Elizondo

The view that made me realize I had already been there

Weekend in Elizondo

For the past two weekends I’ve couchsurfed Basque country style. I was a bit surprised that there actually are couchsurfers from the Basque country, since the couchsurfing project goes against Basque social sentiment. E.g. Aversion to foreign things; closed-circle social stratification. Needless to say, I took advantage of the language search feature on the website and screened everyone from the province of Nafarroa and the provinces of the Iparraldea to make sure that they knew Basque as an expert and would be an adequate host for me. After sending messages to ten different people I attained a 20% reply rate (two people, both from Nafarroa).

So, last weekend I went to the town of Lesaka where I spent two weeks doing a Barnetegi during the summer. I stayed with a 35yr old guy named Iñaki. He told me a story about a cross on top of one of the surrounding hillsides, saying that a somewhat crazy guy had climbed up to the mountain with an ax and chopped the cross down at the base. So they rebuilt the cross, making it out of concrete. As he told me this story Iñaki pointed out to me that the very guy who chopped the cross down had just walked by. Then we walked up a hillside where Iñaki showed me his baratzea. It was full of apple trees, chestnuts and kiwis. He explained to me that anything can grow in Lesaka especially given the right microclimate. (I spotted a very healthy looking patch of Banana trees growing on a hillside.)Since Iñaki couldn’t offer me a place to sleep he made reservations at the local hostel where I stayed during the barnetegi.

This weekend I traveled to Elizondo after contacting a host named Idoia. Although she was having her 30th birthday party she was more than eager to have me stay with her. So I left Saturday from the bus station with a backpack, a jacket, a scarf and a bottle of Blanc Pescador in hand. I passed through some very romantic towns with old buildings and church steeples surrounding riversides until I arrived in Elizondo. When I got off the bus there were three girls waiting for me, they walked me to a car and we all went to Idoia’s house where she was busy preparing falafels for her birthday dinner. There were sixteen of us at the dinner.

Idoia and her friend Ainara work in the town of Zugarramurdi just next to the border which is a small town famous for its witch caves. They explained to me that they work both in the museum and also giving tours, and Ainara was explaining to me how she was nervous the day before because she had to give a tour in English to the USAC group.

I was very happy at dinner with my decision to come to Elizondo and knew that I was going to have a great night. After dinner we exited the house and walked towards the center of town where all the bars were at. As we rounded the turn on an old street we came upon a river. As soon as I stepped on to the bridge and looked up stream I realized I had already visited Elizondo once before. As the group all headed towards the bars I decided to go off on a side street and do some exploring, so I caught up with them later. At 2am wandering the streets I walked past cats, miniature ponies, and vegetable gardens with giant gourds and dried corn stalks, old houses and was in an extremely good mood and excited about the night ahead of me.

I found our group and then we hung out in the bar for a little while and I talked to some of Idioa’s friends and danced a bit. Then at about 4am we all took the one kilometer bus ride to the Diskoteka, Lur, which was located in a converted warehouse at the outskirts of town. We had to pay 9 euros to enter the club with a huge dance floor and a big screen TV which projected the videos of the songs being played. It was a pretty spectacular place (in the Guy Debord sense of the term) because all the videos showed images of super model girls in thongs and tight clothes dancing around the rapper or whoever’s video it was. This meant that the dj only played popular songs, and didn’t even bother mixing them together. Lame! But, I had lots of fun anyway. It was interesting because although I only had three or four drinks the entire night, just the atmosphere and the people I was with influenced my state to a large degree. I guess I could say I chose to have a good time, but I just knew it as soon as I arrived to Idoia’s house.

The diskoteka closed at 7:30 so we left and hung out in the street for awhile. I finally got back to Idoia’s house and was asleep by nine.

New Semester

When August ended I left the barnetegi in Amorebieta with one of my classmates. She dropped me off in her town, Deba. From their I took the EuskoTren to Donostia, called Fernando (my new Colombian landlord and housemate) and took a taxi to my new home on calle Miracruz in the neighborhood Gros. It was a very nicely located house: right next to the river, 3 blocks from the beach overlooking the triangle shaped Pinudi Plaza. It was a hot, beautiful day.

Fast forward one month later and I find myself in a new house in a different neighborhood, Antiguo. Antiguo is located on the opposite end of town, and is rather separate from the rest of Donostia. I'm living with a family and am relieved of the household duties I had at my last place. Now I have more time to study and do other things. I'm living with a middle aged couple named, Mikel and Karmele. They have two daughters, 18 and 21 who are doing ERASMUS programs in Berlin and London. This family normally takes students through USAC, but since they applied too late they found my ad posted in the University and contacted me.

Karmele and Mikel are euskaldun berriak, which means they have learned Basque as a second language. They both study english in their spare time, and I nearly piss myself everytime Mikel tries to speak it with me. He has a really fun voice and he totally overly exaggerates the american accent. The other night he did an impression of the accent without saying any actual words, which cracked me up. Just imagine the villain in a John Wayne-style western film with a bunch of marbles in his mouth.

Karmele is very friendly and talkative mostly because she knows more Basque than Mikel. (I also know more Basque than Mikel). She had to achieve the title EGA via Basque language studies so that she could be a professor here at the local University. We live three minutes on foot from the campus where she teaches Child Education, and this just so happens to be the same building where I'm studying Spanish in the afternoons.

I showed her the picture from my last post and she couldn't believe it. She still hasn't found out who put the plant there. She always tells me things about the university and the people there. For example, she told me she thinks my spanish teacher is a really strict, unfriendly person, so I related a story about how one day I made a joke in class about how I couldn't do my homework because I got locked out of my house in the rain with my book and the rain caused all the ink to bleed together. My teacher did not catch the exaggerated sardonicism in my voice and started to lecture me about not doing homework. Hahaha. It's nice to be able to relate to my new mom and, because of her, the people who work at the university recognize me and, because I've met some of them, they always say hi to me on the way to class.

Karmele, Mikel and I always get into really interesting conversations, and although I haven't even been here a week I'm already at ease with my new living situation.