San Sebastian

Those of you who have been there will know.
Those of you who have not can only dream about it.
There is not a great deal to do in San Sebastian, but it is the most beautiful little town.

Tall, skinny, colourful, buildings in winding streets with no traffic, delis dripping with ham and cheese, wild hydreageas, that display saturated color, as opposed to the faded, soft, lilacs of ones that grow in Australia.


We decided to do all the tourist typical things. A little list
1) eat an ice-cream on the promanade,

2) walk the old town in circles thinking we had entered a new street when really we were just walking up the same street in the other direction

3) drink coffee on the promanande

4) walk up to the top of the the park to be blessed by Jesus. (It turned out to just be a giant statue.)

5) Stare at the beach, mountains, town, boats, sea, river, people, making ho-hum noises of satisfaction and awe.

6) and last: sit at a beachside cafe and eat seafood (sardines and mussels) with un-ashamed licking of fingers and mopping up of sauces with bread.

Education in the Basque country. I met a teacher on the bus who was on her way from San Sebastian to Bilbao to defend her English teaching program in order to attain a permanent license to teach English. The things that annoy her are that the syllabus gets changed everytime there is a new government, the program defense is an oral exam and she was very nervous, it took a lot of time and preparation, but she did not think it made anyone a better teacher. She was forced to reinevent her teaching a bring it in line with competencies, but was pretty convinced that the next government would just change things again. SOUND FAMILIAR ANYONE?

She liked the fact that Basque is the language of instruction, but pointed out that that this makes things difficult for the migrants from Venezuela, who come to Spain because they can speak the language. She was a tall, skinny and colourful, just like the buildings of her home town.

Julie has suggested that I take photographs of my rash and blisters, but I realise that some of you may be eating.

Germaphobia

I have not revised my position on germaphobaphoboia, but.....

Apparently, Spain is microb-resistant. Dishes of warm beef cheeks, tuna with mayonaise on crosscut bread, little curls of jamon (that’s ham to you) sit artfully perched on top of slices of boiled egg garnished with a bit of smoked salmon, all day, possibly for many days. People enter the many bars of the old town of Bibao, buy a beer and swallow down a vertible hoard of bacteria. The pickled calamari rubs shoulders with the blood sausage which eyes off the stewed red peppers. They know each other intimately because they have been togeather for such a long time: they have fomed a relationship, a biological relationship. Nobody can explain why everyone in Spain does not constantly have some sort of stomach ailment. Perhaps germs are a myth, or perhaps after Guernica, nothing can hurt these people.

In the Basque country (which is where we are right now) they have another word for tapas; it’s pintxos. I am not sure of the literal translation, but the idiomatic translation is mashed fish substance mixed with creamy stuff marinated at room temperature for a long period of time.

But tonight’s dinner was spectacular. Rather the eating pintxos, we had a proper meal at La Delicosa and it lived up to its name. There was duck, crab stuffed peppers and medallions of foie. I drank a dry sherry and loved it.

Debbie did not kiss the guy who presented her with her bag, firstly because he had the audacity to ask her for her passport number in order to receive it (the gall) and secondly because Julie and I held her back. So voting blog members, she is out of the running for longest suffering member of the girl band. I, on the other hand have taken the lead with a rash that is so remarkable that Juile and Debbie banished me to the bathroom when they saw it. Exiled to the en-suite, I was instructed to put my feet into the bidet to try to settle the red, blotchy, raised hot welts that are creeping up my ankles towards my knees. (Sexy I know.)

Bilbao is the town of flowerboxes overflowing with geraniams, street lamps, great coffee and streetlife. We still love it.

Blistering Bodies in Bilbao

The blog is now interactive, you can vote one of us out of the dorm room.
We are having a competition involving the readers as to who is suffering the most.

The status of the three players is as follows:
Greta: blisters (all seven of them) have been burst, feet are stinging and oversized, only the day ahead will tell if I should be put down or not.
Debbie: luggage is lost, she is now forced to entertain the idea of spending time naked. Her suitcase including her contact lenses and her orthotics are gone. I offered to rent her single items clothing for a substantial fee. Julie has tried to undercut that fee. Wisely, Debbie has selected the multipurpose sarong from me and the runners from Julie. She is also using the airline supplied toothbrush and I am thinking of selling her the Cathay Pacific socks that I put in my bag.
Julie has a permanently raised core body temperature, and it is really hot here. It turns out that the hotel does not actually have operational air conditioning, instead, it has a non-oscilating fan which is situated under the skylight and blows air straight out into the Spanish sky bypassing us all together.

Who do you think can stand the challenge of the day ahead?

Bilbao

Debbie and I have been joined by our friend Julie who has spent a day in Finland and will be a part of the gang for a few days at least.

Bilbao is gorgeous! If you read no further, then remember this: Billbao is a little sweetie of a town. The Guuggenheim is the best building that I have ever, ever, in my long legged life, seen. Way, way better than the building Guggenheim in New York, which is pretty good, even better than the Sydney Opera House, it rivals the cathedral at San Miguel del Allende in Mexico which those faithful bog followers will remember. All superlatives aside, it is so good that it is pretty much indescribable. It goes under bridges and juts out like a wave and stands at geometrical angels, all, incongruously at the same time.

I have got myself a mild sunburn, which is a constant friend and reminder that I am not in Melbourne anymore. I have drunk alcohol in the daytime and sat in Plaza Nuevo eating more fried calamari than is recommended by the health authorities. Just as I could only vaugly imagine the heat before I got here, I can hardly remember being cold in Melbourne, just a few days ago.

