Vamos a Espana!
Beepbeep. beepbeep. beebeep. beepbeep. beepbeep. beepbeep. beepbeep. beepbeep. beepbeep. My alarm beeps nine times. I wait until the last beep before I tell myself I have to get up. Arrggh, I moan. And the sneaky thought passes through my head: Do I really want to go to Spain today? Wouldn’t I much rather stay in bed? I could just pull up the covers and sleep all day. At 6.15am its not going to be light for at least….two hours. But I suppose if one wants to get out of the caravan once in a while and go to far and distant countries, one must really get up….Quite uncharacteristically I had successfully prepared everything the night before, to the point of putting my packed bag in the car ready for the four hour drive to Dublin, and laying out my days outfit – carefully selected so that my shoes match my bag. You see it pays to be fashionable at 6.30am when you’re going to spend four hours in the car in the dark.
So after slipping into my ensemble I started up the car and tried to back out of the carpark but something was holding us back. Like too much friction. Like that familiar feeling of a seized wheel…damn you Henry and your car arthritis. Forward, then back, then forward, then back, and with a clunk we were rolling again. If this is what has happened after three days of sitting immobile, I am now very nervous about leaving my car at Dublin airport for seven days. But I’ll kick that wheel when I come to it. For now, vamos a Espana! I wont describe for you the four hour journey to the airport along motorways, through roadworks, in the dark, in the rain, as Im sure you can imagine for yourself. I wont describe the transition through the airport from check-in to customs to boarding as it was all thoroughly routine, no toothpaste testings, no marmite confiscations, I didn’t even have to show my liquids.
The plane trip from Dublin to Bilbao was also uneventful apart from my unfortunate seat assignment behind the one man determined to recline his seat as far as possible so that I had a much too close a view of his shiny bowling ball pate, and who then proceeded to lean forward and back against my knees every time his wife (whose seat was fully upright) said something. And unfortunately for me his wife talked a lot.
From Bilbao airport I emerged into a mild 20 degree afternoon and after the obligatory 5 minutes walking in circles, I found my way onto a bus to the city. In the city I used my powers of Spanish to find a bus to the youth hostel, and I knew it was the right bus when I got on and heard Crowded House playing on the radio. Who knew they got airplay in Basque Country?
The hostel is huge, with a sporting complex, 8 floors, and a cafeteria style breakfast, lunch and dinner that reminds me of Saved By the Bell (or enter equivalent high-school comedy of your choice here). As I write this, some guy is muttering and shaking one of the automatic vending machines…He’s getting pretty angry…I think it must have insulted him…Time for me to leave the cafeteria……
I caught the bus into the city on my first morning here and got off at the last stop just outside the centre which gave me a chance to walk in and see what it was all about. As usual I was wearing my all season Haviana jandals. Im used to being the only person in whole European cities wearing jandals as in Europe they are generally considered to be water paraphernalia, for showering or swimming. But what I did not count on here was Bilbao being a city of dog lovers. And dog lovers like to walk their dogs. And walked dogs like to leave little doggie doo-doos behind them. I saw one unlucky woman not watch where she was walking in her designer-looking high heeled boots step right in a neat little pile and then try and smear it back onto the pavement muttering something about ‘los perros’ (the dogs) and several other things that Im sure translate into words that may be removed by the moderator. That was not at all hilarious….
And there wasn’t actually a lot of it sprinkled around because Bilbao on a whole is a very tidy city, but to make matters worse it was coming into autumn and there are quite a few deciduous trees in the city, which were moulting brown leaves all over the ground. I’d see these patches of brown in the corner of my vision, and not knowing whether they be benign or stinky I’d have to suddenly hop over or past them. I have to say I regretted my footwear decision for the rest of the day. If I knew the Spanish for “look at that crazy hopping lady in flip-flops” Im sure I would have heard people saying it.
As it turned out, my powers of Spanish were far worse that I had imagined. People could understand me fine but the problem is that when you learn Spanish you generally learn questions not answers. So when I ask at a Pensione if there is a single room for the next night, I would expect a simple si or no at the beginning of the reply. Instead, when I did actually do this I got a string of words, several sentences, inflections and gestures. No si’s or no’s. No nods or shakes of the head. I ask again. I get more words, a shrug and hear the words for only two single rooms. So I gather that they only have two rooms and they don’t know yet if they will be available. Either that or the guy I was speaking to was just the cleaner and had no clue. He was holding a broom after-all. I can tell you that my Charades skills have greatly improved, and I have perfected the words: Lo siento, no entiendo.
Anyway it is possible to enjoy Spain without having to understand the natives. Deaf people do it all the time (Not counting lip-reading Spanish deaf people). And in terms of city planning, Bilbao is an enjoyable and interesting city to walk through. There are pedestrian crossings everywhere that I soon found require the pedestrian to walk straight out into the path of oncoming traffic with confidence that they will definitely stop, or wait until a Bilbao native did this and then walk on the outside of them so they are between you and the cars just incase.
But many of the pedestrian crossings had traffic lights also, and when the little walking man lights up red or green,so do lights on small barrier posts lining the street. Perhaps this is actually not a new idea but to me it was pretty cool. Subway entrances are covered by rounded worm-like plastic shelters which is a bit of a weird description I sure so here’s a photo: Worm Covers. There are advertising boards that electronically show the time and temperature. The seats in the parks vary, some double, some single, some clustered, some alone, some back to back, some facing each other, some with footstools even. This “new town” is separated from the old town by a river and there is a tram that runs from the end of one town to the end of the other.
Aside from hopping dogshit I spent the day wandering around, shopping and sampling the local chocolate (sea-salt todays favourite). I found one of the ever ubiquitous kebab shops for lunch and a Subway for dinner to avoid all the expensive looking restaurants with their clean pointy napkin displays. I bought a giant apple for 1.04euro (that’s a $2 apple!!). I took some preliminary shots of the outside of the spectacular Guggenheim museum on my way back to the hostel, just warming up for the visit tomorrow.
I had hoped to stay an extra third night at the hostel but they were full the next night, and anyway by the end of the day I remembered why I usually stick to small coastal towns. The exhausting pace of the city, ever-present smog and cigarette smoke to name a few things. Tomorrow I will see the inside of the Guggenheim before catching a bus to Santander where I expect to find more of sun, sand and surf, and hopefully less dog poop.
Tags: 1
Em
Leave a Reply