Basque Country: Part II, San Sebastian

So, on day two we headed over to San Sebastian which is another city on the coast near France, also in Basque country. It was about an hour and 15 minute bus ride from Bilbao, round trip 19 euros which I didn't think to be too bad. A lot of the city is pretty stereotypically Spanish looking, but its the coast that makes it especially nice. Here's a picture of the obligatory cathedral in town.
This is a picture of part of the beach here. At low tide its enormous, but high tide covers up almost the entire thing. There were a bunch of kids playing in a beach soccer tournament when we first got there.
The project of the day was climbing a very large hill to get to the castle on top. The castle wasn't much, but the view from there was incredible. The picture below shows the castle on the right which has the enormous statue on top of it and the one below that is the view. Clicking on any of the pictures in the blog makes them bigger and therefore cooler.

After the hike, we decided to go and get la comida at an actual restaurant. It was the first time that I'd gone to a restaurant since I got here outside of tapas. It was a long wait and the food was okay, and it was a bit pricey, but it worked.

The last picture here is from a plaza kind of place at the end of the beach where an art exhibit had been permanently installed. We read about it in the museum of fine arts that we went to in Bilbao, so we figured we should actually go and see it while we were in San Sebastian and had nothing to do. They're called wind combs. That's all I got.
Last night, we tried to go out as the Basques do as all we had to do today was get back to Salamanca. We started by drinkig some calimocho (a mix of red wine and cola, not as repulsive as one would originally believe) out of coke bottles in a plaza. Then we figured out that Basques are infinitely sketchier than Salamantinos. About 10 minutes after getting to the plaza, this guy who was speaking a combination of Spanish, English, and Basque tried to sell Tyler coke, as in cocaine and kept making him listen to his Ipod. We then escaped that guy and followed where most people were headed only to find the sketchiest road I have ever been on. 10 times over. Everyone was either 16 or 25 and were dressed up in clothing that was something between goth-holloween-random, there was almost no street light and it reeked of urine from all the guys just peeing on the street. I guess this is fairly common as water trucks have to drive through the city every morning and wash away whatever was left the night before. Well, the girls from IES that also happened to be in Bilbao that weekend went home after we finished the calimocho and the rest of us just wandered around to a couple different places on a much less sketchy street. But then we ran into this guy named Abdul from Ghana we followed us around for a bit. The night finished off as any night out should, at a Doner Kebab place. So good.

This is about to be a paragraph of random things that I forgot to mention earlier in these posts. Let's see, well, our hostel was alright, but smelled heavily of old people and was very, very dull. It worked though. Jen, Sarah, and Martha happened to plan a trip to Bilbao for the same weekend so we met them for pintxos one night and then for a bit on Saturday night. I've decided that Basque may actually just be made up as I didn't hear anyone having an actual conversation in it, only Spanish, but all of the signs were in Basque before anything else. Also, they want their independence. A lot. They have some elections coming up in a couple weeks, and on huge bilboards all over Bilbao there were signs that said "Independientes para vivir mejor" and cars that drove around that blasted music to support one candidate. The say we went to San Sebastion, there was a huge protest in Bilbao and a bunch of people were arrested and there was somethinga about a bus being attacked. I dunno. Speaking of buses, there bus system is called Bilbobus which I found amusing. Also, Bibao is a city of 350,000 and they have a freaking metro system. I can see why they want their independence considering that their infinitely more wealthy than most of Spain and have to help the rest of the Spaniards pay for stuff at a greater share. Oh well.

Took the 6 hour bus ride back to Salamanca today and got in about 5 pm. Overall, the trip went very smoothly, and it was a lot of fun. Definitely glad I got to see it, it's a very interesting place to go and visit. Next weekend, Carnaval in Cádiz! Leave Thursday night, should be a good time!

