Spain 04

The Basque Country

In July and August of 2004 we made another home/auto exchange, this time to the Basque country of Spain with some little side trips including into the Basque provinces of France. 

The background photo you see here is the city of San Sebastian, Spain, on the Bay of Biscay only a few miles from the French border.

Some of our photos of the trip have been posted on www.shutterfly.com.  You may view a slide show of them by going to that web site and signing in using my e-mail address, spengelm001@hawaii.rr.com and a password of "hocuspocus" (without the quotes).  On the following page click on "Northern Spain 2004."  On the next page select "View as Slideshow."

We arrived in Madrid on July 22nd and spent a few nights there.  It’s one of my favorite cities but it has changed a lot.  When I lived in Spain from '70 to '75 there was prostitution but it was very discreet.  We stayed in a hotel on the Gran Via and the hookers were all over the street from 4:00 p.m. until 7:30 a.m.  When Franco was alive he’d have had the army shoot them like rats.  It’s still a beautiful city and a lot more prosperous than when Franco was the boss.  In fact it’s downright expensive.  

When I left Spain in ’75, and for years after, I really considered the country as a possible retirement home.  With accession to the European Union the economy has advanced to the point that I couldn't afford to live here now.  In fact, when we visited Barcelona in '90 we encountered many American expatriates who were moving back to the States because the cost of living had risen so dramatically even then.

Some things have changed and some have not.  The lights in the common areas of moderately priced hotels and apartment houses still shut off automatically after two or three minutes.  On the other hand, military uniforms were conspicuous by their absence as compared to thirty years ago.  Military service is no longer compulsory and many of the old Army barracks are closed. 

We arrived in San Sebastian in the heart of the Basque country the evening of July 25th by train.  It was a pretty ride of about six hours.  This city of about 180,000 became an upper class resort on the order of neighboring Biarritz in France or Cannes at the beginning of the 20th century when doctors advised Queen Maria Christina to take her daughter (later Queen Isabella – not Columbus’ benefactor) somewhere so she could bathe in the sea.  There are many beautiful buildings in this city of three beaches, and the Parte Vieja (old part) is absolutely thronged with people having one big party.  

The apartment we lived in there for the next month is quite new and is almost as large as our home in Hawaii.  It’s in a very large, seven story building that occupies an entire block and has a large central courtyard.  The ground floor is occupied by various businesses including two bars, a video rental shop, a hairdresser and a rehabilitation center.  There are two supermarkets within 300 yards and numerous bakeries within the same distance.  The beach is about five blocks away down a street that’s lined with retail shops including several greengrocers, lots of bars, clothing shops, tour agencies, etc.  These buildings are four to six stories tall and have apartments above the shops.  A beautiful old palace sits atop a hill overlooking the beach. 

Our home and auto exchange partners were a family of four; Begoña and Miguel and the daughters, Usue, 16 years old and Libe, 12. Begoña teaches logic, mathematics and argumentation at the University of the Basque Country, Miguel is a philosophy and psychology high school teacher.  We haven’t met personally, but my friend Jolly Gamboa picked them up at the airport in Honolulu to take them to our home and he said the girls are dolls. 

The beaches in San Sebastian and the remainder of the north coast of Spain don't look much like Waikiki, but that's not to detract from their beauty.  They are lined with cabanas, beach umbrellas and flys (sun shades consisting of a blue and white striped pieces of fabric attached to evenly spaced, permanently installed uprights).  Topless sunbathing is found but the bathers cover up when moving about.  I was surprised to find the water temperature was about 70 degrees or a little warmer.  I would have expected it to be colder. 

San Sebastian isn’t a big hit with the back-packing crowd because there are few lodging places of less than three stars; real estate prices are too high for cheap lodging to be profitable.  Likewise, there aren't any cut rate clothing stores.  If you need something with quality like K-Mart or WalMart you have to go to one of the two hyper-marts on the outskirts of the city.  The locals dress pretty well, and that’s especially true of those over about 35 years of age.  Hyper-marts in France were the original model for K-Mart and WalMart. We saw two McDonald's but no other fast food chains including the home-grown variety.  This area is famous for its food and seafood is the most common.  

Regarding food, that’s one area I found a little disappointing.  It’s really difficult to find a meal that’s not loaded with cholesterol.  If you go into places selling meat at least half of the display cases are occupied by lots and lots of air cured hams, salami-type meat rolls and sausages.  Eggs are pretty difficult to escape, too, although I love them.  The Spanish tortilla is completely unrelated to the Mexican or Latin American versions.  Rather, it begins as a plain omelet.  It’s more common appearance is as an omelet made of eggs and thinly sliced, pre-cooked potatoes.  There are many variations on this theme.  This dish is similar in appearance to a whole pie and is delicious – heart attack on a plate.  A store with a good selection of cheeses will have fifty or more types.  More good news for my arteries.  And the hot chocolate!!!  You can’t believe the stuff.  It’s like drinking hot, dark chocolate pudding.  It’s often accompanied by churros, deep-fried long pastries about twice the thickness of a pencil that are absolutely indigestible and wondrously delicious.  It’s rare to be able to have vegetables as part of a meal in a restaurant unless you consider French fries a vegetable.  I think Mayumi ate paella at least seven times during the trip AND bought the special pan that’s used for preparing it AND bought saffron which is used in making it. 

