From País Vasco to Pays Basque

I had the absolutely wonderful opportunity to travel with my Spanish family this weekend for the first time, returning to País Vasco - the region where Alemana, Findlandesa and I visited Bilbao - but this time to see San Sebastián.

San Sebastián is a beautiful seaside city with canals, churches and a beach that draws crowds of surfers. We arrived Friday evening in time to take a nighttime walk through downtown, and see the elegant old buildings lit up. We stopped for pinchos, the tapas cousin that Basque country is known for.
We did the daytime version of our tour the next morning, walking along the canals and past the churches to see them in daylight.

We adventured across the border to the French side of Basque country to visit Saint Jean de Luz - giving me my 14th country and a rare opportunity to use my French in real life. Since that mostly involved saying "un verre de vin blanc, s'il vous plaît" and "merci" to the waiters, I was feeling pretty good about myself. ...That is until I panicked that I had misunderstood when I actually hadn't, and ended up ordering both a café au lait and coffee ice cream. Ha ha ha, oops. At least there are much worse mistakes I could have made than accidentally over-caffeinating myself!
We visited another French town called Biarritz after lunch to see more of the stunning coastline before heading back to Spain.

On our way home on Sunday we did a tour of the towns along the northern coast of Basque Country. We stopped in four little towns along the way - Lekeitio, Mundaka, San Juan and Bermeo - to simply walk around, take in the ambiance, drink coffee and enjoy the sun.

Doing 'nothing' without wasting time is something the Spanish have perfected, and I wish we did better in the states. The entire trip didn't really include any definitive activities - and yet we saw 7 different towns over two days at a relaxed pace and had valuable time together.
It was exactly what I wanted from my last weekend in Spain.  

The First Lasts

With exactly one week left in Oviedo, I'm starting the torturously slow process of saying goodbye to my life here one piece at a time. I'm almost starting to get the sense that I'm living my time in Spain backwards, parting with things in the order in which I found them.

On Friday, I celebrated my last night out in Oviedo with Mica. What a difference almost six months makes! I remember the lost American girl who didn't know how to order a drink, who was beyond embarrassed when this smiling brunette was ordered to be her friend. I remember that girl, but she's disappeared since October. Mica helped me take my first step away from being that girl. She was the first solid thing I could hold on to in a situation that was occasionally overwhelming. Now, as my friend prepares for her own time abroad, I can only hope she finds her own 'Mica.' All it takes to be at home somewhere is one loving person who will welcome you into their world without judgment or reservation.

I spent the rest of the weekend with the family in Tapia, the seaside village where I hadn't been since my very first weekend in Spain. That parallel provided another bittersweet insight into how much has changed since I arrived. I have worked hard for the relationships I have with all the members of my Spanish family. I know their full value because I know the months of patience and acceptance and kindness we have mutually invested in building them. It didn't happen overnight and it wasn't always easy. It was, however, unconditionally worth it.

We made our last Friday night cookies (albeit on Sunday). Little can use the hand mixer without help now. And I am finally a bit more fluent in the metric system!

Tomorrow I'll go to Calle Gascona for my last Asturian ciders to say goodbye to Alemana and Javi.

Almost every day between now and next Wednesday I'll say goodbye to at least one friend, in fact. As painful as that is, it also leaves me with a sense of gratitude. In six short months my life in Oviedo has filled with people and places I love. The catch-22 of travelling like this is you always hope to create something that you know will be hard to leave behind.

  

The Trip Where (Almost) Everything (Almost) Went Wrong

Alemana and I finally made it to Barcelona this weekend! I've heard nothing but wonderful things from the Spanish and foreigners alike. It's a huge city with a reputation to match. Beautiful beaches! World famous nightlife! The home of Gaudi and the proud Catalán culture!
So now I'm going to express a wildly unpopular opinion:
I didn't particularly like it...

I will say this though - Alemana and I got incredibly lucky.
...Or incredibly unlucky.
It kind of depends on how you look at it.
But from my point of view everything almost went completely down the tubes more than once and somehow we always scraped by, so I choose to look at that as exceptionally good luck.

