Manic Mannequin + Behobia Bonus

Several times a week finds me on a particular street*, either to do some shopping or to get to the bus stop, and I always look up at the same balcony to see what shenanigans their dummy--the Manic Mannequin, as I call him--is up to. As I am easily pleased by most forms of silliness, sighting the mannequin makes me happy; the month that he was apparently on holiday the empty balcony was frankly disappointing and a little bit sad.

Here's a crappy photo I took of him with my phone camera a while ago:

The mannequin is often dressed in some way that reflects the current ongoings and/or weather. This weekend--in honor of the Behobia-San Sebastián half-marathon--he's attired in a green plastic garbage fashioned into a tank top and sporting a sweatband on his head (and although I can't see the rest of him, I suppose he's wearing something akin to running shorts and running shoes).

While I'm here, props to this year's Behobia winner, one Rafa Iglesias of Salamanca, who ran the 20 kms in 1:01:16 in very windy and rainy weather. And props as well to my aunt, who's running in her first ever half-marathon today. You folks are crazy/awesome.




*Calle Juan de Garay (I believe), across from the Super Matia, if you want to visit him in person.

Wandering Irun

Irun, the second largest city in Gipuzkoa and a cheap train ride/16 kms away from SanSe, was a staycation destination the week before last as I accompanied Didier on his visit to an Ayurvedic massage therapist.

Irun is a border town, the last stop before crossing over the Bidasoa river and into Hendaye/la France. Prior to moving here, for me Irun was nothing more than a dreary and annoying place to change trains and have my passport checked in the non-standard gauge/pre-EU days of yore. Even now, as far as I have experienced, it does not seem to have any special charms to recommend it to touristy types; mostly it's somewhere easy and different to go to when I need to go anywhere that isn't SanSe. Irun is SanSe's poor cousin (though pretty much everywhere in Gipuzkoa seems to be SanSe's poor cousin), rather like going from Portland to Vancouver (for you Seattle types), or from Manhattan Beach to, say, Gardena (for you LA types).

Still, a fun little jaunt was had, and Irun certainly has interesting bits which make it as good a place as any to spend an afternoon. We walked from the center of town to a neighborhood called Dumboa, just north of the main Topo station and on the other side of a canal. For some reason Dumboa is full of physiotherapists; in a 4 or 5 block radius we saw at least 10 places. We eventually found the place were Didi was going, and there I left him to wander around, armed with canteen, camera for interesting shots and book for shady spots.

An interesting choice in signage--presumably it's to attract clients

Didi posing with tenor Luis Mariano, native son of Irun.

Writer Pio Baroja; born in SanSe, bronzed in Irun.

Beautiful ornate door of Romanesque church Santa María del Juncal.

Stair stepper/snail sculpture: part of a whole old skool fitness route in a park near the canal. Doesn't seem to be much used any more though, sadly.

Canal cutting through Irun; here spake Didier my new favorite backhanded compliment: "If I close my eyes, it's like I'm in Paris."

More photos of my mini-tour of Irun here.

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As I was wandering around, it occurred to me that Irun was more like Vitoria and Bilbao than SanSe. The first three share architectural similarities that are largely absent from SanSe, and they seem to be places where people live and function more than anything else. SanSe, however, is a different sort of beast--it's not that it isn't livable or functional, but in the end its raison d'etre seems to lie more in maintaining its hoity-toity resorty air, a too-perfect, everything-just-so showcase city for tourists and its wealthiest residents.

For all I know, in the end Bilbao and Vitoria are also all (or a lot) about the tourist, but as a visitor, at least, that's not the primary impression that I get.

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Fun facts! SanSe vs Irun
Population: 184,248 vs 61,419
Area: 60.89 sq. km. vs 42.40 sq. km
Density: 3,025.92 vs 1,448.56
Founded: 1180 vs 1776
Favorite concierge/gatekeeper: nobody vs Patxi
Pop musicians of certain renown: Mikel Erentxun (Duncan Dhu) vs Amaia Montero (La Oreja de Van Gogh)

August Staycation

So it's August and I've pretty much got a whole month of staycation, like last summer. This summer, though, in order to avoid a repeat of the horrible, uh, horribleness of last August, I am actively staycationing by getting out and about town and to other destinations as my bus/train passes and legs/bike may allow, exploring places new and old a couple days every week. Even when I combine my outings with bidness things, they're mostly enjoyable in one way or another and keep me out of trouble.

