San Sebastián

A few weekends ago I visited San Sebastian with my friend Rebecca. Last time I was in Spain I spent a lot of time in southern Spain, Andalucía, but didn’t have the chance to visit northern Spain, namely Galicia and Pais Vasco. Spain is made up of a few different autonomies, and Pais Vasco is probably one of the better known ones because of the issues with ETA and separatist terrorism.

With that said, most people from Pais Vasco are not ETA supporters, the ETA is a pretty radical and often violent organization. However, Pais Vasco is very interesting politically and there is a lot of cultural and linguistic pride that is quite different from the Madrid area.

Anyway, to start things off Rebecca and I left Thursday late afternoon for the 5 hour bus ride to San Sebastian. It was pretty uneventful, other than the fact that they were showing the strangest Asian cowboy/ski adventure movie that was horrible to listen to but pretty amusing to watch out of the corner of your eye. We also met a friendly Australian guy who had just spent the last few months traveling Europe, namely Eastern Europe. He said Budapest was one of his favorite places! (Paprika pride!)

We then took a quick cab from the bus station to the alleged location of our hostel. We arrived around 11:30, to an empty street and a lone apartment building. We found on the door buzzer a sign for a hostel and pressed it, even though the name didn’t look like the name of our hostel. The woman who answered was incredibly rude, and promptly told us that this was not the hostel we were looking for and goodbye.

I tried calling the hostal number but kept getting the busy signal. A slight feeling of panic started to set in and I started seeing visions of Rebecca and I huddling and sleeping outside of a church hoping some friendly nuns would take pity. However, I eventually got through to our hostel and it turned out the cab driver dropped us off too early and we had to walk a few more minutes down the street (jodido taxi).

We soon found our hostel and was greeted by a very friendly, but talkative, Spanish man who looked exactly like Santa Claus. He was very excited that we spoke Spanish and promptly told us all about San Sebastian, the map etc etc. Since our first encounter with him, we always tried to enter or leave the room quickly because any conversation was bound to last at least 10 minutes.

After dropping off our stuff we took a walk around the city, walking by the Paseo that follows the beach on the bay and enjoyed the night scenes.

The next day we woke up and had a lovely breakfast at a pasteleria and discovered my new obsession: Pastel Vasco – a delicious almond custard torte. I’ve since found a simplified recipe for it and hope to make it soon :)

We then happily spent the day sightseeing, visiting a palacio that overlooked the water but turned out to be some sort of institute, and climbing up one of the mountains to see a fortress/ Jesus statue.



We also experimented with a San Sebastian specialty – Pinxos. Let me start off by saying that I love Spain’s approach to food. Lots of little tastes of different things (tapas) but the pinxos are even better. You enter a bar to be greeted by an array of small appetizer size plates of food. You can pick whichever ones you want and you pay at the end depending on how many and which dishes you pick.

A lot of the bars get very creative – and with creativity comes a risk. Some are great and you go back for second helpings, and others are better left untouched. Rebecca and I normally used a “divide and conquer” approach – each of us picking some, letting the other person taste it and thus getting a wide assortment of options.




Anyway, we were both very happy to have a more diverse palate since my diet when I eat out in Madrid normally consists of tortilla española, olives or croquetas.

After a big lunch, we walked around the newer part of the city and visited a few of the cathedrals. San Sebastian, as any Catholic Spanish city should, has at least 3 cathedrals each with horrifying and bloody statues of Jesus after he was taken off the cross. While I really appreciate the awe and beauty of many Catholic churches, some of the art can be pretty graphic. However, I took some really cool photos of one of the cathedrals and the multi-colored light mosaics from the stained glass.



We then met up with Carmen, a friend of my parent’s they met when Carmen and her husband Pedro were living in New Jersey. Carmen is very maja (sweet) and incredibly energetic. She was very excited to see me, since last time I was about 5 and I don’t remember it.

Carmen is from Barcelona and had some very interesting perspectives on living in San Sebastian. We asked her how she liked it, and gushed how lucky she is to live in such a beautiful place, right by the coast. She agreed that it was pretty but proceeded to tell us about the politics and the issue she had with Euskera. Euskera is the language in Pais Vasco, a very old language that has no connections to Castellano (Spanish). Under Franco all the other languages in Spain (including Catalan and Gallego) were suppressed and forbidden.

