So we sat and looked at places the bus lines ran to (the bus being by far the cheapest way to get around Spain, though the slowest), and after trying to fit in Córdoba or Seville or Granada, decided on Bilbao, a city in the Basque Country. It was relatively close, it was cheap, and it had the Guggenheim, which is a world famous museum.
So on Saturday morning we headed out, across the vast open plains of northern Spain, to the Basque country in the north, nearly to the Atlantic Ocean.
The land in between Madrid and Bilbao can only be described as plains interspersed with mountains, with very little in between except churches and tiny towns that have, in most ways, probably stayed exactly the same since before Columbus (apologies for these pictures; I was taking them from a moving bus behind a not extremely clean window):
Look at that last one. That's a castle in the middle of a tiny town. How would you like to be able to say "yes, I am aware that it's the twenty-first century, but I do live right next to a castle." Part of me wants to say that would be awesome, but it is a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, so perhaps not.
As we made our way further north the sky got darker, and eventually we realized that we were about to encounter our first rain in Spain as we got to Bilbao. A light trickle merely wet the windows, though, so our first night in the city wasn't ruined. And lucky for us, because we had a lot to see during the night.
Upon arrival, we first had to take the Bilbao metro to our hostel. The guidebook I was using described it as "ultramodern", and upon entering the sleek tunnels I found myself in full agreement with that description:
Our hostel was in the "casco viejo" - the "old heart [of the city]", which despite being the "heart" of the city, was nowhere near the heart of the city. We took the metro for a couple of miles and upon getting to the casco viejo made our way to the hostel, which looks like this:
It's only the green part at the bottom of the building, but still, that's a pretty awesome looking modern building. Bilbao is an incredible contradiction in this regard: it has some of the most modern and even avante-garde architecture in the world (the flagship of that being, of course, the Guggenheim, which I shall get to soon) right in the middle of centuries-old cathedrals and other buildings (for example, tell me this isn't a very stereotypical rainy old European street scene:
). It is very unusual in that regard, but I like the vibe quite a bit.We walked the town at night looking for a place to eat, but wandering through an old "Hippie Market;" that was the actual name, I didn't translate it - I told you that English is absolutely everywhere here in Spain.
However, there's also another language here, and I should use this time to tell you about the Basque Country in greater detail. El País Vasco - The Basque Country - is an "autonomous community" of Spain, which is roughly equivalent to a state in the US. But the history of the Basque country is on the most unique of any of the autonomous communities in Spain or anywhere else. The Basque Country is home to the Basques. The Basques call their country "Euskadi" and they speak the language known around here as "Euskara". Who are these Basques, you may ask? In one sense, no one really knows. The language and people are literally the oldest in Europe, having existed in more or less their present location since before the Romans. The Basque language is not clearly related to any other language in the world, whereas essentially all of Europe's other languages are related to each other, descended from the ancient "Proto-Indo European" language spoken by the Proto-Indo Europeans who lived in the Caucasus Mountains and who moved into Europe and India roughly 8 to 10 thousand years ago, bringing their language with them. As a result of the Indo-European migrations, almost every language - and people - from Gaelic to Sanskrit, from Ireland to India are descended from these people and their language. Except, that is, for the Basques. It is thought that the Basque language and people are the last of the original languages and people of Europe, who lived here more than ten thousand years ago, and who all were overcome by the Indo-Europeans, whose languages we now speak today. [If you're further interested in this, I suggest you read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo_European_languages]
That unique origin is part of the Basque historical and cultural legacy, but beyond that they also have had a long history, going in and out of independence throughout the Roman Empire and the middle ages. They existed more or less peacefully in modern Spain, until Spanish Dictator Francisco Franco singled them out and oppressed them as an unwanted minority. The Franco-ordered but Nazi-enacted bombing of the Basque town of Guernika was one of the first major atrocities of the WWII era, and was the inspiration for the famous Picasso painting "Guernica."