Our hotel is in the heart of the old section of the town and we and ensconced in the garrett. It is hot and a bit like a dorm. I have suggested a pillow fight, no takers, I have suggested that we tell each other the man of the boy we really like, no takers, I have suggested that we do each other’s hair, no takers.

What I have learned something that I already knew. Almost everthing in life that happens, depends on how you look at it. Here is the example. When two young lads sidled up to us and started a serenade, Debbie thought they marked us as deperate middle aged women in Barcelona in search of something better whilst on holidays. This is not true. We are in fact desperate middle aged women in Barcelona in search of something better whilst at a conference.

My feet are a source of amazement. Debbie and Julie have taken photographs of the soles of my feet. Julie has every legal drug known to St Christopher in her pack, but nothing that can relieve the bubble of pus that I now have to walk on. My blisters are planning on joining togeather in a kind of United Republic of Blisters. They are coming together to form a giant pillow on the bottom and sides of my feet.

Debbie has had her luggage misplaced by Click Air and we a trying to workout what to do. This might be possible except for the bottle of Brazilian rum and Mateus that now both sit half empty in the bathroom sink.

Hola Barcelona

I left my home, 32 hours later I put my bags down in Eurostars Gaudi Hotel.
From our hotel window we saw the towers of the Sagrada Familiar, we went downstairs for beer and almonds at a hole-in-the-wall bar, probably indistinguishable from any other of the thousand small bars that are all over this city.

Everytime we turned a corner, we turned in the wrong direction. Two middle aged women who have devoted their lives to starving the numerical-spacial part of the brain to make way for the language part of the brain creates a situation whereby no amount of looking at streetnames and turning the map will help.

The flea market we visited was full of stuff that we cannot be bothered carrying back, but fun all the same. we did however, buy hats because we can carry them on our heads. Eventually we got the to the beach, and after walking from the giant golden/bronze fish sculpture/building to the inverted D-shaped hotel at the other end, we settled in at a bar on the beach for some very slow beers. From this vantage point we could scan the topless girls who impressed us until we saw the bottomless men! We tried to act cool about it and I refrained from pointing, holding up score cards, laughing and other inappropriate behaviour. Like many other European beaches, the bikini is by no means limited to the young, slim and beautiful. Good on those grey haired grandmas who let it all hang out!

On the walk back to the hotel, we stumbled into a wonderful produce market. The fish made me hanker for a fry pan, my urge to live up to the name of this blog was powerful.

Germaphobaphobia

I have a new condition. I just invented it. Perhaps you have it too. It is: germaphobaphobia. The symtoms are:

• increased stress levels when surrounded by people wearing face masks
• a noted disinclination to accept the offerings of flight attendants wearing face masks
• a refusal to even acknowldege the existance of the person sitting next to you on a plane, simply because they are wearing a face mask
• a desire to cough, sneeze, sniff and blow you nose just to annoy people who are wearing a face mask.

On the flight from Melbourne Hong Kong and at Hong Kong Airport, Debbie and I shamelessly walked around with our facial orifices on public display. Wierdly enough, we learned that while we were both in the throes of an allergic reaction to those who wear face masks, the world’s most famous face mask wearer was dying in his home in Los Angeles. Rocking robin is gone!

In the tradition of The Castle, I will include a full report in the movies I watched on plane trip, as if this were a part of the holiday. Here are my film reviews.
The Wrestler
Mickey Rourke looked like he was wearing a fake “He Man and the Masters of the Universe” prosthetic chest”. The movie has a stripper with a heart of gold, a wrestler who seemed to let everyone down but was really lonely on the inside and his daughter who wanted to believe her dad could change, but really he couldn’t. A Hollywood movie but thankfully not a Hollywood ending.
Milk
Terrific. It is hard to say a bad thing about Sean Penn. He captures the time so well and manages the role without too much affectation. Even though I lived through the time and knew about the assasination, it was good to see the characer and the events leading up to it.
Defiance
A really wonderful story, even if you already know about the Jewish partisans, it’s terrfric. Terrible sentimentality in the shooting though, which was a pity because the story is already about people doing the impossible. Showing enormous courage, starving and freezing to death while they lived in the forest and took waged warfare against the German forces. Thus, the story did not need to be embelilshed with slowrolling tear drops and moments of fraternal reconciliation. and I felt Daniel Craig was miscast.
The Class
A French Cannes winning film. But really a bit boring or me. A classroom of naughty, lippy, multi-ethnic, underprivledged kids and a staff of teachers who try really hard to reach them. I think it was only interesting because it was French not British or American.
Sixty-six
The was a pretty funny, quirky story about an English/Jewish kid approaching his Bahmitzvah. Cute and funny.
The International
Clive Owen: thinking woman's crumpet, or for that matter, breathing woman’s crumpet, Naomi Watts: what a honey, and other good actors were not nearly enough to save this dross. The whole film is a international spy thriller where you get to learn that banks, governments and police agencies are bad. It has one central good, even interesting idea stuck in the middle. The idea was that the banks will do anything at all to control conflict because whoever controls conflict controls debt and whoever controls debt controls everything.
Seven Pounds
This is a film about redemption, I don't need that. Possibly is is more about atonement than redemption, but I don't need that either. Will Smith plays himself as a character who has accidentally caused great grief to himself and others. He tries to make up for it in a curiously mathematical way. It is a soft film that does not stand critique, but does pass the time on a long flight.