Notwithstanding the fact that the Spanish eat gallons of olive oil every year, smoke like steam engines, and put away lots of wine, the life expectancy for men is still 76 and 82 for women.  They must be doing something right. 

We had the use of a car, a very nice three-year old Citroen, but didn't use it for the first several days.  Parking is almost impossible in the city and traffic is pretty bad.  We only used the car for our many trips out of town.  The municipal bus system in San Sebastian is good, easy and cheap so it’s less frustrating to travel that way in town – pretty much like New York in that respect. 

My main interest was in exploring the small villages in the Basque country.  At first we drove around the area just to the east of Tolosa.  This area is mostly mountains and valleys.  Every time we dropped into a valley the road was lined with factories of one sort or another.  And most of the homes are new.  Like Singapore, a greater and greater percentage of the population is living in condominiums rather than free standing houses, even in tiny villages.  And that has intensified the parking problem.  There's almost nowhere you can park without paying, even in the smallest towns.  And that’s only if you’re fortunate enough to find a spot. 

I took Mayumi to Lourdes about two and a half hours away and across the French border.  We were only there for a few hours.  Lourdes is the site of apparitions of the Virgin Mary and many miraculous cures are said to have taken place there.  There's a lot to see that's of special interest for the faithful.  While there Mayumi picked up a guide book and later learned about all the features she had missed during our short visit, so... 

We returned to Lourdes the following Monday and got a room in one of the 280 hotels in that town of about 15,000.  Only Paris has more hotels in all of France.  Lourdes is host to six million visitors each year.  Most of the hotels are only open from April to October and they’re literally stacked one atop the other.  I sent Mayumi off to the shrine/grotto/basilicas/etc. while I stayed in the hotel and read and then went to a sidewalk café to watch the girls.  We met for a siesta and dinner and then she went back for the torch light procession.  There was a rain and thunderstorm as the procession ended, so I guess all her sins were washed away.  The Pope was in Lourdes the following weekend. 

The next morning we headed across the Pyrenees Mountains by a secondary road and then paralleled the range back to San Sebastian.  It was a beautiful drive.  It’s also an expensive drive: Gas costs $4.47/gallon in Spain and $5.93 in France.  Ouch!  Also some of the really fine toll roads are quite pricey. 

To my surprise, shops in Spain still close for the siesta.  None are open from about 1300 until 1700.  Factories usually don't observe this custom.  And almost nothing is open on Sundays. 

On one excursion of a couple of days, we drove from San Sebastian to Santillana del Mar and San Vincente de la Barquera, then down to Burgos.  Santillana is a national treasure, a town of homes and official buildings dating from the 15th century.  Burgos was a much nicer town than I had expected.  For a short while Franco made it the capital of the country during the civil war.  After a night and a day in Burgos we drove to the village of Santo Domingo de Silos in time to hear vespers sung at the monastery there.  We have had the CD of Gregorian chant made by the monks for quite some time and it was satisfying to hear them in person.  That CD reached the top 5 in pop music in the US in ’95.  We stayed in Silos overnight so Mayumi was able to hear the monks several times and to have a tour of the monastery.  They chant six times daily. 

Our third week in San Sebastian was Semana Grande (Big Week).  About 120 years ago a local businessman started the tradition of having a solid week of bullfights and concerts as a stimulus to business.  It’s still going on with lots of kinds of entertainment added including folkloric events, street dancing, carnival rides for the kids, athletic contests, and an international fireworks competition that has displays on the waterfront every evening at 10:45.  At that time, and although it’s dark, the beach is crowded and kids are playing in the water.  And the shops don't reopen after their mid-day siesta during Semana Grande.  The event draws a lot of tourists and I read that you can't find an empty bed within 60 miles of the city. 

On another little trip we went to a small town that sits beside the narrow entrance to the commercial port just to the east of San Sebastian, Pasaia de San Juan.  After poking around there for a while we headed south about ten miles to a town called Hernani and then stuck out east and south into the province of Navarra on a road that's so little known it doesn't show up on the map I had.  At last we had gotten away from modernization and industrial sprawl.  One of our favorite ways of stumbling onto interesting or beautiful places and people is to intentionally get ourselves lost.  It was a gorgeous drive through the mountains.  There are many apple orchards along the road and the area is famous for cider.  Cider in its fermented form is especially popular in the Basque country and is often drunk with meals.  We took a couple of side roads and followed them to their ends at mountaintop villages.  At the town of Goizueta we turned back because we became concerned about running out of gas and had no idea where the road led.  Neither Goizueta nor any of the villages along that road have gas stations. 

