Bilbao - arrivals - San Sebastian - departures - quests

Woohoo our internet connection has finally been installed! Hurray!

I'm yawning as we speak and I'd like to just go to bed, but my motivation to write something always pops up late at night. I'd like to tell you I'm not going to write as much as last time, but we all know that's not very likely.

So, where was I...

Ah yes, day two in Bergara!
Tuesday morning, we left for Bilbao and we ended up driving for over an hour because on our way we picked up two German hitchhikers.
My dad pulled over at a gas station and I saw two young guys standing there with their backpacks, so I tried to convince my dad to take them with us. Of course, he wasn't all for the idea, but when he got out to fill the tank, he got to talking with one of the guys and apparently changed his mind.

They had to get to the other side of the freeway so they could head in the direction of Zaragoza. My dad agreed to take them there, which led us passed Bilbao to get to a gas station at the beginning of the freeway to Vitoria, from where it's easier to get to Zaragoza.

It was fun really; we spent some time talking about hitchhiking and the trips we each had made, the obstacles on the way, and such. One of them saw my copy of the book Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer and we started rambling on about the movie of the same name and did so for most of the ride.

After dropping them, we headed for the centre of Bilbao, to see the Guggenheim museum. Close to it we found a vegetarian restaurant and to my surprise my dad wanted to have lunch there . Ok, it wasn't your cosiest place ever, but it was decent food for a ridiculously low price. We had four courses, a salad, soup, main dish and a dessert, and a bottle of wine for about € 12,5 each.

So, off to the Guggenheim! There it was, looming up in front of me, Puppy by Jeff Koons! YOU GOTTA LOVE THE DOG! How long had I been waiting to see this! Recovering from the amazement, I walked towards the entrance of the building that is indeed one of the most fascinating museum buildings ever. You just can't wrap your head around the architecture, and each side offers another mind-boggling perspective.

I'm not going to discuss the exhibits and the permanent collection - I'd go at it for the next few hours - but one of my absolute highlights was the work of Richard Serra. The man has got a whole wing of the museum for himself! I find his work incredible and since until now I'd only seen it in outdoor environments, it was dazzling to see it in a museum. Massive!

The permanent collection includes works of a lot of my favourites, such as Kandinsky (which is also my dad's favourite painter), Tanguy, Gris, Chagall, Pollock, Picasso, and many more.

I think we spent about 3 hours in the museum. By then we were a bit tired so we went to have a cup of coffee, again surrounded by pinxtos (seriously, putting massive amounts of food on the counter for you to grab without even having to ask, it's just tormenting. It's like they're all screaming at the same time 'pick me pick me!').

So we didn't see a lot of Bilbao, but my first impression is a pretty good one. We'll be there at least once a week for the next months so there's lots of time to discover the city!
Back in Bergara, I turned in early for what I had thought was going to be a good night's sleep, but I started writing the last entry of this blog, which kept me going for a while.

Next day, my dad and I took a ride to Eskoriatza, to my faculty. Eskoriatza is a small village, nothing to see or do, but at least the school building was quite impressive. We drove back and passed through Mondragon, where the main university is located and thus also where we will go if we want to go out or meet other students.

In the afternoon my dad went cycling and I unloaded my stuff at the apartment. Koen would be arriving at 6 o'clock in the evening together with Oihana and Eneko, our Erasmus buddies. I went to pick them up at the bus stop and finally met with Eneko, with whom I'd had contact for the last two months through Facebook. Oihana and Eneko are great, it was fun getting to know them and I hope we will see them a lot while we're here. They're very hospitable and easygoing.

Oh: I've got a Spanish phone number now, so if you would like to reach me, you can call or text on +34 689 63 88 93.

When our buddies were gone, I went to have dinner with Koen and my dad. The two started talking about football and the whole Wasilewski/Witsel-drama, sharing their different points of view. I suppose that's what you get when you head to an Irish pub with two sports addicts. Luckily, this time I had enough background information to contribute in a small way to the discussion, yay!

I spent my first night at the apartment, which was surprisingly good! In the morning, the three of us went to San Sebastian - Donostia in Basque. We drove along the coastline; this may be the most beautiful European coast I've seen so far.

In San Sebastian, we walked through the small streets and alleys towards the beach. The weather wasn’t on our side, but even on a cloudy and rainy day, it's still amazing.

Afterwards we ended up in - what else - another pinxtos bar. To give you an idea of how tempting these places are, take a look (and ignore the disgusting hams):

Getting hungry?

In the meantime it had started to rain, so it wasn't possible to stroll through town (at least if you didn't want to get soaked). We decided to get a cup of coffee and then left, back to Bergara. Nonetheless, I like San Sebastian, can't wait to go back when the weather's better, which shouldn't take long.

Back home, we spent my dad's last night here in - surprise surprise - the Irish pub. The guy has become a pinxtos-addict while he was here. He hasn't eaten anything else this week and when he's not eating pinxtos, he's very likely talking about them . We all turned in pretty early, tired from driving around all day and walking through San Sebastian in the rain.

So this morning, my dad left for France. I got up early to say goodbye - I have a strong feeling he will come back in a few months just for those pinxtos.
Today I was pretty lazy. I read my book for most of the day, until they came to install our internet connection in the afternoon. Also, our fridge is broken and hopefully we will get a new one by Monday.

In the evening, Koen and I went for a walk. I spotted a fence a few meters above the ground and I saw an opportunity to get on up there. Koen however told me it was too high and that I couldn't make it. Today he learned that I'm easily challenged and so I proved him wrong by climbing up there. On the other side of the fence there was a path leading up the hills, so we started walking up for about half an hour. The view was definitely worth the effort. The regular path down was a bit boring so I found a way to descend that seemed more fun. But oh, was I wrong, it was steep and there were thorns everywhere!
Result: scratches and itchiness.

Further down, we found the gates to a park or maybe a private domain, it was hard to see in the dark. The gates were closed, we thought about climbing the walls but a police car drove by. We decided our next quest is to get in there at night .

There, that was about it. I suppose most of you haven't even bothered to read everything . Niké and Michael will be arriving somewhere tomorrow evening. Monday morning: first day of school! I'll keep you posted!

Cheers!