I want you to do something. Without looking at a globe, tell me where you think the country of Basque is. Oh, you don’t know, do you? Did you know that Basque was a language? And that no one knows its true origins, and it has nothing in common with Latin? And that it has its own flag which looks like this:
The term “Basque Country” is a bit of a misnomer, since the area known as the Basque Country is actually split between two countries: Spain and France. And it’s not actually considered a country itself (although some people living there would have you believe otherwise). In the past week I spent time in Basque cities on both sides of the border. I started in San Sebastian, Spain, which was the most Basque-tastic of the cities I visited. Then I went to Bayonne and Anglet in France, before concluding my week-long Basque tour in Bilbao, Spain. Now, if you could use a slider bar in terms of how “Basque” did each of these cities feel, then the scale would be full-Basque at the start of my trip, and slowly slide down until the end of it. Bilbao feels like Spain. San Sebastian doesn’t. People speak Basque there as their primary language. The TV and radio is in Basque. They say “kaisho!” for hello, and “eshkaricasco” for thank you. One day I ordered the menu del dia, a staple of all Spanish restaurants, and the waitress spoke Spanish to me so broken I actually thought it was Basque.
San Sebastian is known for their fish and beaches. I had a bacalao (cod) there one day and aside from being expensive as fuck, it was one of the best fish I ever ate. The beach was… well, to be honest, all of the places I went had a beach. And the beach in Anglet, France, was the grand champion of all. Biggest waves I’d ever seen, which would come crashing against the rocks and send a massive tidal wave into the air, plummeting down on whatever was unfortunate enough to be under it. The waves can be so tumultuous in San Sebastian that they have to close down the beach-side roads which are 20 feet above the water, since the waves can reach that high and just bludgeon any passing cars. It’s winter here now so it’s not freezing per se, but it rains a ton. And in Bilbao, it has rained each of the three days I have been here, although it’s not a cold rain like it was in all the other cities.
And now I’d like to talk a bit about France. Because although I was still in the Basque region, and there were common denominators between the cities there and on the Spanish side (ex: street signs both in local language and in Basque), things changed real fast once I went over that border. This was my first time in France. I kinda knew what to expect. And I was spot-on with most of my assumptions.
First of all, let’s get this out of the way: the bread, croissants, cheese, wine… all of that shit that you would expect to be superior in France, is. Also, France is HIGHLY inaccessible if you don’t speak French. Never have I been in travel-mode and as reticent to speak to people as I had been in France. I had heard that French people were rude and will belittle you if you don’t speak their language; you know, just like us Americans do with our “WE SPEAK ENGLISH IN AMERICA, YE-HAW!” outbursts. And no, that’s not really how it goes. I only encountered one rude person, and that was the girl at a rock concert who denied me a high five. Like, who does that? Just put your fucking hand in the air. I don’t have scabies. But people just don’t speak English there. It isn’t their lingua franca, like elsewhere in the world; their lingua franca is French. That’s it.
One morning I went to a bakery on the corner and tried to order an almond croissant by pronouncing whatever I thought it said on sign right below. The sign said croissant aux amandes. I was like, “YOU CAN DO THIS DARBY!” But of course I butchered it, so I restorted to pointing to the croissant. But the girl working there had one eye going sideways, glasses, and a possible case of severe mental retardation, and one full minute later she still hadn’t given me my croissant, despite the fact that my finger was all but penetrating the croissant I wanted. I was like “goddamn, I really should come back to France when I have some bare-minimum base of speaking ability.”
The next day, I went to a restaurant to get the French version of the menu del dia, the menu du jour. After going through all of the food translations on my dictionary and figuring out that that day’s special was some sort of rolled-up salmon ball, I decided “fuck it, let’s just go in there and see what they feed me.” Also the waitress was hot as shit and that may have had something (or everything) to do with it. I managed to order the dish and the waitress dropped the food at my table, with an accompanying “bon appétit!” Out of habit I said “gracias“, and as I did–cue record scratch!!–everything in the restaurant stopped and all eyes were placed upon me. I apologized by saying “sorry, I’ve been speaking Spanish lately…” and the waitress, with that sexy French accent goes, “Spanish, English, French, eez okai.” So I was like “Well, what do you know? Maybe I can have a chat with this lady.” We exchanged some light banter before I realized that her shirt was a picture of the “cube houses” in Rotterdam, Netherlands, which I had just visited 4 months ago. I tried to tell her about the houses and where they were, but that’s when I realized that I had overestimated her English ability. So I got the brilliant idea to pull up the cube houses Wikipedia page in French on my tablet (which took 15 minutes), and then I got up to both pay the bill, show her the maison cubique as they were called in French, and well… who knew what else could happen?
As soon as I stood up, I confidently crossed the tiny gap between tables and walked 5 feet to the counter, and just before I could open my mouth, I realized that my scarf had somehow latched onto the water vase at my table, and that the vase was mid-air and only a moment away from hitting the ground. I didn’t even try and stop it. The vase shattered all over the ground in a million pieces. Once again time stopped and I was the unwanted center of attention for the second time there. “OH MY GOD” I shrieked and tried picking up glass chunks off the floor. The waitress just insisted over and over, “Eez okai, eez okai,” and I realized that not only would we NOT be socializing after this, but I couldn’t use the bathroom or remain in this restaurant any longer. I quickly paid and got the fuck out of there. It was the least smoothest exit ever.
And I’m not sure if that story has anything to do with the language barriers of France, or it’s just a really unfortunate tragedy that I wanted to share, but there you go. Make something of that.
I was relieved to be back in Spain the next day in Bilbao, where I could speak Spanish yet again. And here people actually spoke Spanish, almost as if… they were living in Spain! Which they were. And that’s how it’s been here. Bilbao has been one of my favorite places in Spain, and possibly the world. I cannot find a single thing negative to say. Each day has been an adventure. From my arrival on Saturday night, it started with drinking copious amounts of beer on the street, something you can’t do in the rest of Spain. We went to a club at 12:45 and they didn’t let us in because nobody had even showed up yet. I met gorgeous, chatty girls, as well as some utter creepers, who let’s be honest, inject some personality in the party. And I ate a fuck load of pinchos (Basque’s term for Spanish tapas) all for 1 euro each. Sunday, Messi and the rest of the Barcelona futbol team came to Bilbao for a match, and the fans here stormed the streets like a battalion heading off to war. There were random explosions, more hordes of people drinking in the streets, and I even met a Japanese camera crew and made them shit their pants by describing their work and camera shots to a ‘T’ (I later revealed I worked for NHK). There’s a pizza restaurant called Fratelli’s here based on the villains from The Goonies, the Guggenheim museum, lazertag, bullfighting, and a whole slew of other shit I haven’t discovered. In other words, maybe I’ll move here.
But In two days I’m going to Portugal. And well, anything can happen there.
This trip just keeps getting better and better.
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