As the smoke from hundreds of California wildfires mutes our Sierra sunshine into a melancholy and slightly apocaplyptic light, I think more and more of the Basque Country and its cool, windy and wet weather. Amy captured it perfectly one mid-May day, looking westward along the Gipuzcoan coastline from my favorite perch above the town of Zumaia.
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Tucson, Arizona. Down here the Wildcats enjoy one of the most vibrant university-city neighborhoods I’ve ever seen, with three separate residential districts on the National Register of Historic Places and more bookstores, cafes, restaurants and state-of-the-art retail joints than you can shake a saguaro at. I’ve always wished for something similar around UNR, but the pickings are still pretty slim, so much so that I’ve heard the perimeter of our campus called “The Dead Zone.” To get to where anything lively is happening, like along the riverside, you need to make that treacherous crossing of I-80 and fend off the troll population, especially problematic at night, or ride the Sierra Spirit through the intervening belt of seedy motels, parking structures, and pawn shops. The “Joe” definitely helps, but I don’t think a single large-scale establishment can service an entire university community. We lost Record Street, an island of relaxation on the nice side of campus. Fritz’s, the Breakaway, Jimmy John’s, a couple of convenience stores — don’t we deserve more? [Read more →]
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Does the news these days have you worried about your academic future? Think you might need one of these soon? Are you worried about getting the classes you need? Let us know. We’d like to hear from you.
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Apologies if you’ve been checking back looking for a new post. I’ve been busy re-entering. But perhaps I delude myself … [Read more →]
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As I pack my bags to leave this beautiful place, I want to thank two local residents who have made me feel something like a genuine dyed-in-the-wool donostiarra.
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Rails to Trails is what we call them in the States, and there’s even an organization dedicated to converting old railroad right-of-ways into cycling and hiking paths. Here in the Basque Country they’re called vias verdes, or “greenways,” and the Ardituri path is the best one I’ve found so far.
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Help me, Reader. There is a Spanish word for “blessing,” other than bendición. I remember that it sounds Basque or Mesoamerican, rather than Latinate, with a “z” in it, I think.
For those of us up here with children, grocery bags, arthritic hips, cases of Rioja, visiting senior relatives — whatever that word is, this is it. One local woman used it to describe the new all-weather outdoor escalator that in four flights cuts off hundreds of stairsteps and the narrow switchbacking road from Plaza Easo up to San Roque, here in my part of hilly Donostia-San Sebastián. The ayuntamiento is installing them in other neighborhoods too. Talk about tax dollars at work! It’s a marvel of … well, it must be revealed … German engineering. ThyssenKrupps AG specifically. At night it looks all sci-fi, with these cool blue LED tubes along the treads.
That’s my 86 year-old Dad, at the top. He took German in high school and college. His verdict: fantastisch!
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I stand here on the coast corrected. (Actually that’s McKoy, standing on the cliffs at Zumaia, looking westward — click on this and the one below for a larger view of this part of the coast.)
It is just past “Aprille … [w]han longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,” and at various points along the Bay of Biscay I am seeing a steady trickle of pilgrims, a few almost every day, though far fewer than the hundreds every week who choose the easier grades of the inland route.
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Down at the bottom of the hill on which I live here in Donostia-San Sebastián is a little parish house (below right) with the stylized symbol of a sca
llop shell — una concha — affixed to a corner of the wall. It’s a waymark, and this is a pilgrim hostel, although very few pilgrims any more follow this extremely difficult route along the mountainous Basque coast. Most of them wisely take the inland road into the La Rioja wine country and across the Castilian plain. But, using one route or the other, pilgrims have been coming to northern Spain for over a thousand years. [Read more →]
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You’ve heard me out on the food, but have I raved yet about the public transportation in this part of Europe? Before dawn last Friday I shouldered my duffel, locked the door, and walked 10 minutes down that series of mossy old stone staircases to the edge of still-deserted downtown San Sebastián-Donostia (guess I should be raving about the urban planning here as well).