Here are some pics of my outing to Hendaye's beach and my loitering about the Palacio de Miramar. I do not, however, have photos of my excursion by train + feets to the shopping mall just outside of town to buy bidness supplies (you're welcome).

Colorful Hendaye!

Looking over to the other side: from Hendaye (France) to Hondarribia (Spain)

Hanging in the shady bits of SanSe's Palacio de Miramar, overlooking the sparsely populated beach and adjacent park. It was overcast but humid, so I was exceedingly glad of the breeze.

A fellow park visitor, with Monte Urgull and its Christ in the background.

A new perspective on a stretch that I travel many times in a week.

Summer "Fun"

Out and about with the camera this morning, taking summery snaps for you, my three faithful readers and my poor Seattleites who are not enjoying the immensely sunshiney summer day we're having today*. So, until your sun comes back, I send you some of mine!

Sun-drenched sculpture: Eduardo Chillida's Homage to Flemming (not sure which one as I couldn't be bothered to wade past the tide of tourists to go read the sign (which for some reason is not actually very near the sculpture), but I like to think of it being for Ian).

It is well known that, in spite of (or perhaps because of) growing up in a similarly sunny and beachy place, I am a summer beach grouch and do not like crowded and/or hot beaches and do not understand the pleasure people take from baking in the sun (every August I yearn to be in Sweden!). However, I am not so grouchy that I can't enjoy people actively enjoying themselves at the beach:

Happy kiddies taking advantage of the low tide to do some 'sploring of the mossy rocky bits and the creatures that I assume live within.

Dudes playing squash or paddle ball or whatever you call hitting a ball against a wall with a paddle.

The line of people walking all up and down the shoreline, between La Concha and Ondarreta beaches.

Same as before, just from the other side and closer up.

OK, that's enough of that sunlight business; I hope that'll tide you Seattleites over until you get more of your own. Let's now move onto the shady garden at Palacio Miramar, which is much more my cup of tea:






*Ooops, as I write it's starting to get overcast here as well!

Food Friday: Mostly Garden Veg Edition

I love my chef student, and not just because he's been sharing his garden booty with me (though it certainly does score him big points). A while ago I got some nice big zucchinis, comme ça:

I cooked up what turned out to be a sort of Mexican-spiced ratatouille-esque dish. It sounds weird I suppose, but let's remember I operate with limited kitchen tools and food ingredients. So all in all, it was tasty and the people I fed it to liked it well enough and nobody threw up or died.

The other day I was given some lovely garden fresh gigantor tomatoes--one was a standard tomato and the other one was a tomate negro. I had never tried or even seen a black tomato before, so it was fun to try it. It was soft and had a slightly sweet taste, or perhaps more accurately it was less acidic. Now that I go to the Parte Vieja in the mornings to teach, I was able to take advantage of being near the morning fresh produce market and bought myself a basil plant and a cilantro plant, and I also popped by a nice bread shop and got some yummy seedy bread. When I arrived home I put it all together with a dash of salt and pepper and voilà, my very yummy garden lunch:





Today I was given more booty as my student now has more veg than he can deal with. I got more zucchini and tomatoes, with the addition of an eggplant and some vainas/green beans. Dinner tonight featured zucchini, red onion and piment d'Espelette (after giving the stuff to Statesiders all these years, I finally got some for myself, yay!); I'll work the rest of the veg into my weekend meals.

I'm excited to see what will come from the garden and end up in my clutches next.

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I had some friends over for dinner last weekend and we followed up our black beans in mango sauce with a new (to me) and dangerous chocolate bar that one of my friends brought for dessert:

Sweet and salty is a pretty super combination. As far as I am aware, round these parts it's only available at a shop I rarely get to (Solbes), thankfully. (If it is available elsewhere round these parts, please don't tell me as in this case it is certainly better I live in ignorance.)

Food Friday

Aussie pal Jules just alerted me to this video clip from a recent Australia-based eppie of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations travel/food porn show. What makes it exciting and very worth a watch is Bourdain's visit to the Royal Mail Hotel* in wee Dunkeld (Victoria), where Jules and her husband Dan work--Dan as the executive chef and manager of the restaurant. Both Dan and the restaurant have been getting lots of very positive press and accolades, and Bourdain went to check it out.