Our trip started off with the thrilling discovery of arriving at the Asturias airport to realize I hadn't brought my passport.
Not that I'd forgotten it. Oh no, no, no.
I had consciously, deliberately not brought it. I looked at it while I was packing, thought, "I need that. No I don't; I'm not leaving Spain. You should bring it anyway, just in case. Nah, don't bother." And so I left it. WTF, brain?!? I don't know what sort of self-destructive, willfully idiotic mood I was in, but I paid 50 euros for that unbelievable FAIL. It was extremely fortunate that B was home and able to put my passport into a taxi, and that we had left early enough for the airport that it could arrive in time. My adventure to Barcelona very, very nearly ended before it even began.

So we flew to Catalunya, and proceeded to wait an hour for our luggage to show up. Which resulted in us missing our last bus to P's apartment, borrowed for the weekend. Alemana teased me for buying a boxed liter of sangria and opening it on the street while we walked. A taxi ride later, our driver pointed us to the street and zoomed away. We found the correct building number... and the key didn't fit. At which point Alemana simply looked at me and said, "Pass the sangria." Turns out we were around the corner from the actual street, and we managed to proceed without any near disasters.
Until, of course, our alarm inexplicably didn't go off the next morning and we almost missed our entry time to the Sagrada Familia....

This is where things finally started looking up. Gaudi's cathedral, over 130 years into construction and still at least a decade from completion, is truly incredible. The most amazing building I've ever been in, actually. We were advised to go in mid-morning when the light would be streaming through the stained glass windows, and the effect was indeed remarkable.

 

You could spend hours in there without running out of new details to discover.
We had found out over breakfast it looked like our itinerary wasn't going to match with Javi's, a friend we'd made on the Portugal trip who also happened to be in Barcelona over the weekend. As we sat in a corner of the sanctuary pondering what to do about trying to meet with him (without the benefit of wifi to boot), he appeared out of the crowd and we were able to make dinner plans.

Alemana and I continued on to Parque Ciutadella, my second favorite place we visited all weekend. For the most part it's a plain park, with simple walking paths and a tiny lake overfilled with people in wobbly rowboats. But suddenly through the trees you catch the glint of sun hitting a gold statue. And when you get closer, you realize it's a huge fountain that looks like something straight out of the Greek myths.

We continued our walk through Port Vell and the beach, for my 

first visit (in memory) to the Mediterranean Sea.
When it was time to meet Javi for dinner, disaster loomed again. We realized we had directed him to a certain metro stop and told him he could take either of two train systems to get there, only to discover when we showed up ourselves that they actually led to two different places that were not particularly close together. On top of which, we'd agreed to meet him outside, not knowing there were two exits. And naturally we couldn't reach him by phone. So we sat and waited, and hoped he'd take the right train to the right stop and choose the right exit. And you know what? He did!
We debated between walking or taking a bus to our dinner location, but Javi's GPS said it was a 20 minute walk, so we decided to hoof it. Thirty minutes later, when we finally stopped to ask ourselves why we still weren't there yet, we found out we'd been on the very street we were wanted for at least half the time. We asked two old men which way we needed to go, and just to put the cherry on top they responded by pointing - in unison - in exactly opposite directions.

That night Alemana and I decided to try out Barcelona's renowned nightlife...
Take one: Upon arriving at the metro station after the 10 minute walk from the apartment, I realize I've forgotten my metro card.
Take two: We arrive downtown to meet Alemana's friend from back home, who is living in Barcelona. Braving Las Ramblas from the metro stop to the bar nearly provokes us to violence with the endless parade of club promoters offering bar crawl specials.
Take three: The friend and her group decide last minute to go to a different bar all the way across downtown, and Alemana and I are too fed up to continue this goose chase. We reticently accepted one of the promoters' offers, and found ourselves in a bar full of tourists. So we decided to cheer ourselves up with a continuation of last week's shenanigans.

