Pulpo paradise, or...

Oke.. If you don't mind dear reader? I have a complaint to make! You know what it is? Pulpo.. Squid, octupus or ink fish as we call it at home. I mean, come one! What's so great about it? Don't want to be close minded here, and really I trie something when it's offered..

Here I've eaten morcilla, stomach, tongue, pork cheek(see other post) and yes, squid. Now I have to admit that the taste wasn't even that bad, sort of rubbery chicken, although opinions on that vary..
The point for me is that in this case I prefer not to be confronted with the looks of the animal involved. I realize I'm being a spoiled brat that's used to perfectly clean food from supermarkets. However, this squid really looks awful to me. LOOK!
Did you? Well, honostly, do you feel like chewing one of those tentacles now? I don't anyway.. But people here and in Spain are just crazy about it. They even have special restaurants, called pulperias.
PULPERIAS, for heavens sake, pulperias! That would be a squidery, octopuseryor a ink fishery!
A sidreria okay, a pulperia, no way!

One of those rainy days..

Somehow on Saturday it was raining everywhere! And I mean everywhere.. I checked from Buenos Aires to Valencia and from Paris to Cape Town. Rain, rain, rain.. And when there is one place it always rains, it's the Basque Country. 'Good for the garden', my mum always says. yes, that's true, but when you're looking for something to do on that rainy Saturday, it might set your enthousiast spirit a bit back! Last Saturday me and my French friend were at my place, thinking what to do. . Okay, so “no outside programme for today”, we concluded after seeing those forecasts.

So what do you do then? We were really looking forward to do at least a little something, all seemed better then hanging around at home. We started looking for places that could be fun to visit with this weather. And what else can come to your mind at that moment than Leinz Gatzaga?!

Leinz Gatzaga is a tiny hamlet, leaning on the side of a mountain, a couple of kilometres up from Eskoriatza. This border town of Gipuzkoa has it all, or not, depending on what you’re looking for. Leinz Gatzaga’s well kept old centre, which is practically the whole town, kept a silence that makes you fantasize yourself away some hundred years ago. Pretty little streets, tiny churches and cosy bars around the squares.

We entered one of them, is was a lucky guess.. To be honest, it didn’t look all that promising from the outside; plasticised, dirty white doors and an ice cream sign makes you wonder why we entered it at all! But it turned out to be just a bit more than we’d expected. The small room crowded with people eating appealing dishes on tables with those typical old fashioned table cloths, old men and women playing cards and having a drink, good jazz music and just a warm atmosphere!

Lucky us, one table was free! We sat down, ordered ourselves a fish soup (suppose there wasn’t much more on the menu) and a good Rioja. Not the worst way to spend your Saturday afternoon! The soup appeared to be great, filled with chickpeas, monk fish and clams it was a considerable meal. We finished with some home made flan, coffee and an essential patxaran. Good times on a rainy Saturday in Leinz Gatzaga, quite recommendable

Arrasatterdam?!

The other day I was just having a walk in my town Arrasate, dreaming my own stuff, when I got woken up by an awkwardly familiar odor.. Is that weed? But I thought: Hey I'm the Dutch guy here, and clearly I'm not smoking! Who is that?' Well, just some guys, having a smoke in the streets.. That's is not even allowed in the center of my town due to a bye-law!

But this is Arrasate, so apparently it is okay. Thereafter, I went to a bar with some Basque friends, only to be confronted with the same damn smell! 'In a bar?!', I asked them. And yes, nobody seemed to be bothered by the joint rolling youngster at the bar. Another thing which is not done in the Netherlands. Okay, since the smoking ban you can't smoke anywhere, but even before that.. Smoking weed in a bar was not done. For example, the bar I used to work had you kicked out instantly!

What a surprise, small villages tend to be more conservative, but in the same time there's a feeling of anarchy. And EVERYBODY does seems to do it! I guess the 'legalization' in the Netherlands proved effective, cause I think we don't find it that interesting for that reason. While here it's illegal, but everybody does it and no one seems to care about it happening.So when homesick in Arrasate as a Dutchy, just close your eyes, open up your nostrils and feel at home..

Fishy times out here!

Some fish a day keeps the doctor away.. I never heared anyone say it really, but I think it should be a Basque telling you this. Cause eating fish is healthy, and even more popular in the Basque Country. I'm still investigating where this popularity comes from.. But one thing is for sure, a happy Basque is one eating a good plate with tuna, red snapper or cod! I wonder, would the popularity have something to do with the sea close by?

Women repairing the nets in Donostia

A fine tuna pintxo, cod pil pil or whatever the pintxoneers (pinxto makers, just invented it..) here feel like putting together, fish enjoys a well respected status in the Basque diet.

For that to happen, I guess you need people to take that fish.. Yes! That must be it, the fish live in the sea, Basques eat fish, so somehow, the fish comes to the Basques! And that’s what all these small villages are for! Must be my egg of Columbus..