In one village, Arano, we stopped for drinks and got into a conversation with the old maid who, along with her brother, owns the sole bar.  All but one of the fifteen or so homes in the village looked new so I asked her if these were homes of wealthy people retired from the city.  She said that they weren't new but rather are renovated homes belonging to long-time residents of the village.  The stone shells of the homes are sandblasted and completely gutted and refurbished.  I asked what happened to the economy that would permit everyone to upgrade their homes at the same time.  She said the provincial government had been concerned about the declining population of the villages and had made very low interest loans and provided other incentives to keep people in the villages.  The views from this village are really breathtaking. 

On our return to San Sebastian I went to a book store and bought a regional map that shows more of the little, winding roads I like along with the roads that don’t really go anywhere. 

Another day-long drive took us to the towns of Azpietia and Azkoitia which almost blend into each other.  Between is the Basilica of St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits.  His birthplace, a tower/castle, is incorporated into the huge basilica.  We wandered down through Zumarraga, Legazpi, and Oñati and ended it the tiny mountaintop village of Arantzazu which has a very modern monastery and breathtaking views. 

One Thursday we took another stunning mountain drive along a different route, again in Navarra.  We picked up a brother and sister who were hitchhiking from a village into one of the more substantial towns.  They're high school students.  I pumped them about the wildlife, climate, housing types, etc.  Nice kids.  Friday was more of the same with a trip up the valley of the Baztan River to the French border and a stop at the top of Gorramakil Peak, 3,600 feet above sea level.  The countryside reminds me of Ireland without the rocks or abundance of wildflowers because of its intense green coloration and the topography.  Also, the farmsteads are neat as pins.  The views from the mountain roads are so peaceful you can feel the stress draining from your pores. 

On yet another drive we intended to head for a particular valley that leads up into France.  I still don’t know where I went wrong, but we actually started down the valley from the French end, came to a village in Spain where the road was closed for a festival and wound up back in France.  With the inception of the European Union you can cross from one country into another with no formalities and even be completely unaware that you have done so until you notice the signs are in a different language.  On this particular drive (St. Jean-de-Luz, Ascain, Sare) we noticed that the homes were somewhat more elaborately decorated in that part of France than those on the Spanish side. 

The road system is orders of magnitude of improvement above what I knew when living in the south of the country.  And the controls on traffic in the interest of safety are quite elaborate.  For example, even on secondary two-lane roads you usually can’t make a left turn:  if you want to go left there is a lane on the right that swings around and brings you to the road you were initially on at a right angle.  The signs are really comprehensive, and I guess all the foregoing is in compliance with European Union standards.  In many cases the maximum speed limit is actually higher than I’m comfortable driving under the existing circumstances, but the density of traffic on the main roads demands that you exceed these limits or be trapped behind a heavy truck moving at half the speed limit.  At the time of our visit the tow truck operators were on strike against the insurance companies with the result that the roadsides are littered with wrecked cars.  In the third week of the strike there were 4,000 wrecked or broken down cars on the roadsides of Guipuzkoa province. 

There are some supermarkets in San Sebastian that are comparable to those in the U.S. but they’re somewhat smaller with narrower isles.  Some frozen food items such as peas, carrots, squid, fish, etc. are in open bins; you scoop up the amount you want into a plastic bag.  Like the vegetables and fruit you place them on a scale and punch the key for the item’s code and a label with price and weight pops out.  Cashiers are seated rather than standing and you’re usually expected to bag your own purchases.  Grocery carts are locked together and are released by inserting a one Euro coin into a slot on the cart.  Returning the cart releases your coin.  The darned carts have four castering wheels rather than just the front two so they’re somewhat more difficult to control. 

The large hyper-marts fall into another category entirely.  The grocery areas are huge.  They remind me in their diversity to the old Union Station in St. Louis in the 1940’s.  The butcher shop is a distinct business as is the fish peddler, the baker, the cheese shop, etc.  And each of these is very large.  The cheese shop may have 150 different types of cheese.  The amount of olive oil on display would fill a normal 7-11.  At each of the foregoing purchases are paid for at the time of receipt of the goods.  The remainder of the products, such as canned foods, frozen foods, prepackaged bread and pastries, laundry products, and so on, are paid for at a check-out counter as in a stateside supermarket. 