In response to this oppression, a group known as ETA (Basque: Euskadi Ta Askatasuna - Homeland and Freedom) was formed and would later be known as the principle terrorist threat to Spain during the latter 20th century. Via bombings, assassination, ransoms and other terroristic means, ETA waged a campaign for full independence for the Basque Country which made it simultaneously feared and hated in Spain. Over the past decade or so, police action has led to the arrest of most of the leaders of the organization, putting it near its end, and there is currently talk in the press of the "final end of ETA". But the terrorism of ETA was only one of the means by which some Basques pursued their independence, and exists a slew of thoroughly peaceful political parties seeking Basque independence as well. Though ETA grew to be hated and reviled by most Basques, there is still some support for the peaceful political independence of the Basque Country (of which Bilbao remains the cultural heart).
Anyway, that bit of politics and history aside...
We walked around looking for a place to eat and found...not very much at all. Though the town was thoroughly beautiful at night...
...restaurants were disturbingly hard to find. We did, however find a grill/pub restaurant near our hotel, and there I got something delicious: a steak which, had it been cooked in any other way and in any other setting I would have found inedibly undercooked, but it was seasoned to such utter perfection and accompanied so well (steak fries and roasted red peppers) that it proved to be one of the best meals of my life. Serendipity dwells in Bilbao, I suppose.After eating we retired, thoroughly worn out, to our hostel. Upon trying to get towels from the front desk, however, we were forced into conversation with the very drunk night employee who talked to me for about thirty minutes about the Euro crisis and other stuff that was too incoherent for me to remember.
The next day we had a plan: The Guggenheim. I got up earlier than anyone else though, I enjoyed my provided hostel breakfast (cereal, toast with jams, cookies, that sort of thing) but then I made my way up to a park which overlooks the city. I got some great pictures from there (some of these I took that evening, though, from the same park):
Eventually we all got up and walked the 20-minute walk to the Guggenheim. I'm sure many people have seen pictures of it before not knowing what or where it was, but it's in Bilbao, Spain, and it is a thoroughly unique architectural wonder:
Impressive though the exterior may be, the inside was more amazing still, but unfortunately photos were not allowed inside. The upper floors were full of modern art which I must say I didn't really like or feel the need to contemplate much at all. But the ground floor was unforgettable. The first gallery I went in was filled with 10-foot-tall, 4-inch-thick, curved walls of solid rusted iron. They gave the distinct impression of canyon walls as one walked through them, and the echoes of one's footsteps reverberated a hundred times between them, making it a visual, auditory, and tactile experience. Some of the walls ran parallel; others curled up into a spiral. If there's any such thing as an artistic, mature playground, this was thoroughly it.
One exhibit involved 100 TV sets spread out evenly on the floor, and 100 chairs sat before them for anyone to come, take a seat, and watch. And on each and every screen was playing a different interview with a different person, and each person was telling a sad and depressing story of their situation in life - friendless, abused, sad, everything. I couldn't stay in that room for too long.
Near the TV room was a cave made out of packing tape. And I don't know what the standards are for packing tape caves, but this was huge, and had to involved thousands and thousands of rolls of packing tape. And inside the cave, aluminum-foil people stood anchored to the walls, and aluminum-foil wires connected them to aluminum-foil dynamite and real books on human society, political science, psychology, philosophy etc. In another room of the cave, thousands of pop cans lay strewn across the floor. In another room, movie posters decked the ceiling and walls. It was a cave of the human condition, of our waste, our minds, our entertainment. And it was extremely creepy.
Unfortunately I can't go through and describe every exhibit in detail, but those were the highlights.
The fact is, after that, we had no real plans for what to do in Bilbao. It was already Sunday evening, the other museum in town were closing, and we discovered to our chagrin that the other museums in the town were closed on Mondays. So, to my resigned indifference, Abbey and Zahra determined that we were to leave at midday Monday.
That decided, we made the most of our evening, getting artisan pizza and beer, and meeting the other occupant of our 4-person hostel room. Having glimpsed his short stocky pants early in the day we jokingly referred to him as Danny DeVito all day long, but meeting him we realized that was nothing like Danny DeVito. In fact, he was a professional chess player in Bilbao for a tournament. We talked a bit about where were were from (he somehow had heard of Oklahoma, but hadn't heard of Wisconsin, where Abbey's from).
After talking for a while we went to bed, and getting up somewhat early the next day we wandered around town, saw some nifty shops, and then managed to get our way on to the 2-o'clock bus back to Madrid. And that's the story of Bilbao.
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