The video has something for everyone: pretty pictures of yummy food, mentions of the Basque Country, gorgeous Australian scenery, Anthony Bourdain and his very mild potty mouth, and Dan! If you're not interested in what Bourdain calls the best Chinese food in the world, you can skip ahead to the Royal Mail Hotel bit starting at 2:00.

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Recently I went to a wine-tasting, and despite it being held at FNAC**, it was one of the best wine-tastings I've participated in. It was led by sommelier Mikel Garaizabal, and his presentation was simple and clear but at the same time very entertaining, partly due to his own humor and charm (and that of his co-presenter), and partly due to visuals like this:

 (Click on image to see English version of site.)

Because it was sponsored by Mondragon Lingua, it was bilingual, that is, in Basque and English. First Mikel would explain things in Basque (which I understood a decent amount of), and then another guy called Joseba explained it in English (which I also understood a decent amount of). We had a nice mix of people; about half were there to hear it in English and the rest in Basque.

We tasted two txakolis (a Basque sparkling white wine), one from Getaria and one from Bizkaia, and two crianzas from La Rioja Alavesa. They were all lovely, the nicest one being a 2007 Dominio de Berzal crianza. We got additional swag at the end: a nice little book on wine and a guide to wine routes and wineries in Alava. I also scored one of the left over bottles of wine, a half-bottle of the lesser crianza.

Everybody really enjoyed themselves, and Mikel and Joseba were charming and gracious hosts. If you locals get the chance to attend a Mikel-led cata, go for it--even if you're not a big wine fan, you'll have a good time.



*An amazing video of the RMH's natural surroundings and the spectacular restaurant gardens is at the link.

**A sort of Barnes and Noble meets Best Buy, in a space the size of a medium-sized B&N. They put on all manner of events, but prior to this one they've been only so-so for one reason or another. I almost didn't go to this one, but the possibility of actually tasting wine got us there in the end.

Feline Jungle Gym

So as I noted in the previous post, on weekends the construction site goes back to the feral cats. Today I saw this momma cat and her offspring taking advantage of the whole no people and no noise deal and playing around on a pile of materials. The kittens were climbing all over the place, while momma watched with disinterest.

A Room With A View

My backyard construction site is coming along slowly but surely. When I'm not annoyed/enraged/driven to tears by it (on Friday afternoons and weekends when nobody's working), I enjoy working out how the building is going to be and imagining how the whole spread will look when it's done. I even find the machinery--my weekday nemesis--interesting. The wild kitties who used to have the run of the place also agree with me: on weekends they're here too, exploring what's new in their former haunt.

New amusement park

A million-foot crane was put up just the other day, and my particular type of vertigo makes me fear not only heights but also insanely tall things that *could maybe possibly one day* fall over and crush me/my house (all I can say is right now I am pleased as punch that I don't live on the top floor), especially on a very blustery day like today. So, while the geek in me is bummed that I missed the chance to see them erect the giganto-crane, my height-phobic brain is trying to learn to not see imminent doom every time I look out my windows and see the towering menace.


Da crane, da crane!

It's All Fun and Games Until... (Part II)

You're Gored

Last week while waiting for a student to show up, I watched a group of little 'uns play San Fermín txiki, where two kid-bulls held shoebox lids decorated with horns in front of their heads and chased after the other kids, trying to "gore" them. If the kids managed to reach the railing without the bulls getting them they were safe. Before letting the kid-bulls loose, they'd sing some jaunty song in Basque. The kids were having lots of fun, running around and screaming. They were as cute as all get out, but all I could think was, dammit, this is a gateway game to the hard core stuff--the real encierro/running of the bulls.

When it comes to the actual San Fermines and bull run 'n' slaughter business, it's far from cute and I want nothing to do with it.* It seems a supremely stupid activity to engage in. Every year people get gored, trampled and otherwise injured. This year, in addition to the usual injuries, a 27-year-old from Madrid was killed when a "rogue" bull sank his horn into the man's neck and lung. It was a tragedy, they said. Indeed. But really, people don't actually get killed very often, they said. So, I guess that somehow makes it OK, and we'll continue on with another season and see who gets injured and maybe killed next year (besides the bulls of course, which is a given).

Not that I'm going to go PETA about it, but I won't be unhappy at all when this man vs. bull idiocy is ended once and for all.