We chose two Italians as our victims, and proceeded to convince them Alemana was Spanish and I was French and we both barely spoke English. Which was great since one of them didn't speak Spanish, and I kept using Alemana as my 'translator.' The other one took it upon himself to help us practice English and I had a ball stumbling my way through simple phrases. We started playing a game in which we made bets about where the other people were from, which was great fun - until we stumbled across a group of actual French people... Bus-ted!
I should probably feel at least a little bit ashamed about playing tricks on all the friendly innocent bystanders, but there's just nothing like a good prank to turn a dud night around. We met a Lebanese guy later that night who told us he used to convince people in bars he was a Dubai prince, so obviously we are not the only shameless liars.

Parque Güell

Saturday we visited Parque Güell, a former private residence designed by Gaudi. It was a little underwhelming in our opinion, although the area included a great overlook point to view the city from above. And where we happened to run into Javi for the third time. After spending the afternoon with him, we visited the Arc de Triomf.






The next item on the agenda was finding a mall, since - true to the spirit of our trip - I had broken my purse and Alemana had broken her sunglasses.



We went on a free walking tour through the Gothic quarter Sunday morning. Unlike our Portugal tours, we actually got to go inside some of the buildings! My favorite was Santa Maria del Mar. Not because it was necessarily the most beautiful, but because the townspeople built it for and by themselves in just 50 years, carrying the stones from the sea on their backs.
The Catalán culture and identity are fascinating. In contrast to the Euskera in Basque Country, it was fun to see how much Catalán (language) I could understand, with its similarities to both French and Spanish. Our tour guide explained the unique Catalán Christmas traditions of Caga Tió and the Caganer - literally the Shitting Log and the Shitter.

The Caga Tió functions as the Catalonian Santa Claus. It's a log with a face and a Barretina, a traditional red hat, propped up on two sticks. Starting December 8th, the beginning of their Christmas season, the children cover their Caga Tió with a blanket and feed him every day. On Christmas Eve they hit him with a stick and sing to him, encouraging him to poop out sweets and presents.
Similarly the Caganer is a distinctly Catalonian component of nativity scenes, a figure in traditional clothes, pooping in a squatting position. The tradition dates back to the 1700s, and represents how what we consume returns back to nature. His poop symbolizes good luck for the next harvest, as it fertilizes the earth. I have to say, this takes the cake as the most unique Christmas tradition I've come across.

We ended our trip to Barcelona the way we began - with good ol' Gaudi. We walked by La Pedrera and Casa Battló, two houses he designed in his colorful, ostentatious style.
Finally, Monday morning we headed home with no further complications...If you don't count the 4 wrong bus stops we went to in trying to get to the airport, anyway.

Hola, soy Milk

In honor of my 5 month anniversary with Spain, I have decided to reward myself with a laugh! I've dedicated this half year to intensively working on my foreign language skills and those of the people around me, and I know all too well the frustration involved. But I also know how making the effort opens up the world and gives you opportunities and moments of humor you never would've had otherwise. So here's my nod to all of us who have worked so hard to conquer another language! 5 months, 5 bilinguals jokes.
Laugh on, fellow multilinguals!

A Mexican magicians tells the audience he will disappear on the count of 3. He says, "Uno, dos..." and *poof* ...He disappeared without a tres.


An Englishman, a Frenchman, a Spaniard and a German are watching a street performer. The performer notices the four gentlemen have a very poor view, so he stands on a large wooden box and asks, "Can you see me now?"
"Yes"
"Oui"
"Sí"
"Ja"


What do French people call a really bad Thursday?
A trajeudi


A Spanish-speaking man is trying to buy socks in an American store. He approaches the saleswoman and tells her, "Quiero calcetines."
"I'm afraid I don't speak Spanish, but here are some suits," she offers.
"No, no quiero trajes. Quiero calcetines," he repeats.
"What about these shirts? They're on sale."
"No, no quiero camisas. ¡Quiero calcetines!"
"Here are some pants," the woman tries.
"No, no quiero pantalones. Quiero calcetines," he insists.
Finally they pass a rack with socks, and he grabs a pair excitedly. He shows them to her, exclaiming, "¡Eso sí que es!"
"Well!" says the exasperated woman, "If you could spell it, why didn't you just do that in the beginning?!"


And my personal favorite:
What if soy milk is really just regular milk introducing itself in Spanish?