Once Franco’s reign was over the different autonomies of Spain were super excited and aggressive about reviving their local languages, and Pais Vasco is one of the most strict. Apparently students are only taught in Euskera in school (obviously except for Spanish and other language classes) and all teachers in Pais Vasco must spend a year without paying learning Euskera if they don’t already know it. Carmen really lamented this law and said that it’s why her children are attending private schools – where they are taught in Spanish and/or English.

Anyway, since I’m working in a bilingual school I thought this was very interesting. Carmen thinks it’s a real disadvantage for children in Pais Vasco, because Euskera is not a global language, while Spanish is. I have to agree with her. The more time I spend out of the States, the more appreciative I am that my native language is such an important, and global language. It’s a true competitive edge.

Anyway, after meeting up with Carmen and her friend (who btw is a teacher in a public school and clearly doesn’t agree with Carmen’s views) we made plans to meet up with Carmen and her family the next day. We then bought a bottle of wine and sat on one of the docks (which is a popular hangout/botellon place) and enjoyed watching the ocean waves at night. I’ve also decided I need to spend some significant time in a city near water – and as much as I love DC, the Potomac river really doesn’t count!

The next day we met up with Carmen and she drove us to a small town about an hour from San Sebastian. It was beautiful, very quaint and we spent some time wandering around the old part of the town before going to the newer section to meet up with Pedro and their two children.

The family was very sweet and treated us to lunch and we caught up. It was interesting because while Pedro and Carmen know my parents, I really have never met them before and certainly not in my adult life. (btw can I call myself an adult? Still not sure about that one). They were reminiscing about living in the States, which is where they met, at a wedding in NYC although both are from Barcelona.






While their kids were younger and a bit shy, the eventually opened up to us. They were both fascinated by the fact that Rebecca lived on an island in the States and were very funny in asking if Rebecca owned the island, how large it was etc.

After lunch we walked along the pier and took a small boat over to France! In all honesty the French side wasn’t too exciting and we only stayed for half an hour but at least we could say that we just “wandered over to France over the weekend.”

Rebecca and I were both pretty exhausted after our adventure, speaking in Spanish for 5 hours and being sweet and conversational can be very tiring, and we took a much needed siesta. We then watched the sunset over the pier, visited the famous San Sebastian hotel that is where all the stars stay in when they come for the San Sebastian film festival and walked on the beach. We then had a wonderful dinner at a restaurant and agreed that San Sebastian had been the culinary highlight of our time so far in Spain.




The next morning we were supposed to go on a walk with Carmen, but after sleeping in a bit decided that it was a bit rushed. I guiltily called Carmen to apologize, and she invited Tim and I to visit their vacation house near Barcelona during Christmas! I’m hoping that this invitation still stands true because they call it the “pink castle” – apparently it’s been in Pedro’s family for years.

We then went to have nice leisurely breakfast which escalated into the breakfast from hell. Well, that’s a bit extreme but the waiter ended up forgetting our order, and it took forever. So, instead of a leisurely breakfast, we ended up rushing back to the hostel to grab our stuff and before we knew it we had only 15 minutes to get to the bus station!

As we ran into the hostel, the Santa Clause hostel owner, came out and I asked him where would be the best place to catch a cab on a Sunday. He then proceeded to ignore that request, and ignoring our rushing around, and started rambling about how the bus is much better. We eventually decided to literally run to the famous hotel, in the hopes that cabs would hang out there. Cabs in front of a hotel, a good assumption right?

Well apparently not on Sundays. We rushed around there for a bit (10 minutes before the bus was to leave!) and still couldn’t find anything. I ended up asking someone else and they said to go down to the boulevard. (6 minutes left!) We ran down to the boulevard (picture it, suitcases flying all over the place) until we found a cab and ran inside.

The cab driver was joking around and asked, what’s the rush ladies, did you sleep in? Which annoyed both of us and we started complaining about the stupid waiter….I think the cab driver by the end of the complain session was sorry he even asked.

Well, we ended up getting onto the bus literally seconds before the bus left the station. Seconds. The next bus wasn’t coming until hours later, so it would have been quite annoying to miss this one.

After our morning jaunt, we settled in to nap until we arrived in Madrid 5 hours later. While I love traveling, and the thrill of seeing new places, it’s always nice to get back home after a busy travel weekend. It’s even better when you’ve thought ahead, and brought back some extra Pastel Vascos to enjoy while sipping a cup of tea on your own comfy bed.

More photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/kkiss7/Spain2009SomeMadridSanSebastian#