I went to a few of those places where they make all this happen, fishing villages you call them, and they are inhabited by fishermen and women. Traditionally, the men take care of the fishing part and the women of the on shore activities such a repairing nets.

Because nowadays people often feel like drifting off from reality, fast lives, traffic, office jobs,

etcetera, they occupy themselves with things that make them feel basic. And yes, some of them go fishing. It looks quite relaxing to be honest, you just stand a bit, watch the sea, and just wait… All these hobby fishermen, cause somehow it’s always men(of a considerable age), appear to be bothered by nothing. Just enjoying the fresh sea breeze..

However, this sea breeze might be too fresh sometimes. Because when I started talking to one of them, the guy got a bit over excited and threw out all his social isolation out on us! He was just so proud of his latest catch, that, while bombarding us with unintelligible phrases, he did not satisfy with just showing it.

The ever so quiet fisherman, agitated and all, simply had to stuff that red snapper in my hand. Muchas gracias tio!

Time flies!

Wow, things go fast here.. Now what I feel I'm getting used to things out here a bit, we have to move homewards. Before I knew what was going on, I had a look at my calendar and saw that there's only a good two weeks left to do my things in the Basque Country. The bad thing about places is that they become better when you get to know them.

How many of these villages can I still visit?

That goes for the Basque Country as well. In the beginning we had to depend on other people to see places because we didn’t know anyone, but now we’ve made friends we can visit and we know about more places we should go to. But where has the time gone we had in the beginning?

It’s a shame the weather has changed so rapidly cause I would really like to go hiking in the Pyrenees for a couple of days, but it’s wiser to keep that for summer. Then there’s the French Basque Country which should be worth visiting, Navarre and the Basque part of la Rioja, numerous lovely villages and other beautiful hikes that just need to be done..

How many of these mountains can I still climb?

But I’m never going to squeeze that in four weeks, and even if i had time, my wallet wouldn’t approve all this. So I have to make choices, not my greatest talent.. Painful times, but on the other hand, even if I had done all, mentioned above, I would have found other places to feel bad about for not going there.

In the end I think I should just enjoy the time here, not worry about what and what not to see, and just have the best time with my friends here. But who to see when and where?

Working hard here, mum!

Each Tuesday we get educated about the ins and outs of the Basque Country, this also includes ten minutes of Euskera(Basque). It's quite interresting realy, and if people hear that you bother to speak some words they appreciate it a lot! Oke, we're absolutely unable to have a conversation but I can say ‘kaitxo, zer moduz?’, order ’sagardo bat’ in a bar and some more basic stuff.. Maybe I should do more Euskera classes, but I'm unsure if I'll ever use it after I leave the country, that's why I'm studying some Spanish here in town.

Spanish might help me out just a bit more in the future and is A LOT easier to learn. As I was saying, I went to my language school in Arrasate to see if I hadn’t missed out on too much, and if I could still know what they were talking about. But what happened? My professor appeared to be sick at home.. Bummer! I was kind of looking forward to get started again, and I didn’t feel like waiting for him to get better.

The guy who told me though, happened to be the teacher for the higher level class (I started at level one, cause I hadn’t ever had Spanish lessons). He told me that I could have a trie in the second level class if i wanted.

And it was brilliant! The level was higher than in my other class, but in the end I went home with a more satisfied feeling than before..

Just one of those days...

Since the end of August, we have done a lot of traditional jaiak, Basque parties. Because I love them in every way, I wanted to introduce my visiting Dutch friends to one. Just too bad for us, I couldn't find any.. Therefore, we had to somehow create our own fun. No problemo! We were happy to see each other and we had enough gun to catch up, so creating our own, perhaps less traditional, party was to be a good choise.

After an awesome day in Donostia (sights, pintxos, cider and txakoli), we headed for Arrasate to spend our last night together. Unfortunatley, the calendar said it was Monday. and what can you possibly do on a Monday?!

All our Basque lagunak(friends) were panikcing over deadlines, so we invited our Erasmus friends. Cause Erasmus people aren’t known for having the tightest schedule, as I experience myself! But as the mood was kind of weird the whole weekend, we decided to thematize the party as a dress-up-as-dumb-as you-can-party. Great fun, most people showed up, and they had even bothered to put on something stupid.

Somehow people loosen up a bit when they dress up, as if they can hide behind a different personality. They act, and that can be for the good. Everyone was dancing to my wacky, fast Romanian music and having such a great time!

My Dutch friends and I made us some dinner at two o’clock at night to keep the energy level steady for some more fun, and it worked. We ended the festivities around 6, cause we figured our neighbours would like to have a peaceful breakfast. Still wonder if they managed to sleep at all that night..

In respect for my friends I chose not to post any pictures of this night, since it might do damage to their future career