*Alas, it's pretty hard to ignore it: It's on TV and plastered on frontpages, everybody seems to be talking about it, San Fermín reveler-tourists are everywhere, and my students are all giddy at the thought of going to the big party.

Babelwhacked

Every once in a while I like to play with the automated translation tools the Internetz have to offer and have a good giggle. (Last reported foray here.)

Today I plugged in my little anti-Sears Tower Skydeck rant, and translated it into Spanish and French. The French one wasn't very good, but the Spanish one was even worse and made me laugh/cry/pee for about 5 minutes in its wacky reinterpretation of my original post.

Original:

"I don't remember how old I was exactly, but when I was a kid and we were visiting Chicago with family, I refused to go up to the Sears Tower Skydeck. My poor dad had to stay way down on the safe but boring ground with me while everybody else was whisked up 103 floors and had a jolly old time looking over Chicago and beyond. (Sorry about that, Dad!)"

Spanish:

"No recuerdo cuantos años yo era exactamente, pero cuando yo era un niño y nosotros visitábamos a Chicago con la familia, rechazé acercarme al Chamusca la Torre Skydeck. Mi papá pobre tuvo que quedarse la bajada sobre la caja fuerte, pero la tierra(razón) aburrida conmigo mientras cada uno además fue batido encima de 103 pisos y tenía un viejo tiempo alegre revisando Chicago y más allá. ¡(Lamentable sobre esto, Papá!)"

I'll not go into all the goofiness/wrongness of the Spanish, but the best bits were the following: Sears being reinterpreted as the cooking term 'sear', as in searing your steak; safe being reinterpreted as the secure place where you store your valuables; and whisked being reinterpreted as what you do to your cream or eggs.

If you want to be creeped out, behold a virtual gringa speaking the Spanish translation, in an accent that pretty much matches the horribleness of the text (accents and ñ's removed to 'improve' it).

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For intentionally funny and very well-done linguistic trickery, I recommend* this post written in Euskanglish, i.e. English with lots of Basque (and wee bits of Spanish) in it. Even if you don't quite get it all, it's still a fun read as it's a photo-laden tour of some Eibarian cooking up lamb's head and then feeding pureed bits of it to his baby. (Tip of the txapela to Luistxo for bringing this to my attention!)

"Today, I’ve decided to erretrate the usual procedure of culinating bildots’ head, that conflictive piece that sarry remains in the frigorifick, and many people does the swedish, not to have to eat it, arguing that they got sad remembering the happy sheep-kume, antxitxing here and there, wearing their white coat, so angelical. No my friends, you’ve not to be hypocrit: every meat eater should be gay to kill the animal first, and then eat it, even its identificablest parts. Don’t come here with stories, you membrilios."

Yummy! Full post here.



*If you are euskaldun then I highly recommend it--klik egin above you orain!

It's All Fun and Games Until... (Part I)

The Diablo Strikes

Because I enjoy being sane, I've been working pretty hard at not being too bothered by the horrible, constant construction outside my window and being generous of spirit towards my one-time tormentors. And on the whole I'd say I've been doing OK. While I prepare lunch, for example, I'll see them working just beyond my window and think to myself, man, these poor guys have to put up with a lot of crap, what with them being outside all the damn time regardless of weather and them having to listen to that deafening racket every single working day of their life. I, at least, have the ability to escape from the noise and heat pretty much at will.

But this morning's rude awakening undid all my work: it was decided by some rat bastard diablo that 8am was a perfect time to jackhammer down the wall that is was all of 12 feet from my head. In an instant all my good will towards man and machine was shattered, like so many bits o' rubble from the now destroyed wall behind my building.

Places I Will Never Ever Be

I don't remember how old I was exactly, but when I was a kid and we were visiting Chicago with family, I refused to go up to the Sears Tower Skydeck. My poor dad had to stay way down on the safe but boring ground with me while everybody else was whisked up 103 floors and had a jolly old time looking over Chicago and beyond. (Sorry about that, Dad!)

Thanks to a mash-up of modern technology and insanity, there are now horrible stick-out glass ledges at the Skydeck, open to all crazy people who happen to be in Chicago:

Thankfully for all involved, I am now old enough to stay on the ground on my own should I once again find myself in Chicago with cuckoo people who want to visit the Skydeck.

More nerve-wracking photos of these terror boxes here.