Basque Country: Part I, Bilbao

I finally left Salamanca this weekend! Reid, a guy Tyler from Occidental on our trip, and I went to Basque Country for the weekend. We left Salamanca right after we got out of our Grammar class on Thurday at 2:45 and got into Bilbao at 8:45, which is the capital of the Basque Country, one of the 19 autonomous communities in Spain. The bus ride and three nights in a hostel cost 100 euros each which seems like a pretty good deal. The first night we went to get pinchos, or pintxos as you spell it in Basque, and then walked around Bilbao for like almost three hours, which was nice, but exhausting. Everything is definitely more expensive there though, not like poor old Salamanca.

Friday we spent the day at museums in Bilbao, mostly in the Guggenheim. The actual Guggenheim museum itself is an incredible building. Out in front there is an unnervingly large sculpture of a West Highland White Terrier that blooms with flowers during most of the year. Our guidebook said that it was supposed to be a welcoming and friendly entrance peice, but I just found it kind of terrifying. I have a feeling it has to do with a certain highly overprotective Westie that I am quite familiar with.


We were in the museum for about 3 hours or so, the first exhibits, like this LED panel by Jenny Holzer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrNVgRu5UWk, were definitely the best in my opinion. I tried for a while to find the words that were being shown on the screens but it seems like that's a lost cause. The whole second floor was work done by this one artist Cy Twombly whose work was interesting to say the least. A lot of crayons and random numbers on canvas, such as this, but more crayon and less order http://www.artchive.com/artchive/t/twombly/twombly_wheeler_dtl.jpg. I liked a couple of his works, but not the blocks of wood painted white and then called a boat sculpture.We bought Subway for lunch, which tasted exactly like the ones in America, just $13 for a meal instead of the 6 or 7 it is normally. We then played on this aweome playground. It was awesome. It would never exist in the U.S. as you are more likely than not to be seriously injured while playing on it which is why it was so awesome. That was definitely a theme in Basque Country, as in a general lack of railings and protective construction.
One last comment on the 30 foot spider in this picture. It was terrifying. But then we listened to an audio commentary on it and apparently the sculptuist was inspired by her mother who she loved very much. Odd stuff.
Once again, beautiful building.

First weeks of class

Sorry for the highly delayed posting, the last few weeks have been crazy busy, but not really. It's more like I just keep forgetting to update.

I've now officially been registered for my classes which are: Advanced Grammar and Syntax II, The Franco Regime, Literature and Politics in Spain in the 19th and 20th century, Economy of Modern Spain, and Surrealism in Spain. While I was hoping to take at least one class at the actual University of Salamanca with Spanish students, that just didn't work out. I tried out 4 different university classes and either didn't like the subject matter or the professor. In the end, it should work out fine though.

I added in a few pictures here that I took on my way home from class one night.


So far, the workload has been very light which is really nice. I have Fridays off for the first, last, and only time in my life! Woo! Each one of my classes has one essay due on April second, so I should prob start on those as I have midterms before them. But once again, a midterm, a final, and one paper; not all that difficult. We'll see though, you never know how things end up working out.

In other news, I've been spending a whole lot of money. Mostly on food as I'm trying to enjoy eating at least a little bit. Whenever I make a bigger meal, its usually with Reid and they've come out pretty well so far. I've also decided that if I don't come back ten pounds heavier after this semester considering the amount of chocolate, churros, and doner kebabs I've been eating, I have a tapeworm.

Molly and Jessica from Amherst came to Salamanca last weekend for a trip from Madrid where they're studying. I showed them around a little bit and ended up seeing them out on Saturday night. It was sooo cold that weekend though which was really unfortunate.

Life in Salamanca has been otherwise pretty stable, nothing all that exciting going on. I got my hair cut the other day which I thought could turn out disasterous considering the number of mullets I see on the streets, but it came out more or less fine. The people in the residencia had dinner together last week which was a really nice change of pace. The weather has vastly improved as well going from rainy every day to sunny every day and in the mid 50s. I'll try and update a little more often from now on as I feel I'm forgetting things that I've done.