really soaked. Despite the weather, I truly liked this funky, arty city that over the past twenty years has gone from industrial to culturally bohemian and mundane.



I stayed as a Couchsurfing guest - that is, you stay with a local for free and get to enjoy the everyday life of the place - with a Spanish woman a few years older than me. Her apartment was big enough for a family, so I actually had my own bedroom, my own bathroom, and my own little office where I could sit for work overlooking the river. A fat cat was also included in the stay, which of course made me even happier!

On my first evening, my host invited me to come along to a beer festival in an old industrial block at the other end of the city. Two of her friends, a Bilbao guy and a newly graduated Argentinian student, also came along. We tried different locally brewed artisanal beers, and I got into bed a lot later/earlier than normal. Therefore the Sunday was mostly spent catching up on sleep, doing some work and having dinner with my host.

Unfortunately the Guggenheim museum was closed on Mondays, so I did not have the opportunity to enter, but even the building itself is quite interesting to see and from outside I could admire the great Louise Bourgeois' Maman.

Apart from city centre sightseeing, I also took the metro to a more suburban area to see the Unesco World Heritage Site of Puente Viscaya - the great Biscaya bridge/Colgante bridge from 1893. The small ferry traveling hanging from underneath the bridge takes pedestrian passengers as well as a few cars. But I also braved the heights of the bridge (though I nearly fainted in the glass elevator taking me up to the top, but was saved by a very friendly Spanish lady). The view over the river and the outskirts of Bilbao was amazing enough to make it worthwhile!

However short my stay, I will remember Bilbao as a vibrant but calm and very friendly place. Early on the Tuesday morning I set off by bus again, this time heading for sunny Barcelona, where a dear friend of mine from home came to visit and I took a few vacation days to drink cheap beer and enjoy the sun. More about that in my next update. In the meantime I hope you are all doing well back home, I miss everyone dearly although I must say I am not ready to come home any time soon...

Seducida por San Sebastián

If you later ask me where I truly fell in love with this trip I am doing, I am going to say I was seduced by San Sebastián. This is one of the most amazingly beautiful, peaceful and easy-going cities I have ever been to.





I got in French driver Typh's little Peugeot outside Bordeaux around lunchtime. Along with us went also a Spanish girl my age, and after a short turn-off from the highway to a tiny French rural village in the middle of nowhere (with maybe fifty houses and two churches) we picked up a Spanish guy. He did not speak any other language than Spanish, though living in France, and I did not understand many words he said, which all made me a little bit curious to find out how I was going to communicate once in Spain... Though the girls reassured me that his Andalusian accent is impossible even for a lot of northern Spanish people to understand.

We arrived in a rainy San Sebastián (Donostia which is the Basque name and this is very important to them), I took the bus to Antigua which is a quiet part of town just by the surf beach. I rented a room at a very nice young couple, two guys from Brazil studying in San Sebastián. They were interested in theatre and musicals and had travelled a lot themselves, so we obviously had a lot to talk about and they welcomed me as a long-known girlfriend.


Thursday evenings in San Sebastián means free pintxos (tapas) at many bars, so I picked the most popular one on the street, where it was crowded with Basque-Spanish people aged 3-83 or so (!). A beer was €2 and I eat enough deep-fried gambas, creamy tuna on bread roll, deep-fried potatoe croquettes and deep-fried pimientos to not have to buy a proper dinner. Then I tried a walk on the beach, but wind and rain made it everything but pleasant, so quite early bedtime for me.

Next day I had breakfast at a café around the corner and a hailstorm broke loose for a few minutes. I had gotten the advice not to trust weather forecasts here, and that was good advice - the forecast had said grey rain all day, but after the intense hail storm it cleared up, got sunnier and sunnier and after having climbed the hill Monte Urgell to see the saint statue that overlooks the city, I sat on a bench having fresh strawberries, bananas and cold drinks for lunch. However, every Basque carries an umbrella, because there may always be a quick shower in the afternoon even on a good day this time of year. Luckily, I spent that time in a very dark and original café where they surprisingly had free wifi so I could work a little. I also wandered through the winding little streets of the Old City.

Pintxos for dinner again seemed like a good idea even though I would have to pay for them, so I went back to the same bar and had tortilla de patatas. Then I had been advised by everyone to have seafood, so I tried a seafood salad... the only seafood that seemed edible to me was the gambas, the other creatures looked like grey worms,  and when I cut my tomato they sort of quivered. I had to look out the window instead of at the plate when swallowing tomatoes and salad. No more unknown seafood for me.

But, social life in this bar was very entertaining! When I did not understand, they would patiently use different words, point, speak slower etc, and I thought they were very polite not switching to English. Until I realized most of them probably did not speak English. I worked hard on smiling to get away with my linguistic mistakes... An "elderly" Basque man (at least 80) found my hat funny (he had a real Basque beret of course), so I had a conversation with him. He was ever so surprised I had been taught Spanish in a Swedish school, and even more so when I told him it is actually the most popular third language to learn in Sweden. It turned out he was horrified - to him Spanish is the "evil oppressors' language" and he thought Swedish schools should teach Basque instead if they had to teach other languages at all! He was however very friendly to me, and it was a very interesting Spanish lesson (or castellano, because "Spanish is just a passport nationality" according to this man).

The evening was not too cold and it did not rain, so I went for a long walk back and forth along the ocean, also sitting down just watching the waves come in.

 

Midday yesterday I left San Sebastián, thinking that had I known what a wonderful place on earth that is, had I planned to stay longer. But, Bilbao was waiting for me, which is no bad place either - I will tell you more about it next update.