Some of the small fruit and vegetable shops get a little stuffy about patrons touching the produce.  They insist that they’ll choose your items for you.  I didn’t return to those shops.  One of the very few drawbacks of living in Hawaii is that it’s very hard to find decent peaches in season.  Either they’re shipped too early and rot before they ripen or they’re very dry if shipped when close to ripe.  Many varieties of peach are grown in Spain and we really enjoyed having the sweet juice dribble down our chins. 

We left San Sebastian on August 20th by train to go to Santiago de Campostela, about an eleven hour ride.  On the train we fell into conversation with a retired priest who, although he had spent much of his career ministering to Spanish workers in London, had been in Jerez de la Frontera at the time I lived in Puerto de Santa Maria only six miles distant.  Although our lifestyles were considerably different we had many memories in common. 

Santiago is the traditional burial place of the remains of the apostle St. James and is the third most important site in the Catholic faith after Jerusalem and Rome.  The old part of the city is quite beautiful, but the newer parts aren’t too impressive.  2004 was a “Year of St. James” which occurs each time St. James’ Day, July 25th, falls on a Sunday.  This is a really big deal with millions of pilgrims visiting this town of 100,000.  Since we hadn’t made arrangements well in advance we had a heck of a time finding a hotel.  Eventually we found a nice and very friendly place a couple of miles outside the city.  We had two days to get acquainted with the Cathedral and the remainder of the old city and to poke around a little in the rest of the town.  The Cathedral is really impressive as are many of the nearby buildings.  I think all of those millions of pilgrims were there at the same time.  The streets were packed.  The line to get in to the crypt to view the tomb of St. James was over two hours long, a pleasure I left to Mayumi. 

Pilgrims used to walk from all over Europe to visit the tomb and the routes they took are pretty well defined.  Many of the places they stopped for a night or longer still exist throughout the continent and especially in Spain.  People are still making the pilgrimage although few if any travel all the way on foot.  If you walk the last 100 kilometers or bicycle the last 200 kilometers and get your little official booklet stamped at each of the overnight stops you can receive a certificate for completion of the pilgrimage.  We saw a long line of people waiting at the office where these certificates are issued.  As I was sitting on a low wall a really beautiful little girl of ten years along with her mother, father and grandfather sat next to me and the little girl tried to strike up a conversation with me in French.  Since I don’t speak a word of French, that part of the conversation was pretty short.  She then switched to her native Spanish and told me that her family was from Barcelona and had just completed the pilgrimage.  Her backpack was about as big as she was. 

In Santiago while sitting on a huge stairway beside the cathedral we became part of a crowd of hundreds of young people dressed in what appeared to be Boy Scout type uniforms.  They are members of the Youth Organization of Spain and had come from all over the country.  We were all seated on a huge set of steps and watched a concert by two of their organization’s drum and bugle corps.  One of these musical groups incorporated bagpipes which are indigenous to this part of Spain.  As a mascot this group had a little girl bugler four or five years old with a tiny but real bugle.  We had encountered other similarly attired groups of young people in Lourdes from all over Europe.  There I was surprised by the number of both male and female members in their 20’s and 30’s. 

We left Santiago on Sunday evening on a sleeper train for Madrid, arriving at 7:45 the following morning.  Our compartment cost about $68 each after our 20% senior citizen discount.   

The airport at Madrid, Barrajas, must be one of the most boring of its size in the world.  It isn’t unpleasant, there’s just a lack of interesting shops and other concessions.  At the hour we were there it was impossible to find a full meal – only snacks, sandwiches, etc.  This wasn’t a hardship but, compared with Minneapolis for example, seemed rather bush league. 

Our flight out of Madrid was at noon and took us to Amsterdam where we had under an hour to catch an onward flight to Minneapolis.  There we had a sixteen hour layover so Mayumi got to see the Mall of America, but we were so pooped by that time that the impression wasn’t as great as it might have been otherwise.  After a good night’s sleep we boarded a direct flight to Honolulu and were back in our home by 1:00 p.m. on August 24th. 

From our perspective the home/auto exchange was a complete success.  Our accommodation in Spain was excellent and convenient and we did all the things we wanted to do plus many things we hadn’t planned.  We had absolutely no problems.  I can’t say as much for our exchange partners.  Our car betrayed them – TWICE!  The first time the alternator died.  The day after they got it from the shop a cell in the battery died.  Thanks to Danny Paz of Central Auto Repair Service in Wahiawa, they got back on the road quickly in both cases and Danny held the bill for our return.  After we got back I found that the auto A/C had died as well but it only required the addition of some refrigerant.  As far as the condition of our home on our return, we couldn’t even tell anyone had been here except that there wasn’t any dust lying around and the house plants hadn’t died. 

In closing, I believe the Spanish are a more precise people than Americans, and I offer two points in substantiation of this hypothesis: first, they can parallel park into a spot that’s mere inches longer than their car.  Second, they use toilet tissue that’s narrower than ours.