Be Every Time Lucky

This little shoe was hanging off a door at Aiete park the other day, yet another lost-then-found item that gets hung somewhere very near where it was found. The day before I took this photo, from my perch at a terraza, I watched a man spend 90 seconds or so hanging a lost baby bonnet on a bush at about eye-level, so the owner's parents would see it should they come back looking for it. One sees this sort of thing often, and it's one of those small gestures that reminds you that we're all in this thing together and that we should look out for one another at least a little bit. Thanks to this custom, Neds was able to regain a lost beloved sweater a while back.






Last weekend there was a loud wooooshing water sound, and being more focused on whatever Didier and I were doing, I sort of assumed that Iñaki was somehow taking a really loud shower--until he appeared in front of us, dry and fully clothed, exclaiming "Venid! Venid!" We followed him into the bathroom and from the window saw the nice impromptu geyser as per the above photo. Gallons upon gallons upon gallons of escaping water is not such a good thing, neither for the construction site, whose trenches filled with water, nor for the city, who I suppose has to pay for the lost water and for the police and then the fire department to come out and deal with it. But it was fun--water is always awesome, and it gave the neighborhood a show and some relief from the icky sticky humidity for just a short while.

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This summer I do not have the "luxury" of being unemployed or even underemployed, and so I am teaching. And this time around I'm actually quite glad of it. Getting up at 8am and teaching from 9am to 2pm is a downright pleasure (yes, I'm as shocked as you are to hear me saying that) as I am blessedly far away from the oppressive heat and the non-stop construction din that makes me cranky and frays my nerves. I am also happy that this summer my students are nine calm, attentive (mostly-)grown people and not ten loud, sweaty, whiny children, which means I'm not so overly taxed that I am useless for the rest of the day. I actually have energy to do other things in the afternoon, whether for bidness or pleasure.

This time around I'm doing an intensive First Certificate class with a group of seven more or less well-behaved teens in an air conditioned room, two hours per day. Then I hop on Beltxu and hie over to the center to do a private class with my chef student in another air conditioned room, two hours per day. Two other days a week, in my kitchen after lunch, I have class with a very nice and well-behaved 11-year-old boy who, with a few more years of English under his belt, will be giving his father's very good English a run for his money.

Tree/Castilblanco Visit

After becoming re-enamored with trees yesterday, I had time this afternoon to take a trek to the new park that's a hop, skip and climb from my house. The park is called Castilblanco and its development was part of a large housing construction project also called Castilblanco. I'd tried to get into it before a couple of times, but the security guard at the construction site always chased me off. This sparse but expansive park is not a fancy planned Frenchy park with beautifully arranged beds of flowers and rock-lined paths, nor is it an Englishy park full of flowery chaos at every turn. The few flowers to be seen are wild, and it is little more than paths and stairs winding through groves of trees and bushes and little open grassy areas, with benches dotting the way and a small playground at the top. It's a bit unkempt, and frankly I hope they keep it that way.

From the north side of the park here are spectacular views of the bay and the neighborhoods of Antiguo, Ondarreta and Benta Berri, and from the west you get to look at the mountains off in the distance and peer over the university and bits Berio, Igara and Errotaburu.

My first view of Seminario from the backside; usually it lords over me.

Honeysuckle! Very fragrant.

Trees! Not too many that are very climbable, alas.

This entrance off Aizkorri reminds me of Barcelona for some reason.

I was chatting with a lady who was also on her first visit to the park, and she told me that this huge park area used to have a big house on it that housed priests and apparently at one point the Bishop of San Sebastian (what with it being right behind the seminary). And there were animals that some guy called Pepe tended. This was all back some 30 years or so. Then for some reason it was abandoned and became a place for kids to play and hoodlums and indigents to hang out. One day there was a fire and the city closed it off, until it finally got rehabilitated into our lovely new neighborhood park. Nice to have it reclaimed for public use, and even nicer to have it so close at hand and just in time for summer.

The Secret Life of Trees

I've just started dipping into the TED theme To Boldly Go...; there's lots of great stuff to be had, but so far my favorite talk has been this one by Richard Preston about the ancient Giant Redwoods and the things we know about their universe and about the many things we don't know about it.

Afterwards, don't be surprised if you suddenly have an urge to go climb a tree. Heights give me the heebie jeebies, but the idea of climbing back up into a tree as in the days of yore is still comforting and excites the sense of adventure I had as a tree-climbing kid.