Vegetarian?! Ehm.... Tuna??

YES! I do love the food out here! Basques are supposed to have the best cuisine in Spain, and so far I can't really disagree. However, I began to look upon it differently after a few experiences I've had since last week. My girlfriend is visiting me, and just like me and the Basques, she greatly enjoys those good things in life. All of that, exept for the carnivorous part. Yes, my girlfriend is a vegetarian, a rarity around here.

Being vegetarian means asking for trouble we discovered. Even in the culinary capital of the Basque Country, Donostia, we could't find more than one or two veggie pintxos in each bar. So while I happily shove another fantastic creation with 'bacalao'(cod) or 'jamon Iberico'(famous cured ham) inside, she saw the barmans finger pointing at the tortilla patata, again..

Good Samaritans as we were, we even tought the barmen that tuna isn't growing from trees, as they recommended the tuna salad more than once. Yes, I think a lot of them had conversations at home like: 'Hey honey, I found out what a vegetarian is, and did you know there's no such thing as a annual tuna harvest!'

Luckily, we found one finger that wasn't pointing to another bar with 20 hams on the ceiling. Just outside the meat-loving old town, we were given directions to a vegetarian restaurant! Guess what, they nearly convinced me to become one of them.. The food just was excellent, accompanied with ecological txakoli, we had a great time.

Unfortunately though, I don't have a chance to be a vegetarian yet.. There's just so many pintxos and Basque dishes I didn't trie jet, we'll talk after that!

One lovely day in Donostia

Oke, I'm not being chronologic now but I just felt I had to tell something about Donostia(or San Sebastian). This weekend actually started with a thursday night party with my friends from Donostia that live in Arrasate. After a long night out, we regrouped for lunch and a horror movie to contemplate on the who, what, where and why. This resulted in an invitation for me to come to Donostia with them for a day. Well, Arrasate isn't the liveliest of all places on Friday, especially compared to Donostia. So we took the bus, slept like baby's and ended up having dinner with friends of them.

During and after the dinner, I found out that most people spoke some English. The level wasn't always enough for a proper conversation but a few of them were really good. Anyway, I'm the foreigner so I should be speaking Spanish or Euskera to them, whenever my five Spanish classes I had, allow me to.

We had a relatively quiet night because of Thursday's party, but it was satisfying. Meeting new people is what this Erasmus thing is all about in my opinion, and it were good people too! We died on the couch around four after a movie and woke up in another sunny October day. Well, at those days I envy people who live in Donostia even more. It's great just to wander around, hit one of the pintxo bars and have a walk on the beach. And that's what we did on Saturday.

We tried our first pintxo in a suburbian bar that's supposed to have the best pate. And it probably was! Together with some cider(I'm nearly getting good at the pouring!) it was a good start of the day! Cider and pintxo's were the key word for the rest of the afternoon. I tried cod, Iberico ham, gamba's, differtent cheeses, tuna and patatas bravas. O yeah, and some cider:-)

My time in Donostia finished after a walk in the old harbour, while the sun was going down.. You can really fall in love with a city on such days!