Bilbao, Basque Country

After leaving Logroño, we headed to Bilbao, a beautiful city surrounded by mountains, twenty minutes from the coast, and home to a branch of the world-famous Guggenheim museum. Bilbao is the largest city in the Basque Country, an Autonomous Community of Spain with a very unique and interesting history. Although I had expected to enjoy the city from people’s descriptions – who wouldn’t love a place with mountains and beaches? – our time there went far above and beyond my expectations, and made this perhaps my favorite trip that we’ve taken the entire year! We met so many nice people, hiked to the top of a mountain with beautiful views and cows roaming free right beside you, took our shoes off in a museum, watched the sunset over the Bay of Biscay, and so much more!

Euskadi - The Basque Country

But before I cover all of the awesome things we did, I want to share a little bit about the history of the Basque Country, because I find it really interesting and getting to learn about it was one of the many highlights of the trip. Although today it is technically part of the country we know as Spain, the Basque people have always had their own distinct identity. Spain has always been a country of great ethnic and cultural diversity, with numerous groups of peoples speaking different languages, practicing different religions and leading divergent ways of life. In the middle ages, the Iberian peninsula was a hodgepodge of different kingdoms and political zones, each of which had their own culture and language. In large part, these difference are still reflected today in Spain’s division into Autonomous Communities, several of which still maintain their own cultures and official languages in addition to Castilian Spanish. For instance, Catalan is spoken in Catalonia, Galician Portuguese in Galicia, Aragonese in Aragón, Bable in Asturias and Basque in the Basque country.

Not the most sophisticated map in the world, but it gives a general idea of Spain's diversity

Throughout the centuries, all of these different peoples have constantly been jostling for independence and power over their own slice of the Iberian peninsula, and the Basques are no exception. However, the Basque peoples' struggle has been particularly pronounced in the past century, beginning with their extreme persecution at the hands of Franco, the military dictator who ruled Spain after the Spanish Civil War. Although they regained most of their independence immediately following his death, this did not quell many Basques' militant nationalist sentiments, and throughout the second half of the twentieth century a terrorist group known as the ETA committed various acts of violence in order to show their discontent and their desire to be independent. While they are not as militant today as they once were, separatist notions are far from absent, and can be seen in things as obvious as demonstrations (we witnessed a very small one while in Bilbao) or in things as subtle as repainting a street sign to assert the Basque spelling of a name over the Spanish spelling.

The hyper-famous painting Guernica by Pablo Picasso portrays the gruesome bombing of a peaceful Basque town by German forces as ordered by Francisco Franco. It's perhaps the most well-known testament to Franco's cruelty towards the Basque people, and to the horrors of the Spanish Civil War in general.

The goal in subjecting you to all of this history is really just to show how heterogeneous Spain is, and to help understand how unique and different it felt to be in the Basque Country. The Basque language is one of the strangest ones I've ever seen in my life. The grammar is extremely complex and linguists to this day have not been able to determine any other existing human language to which Basque is related!

Some pictures of Basque signs around Bilbao

Bilbao

The city we visited was called Bilbao, and it is the largest city in the Basque Country. I had wanted to go for a long time for the reasons I listed before - it's encircled by mountains and at the same time close by the sea - but we discovered that the city itself was not only lovely and exciting, but has an interesting history of its own. It used to be an extremely ugly, industrial city, with the river polluted and choked by factories and huge exportation outfits. Little money was invested in the upkeep of public buildings, which became dingy and dirty over time, and the city center was blighted by the cropping up of countless impersonal, boxy apartment buildings meant to house the factory workers. It was a gray, dismal, decrepit place, until the construction of a new, groundbreaking building - the Bilbao Guggenheim - put Bilbao on the map, generating a huge influx of revenue from tourism and sparking the economic rejuvenation needed to clean up the city and make it the beautiful, clean, modern place which it is today.

Some interior and exterior views of the Bilbao Guggenheim

The museum was paid for by the Basque government with these very hopes in mind, and it is clear today that their investments and efforts were well-placed. The building, designed by world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, was instantly hailed as a masterpiece, and its daring, deconstructivist architecture, along with the museum's cutting-edge temporary and permanent collections, quickly brought the tourists which the government had hoped for. I obviously visited the museum during my time in the city and it was indeed pretty incredible. In spite of being on the smaller side as far as museums go, the interior layout is so elaborate and quirky that it's easy to get lost and lose your sense of how large the space around you really is. As you can see from the picture above, there is hardly a single straight wall or right angle anywhere in the building. 

Some pictures from Google, because mine really don't do it justice!

I was there on the last day of an exhibit by a Brazilian artist named Ernesto Neto that was truly unique. It spanned several rooms and the focus was on interaction with the various senses. Some of the rooms, as you can see in the pictures below, had cloth draped from the ceiling, almost like a tent, with pieces hanging down in which various substances were suspended. In the room with the white tent, which you can see in the pictures below, each piece of hanging cloth was full of a different spice, and as you were allowed to touch any part of the exhibit, you could rub the hanging pouch and your hands would smell like cardamom or cinnamon. There was also a room with a mat made up of tiny strips of fabric which had been woven together running along the edge of the room; I saw little niños running on the carpet and expected the stern security guards to admonish them. When they said nothing, I went up to investigate and saw a sign that, instead of "DO NOT WALK" said "DO NOT WALK WITH SHOES ON." So I took off my hiking boots and joined the niños in trampling Neto's work of art! It was definitely the first time I've ever taken my shoes off in a museum, and it was such a cool experience - it seems that Neto really wanted to challenge the way people think about and interact with art in museums.

Some of the rooms containing Ernesto Neto's work

Returning to the history of how Bilbao got to where it is today, as I mentioned before, the museum was only the beginning of a beautification process that eventually revamped the entire city. This renewal was aided by a man named Iñaki Azkuna, the mayor of Bilbao from 1999 until his death earlier this year. The museum may have provided the economic capital needed, but he was the one who really took advantage of it to turn the city into something special. He cleaned up the river and hired artists and architects to create the lovely river walk which you can see in the collage below. Now Bilbao's downtown is a charming, thriving place, where nature, modern and classical architecture come together in a truly unique way. Iñaki's work was recognized when he was named the best mayor in the world by the City Mayor's Foundation in 2013.

Some views of Bilbao's river walk

We were able to learn so much about the city's history from a guy named Eder, a native bilbaíno who voluntarily spent the day showing us around and acting as our own personal tour guide. We had messaged him on Couch Surfing when we were trying to find someone to stay with, and while he was unable to offer us a place to stay, he wrote back and said that he would be happy to meet up with us and show us around. We were expecting him to maybe walk us through a bit of the old town, take us to a bar for pintxos (the Basque version of tapas) and call it a day, but he wound up giving us an extremely thorough tour of the entire city center, then driving us in his car out to a picturesque fishing village, and finally taking us to a bar on top of a hill overlooking the Bay of Biscay to watch the sunset. It was incredible, and although we insisted on paying for his drinks and meals everywhere that we went, needless to say we were at a loss of how to repay such kindness. Afterwards we felt so thankful and blown away that someone would go so far out of their way to be so helpful and hospitable. 

A picture of us with our new Basque friend Eder at the top of the cable car in Bilbao

Getxo, the beautiful fishing village Eder took us to visit

The hilltop bar where we had calimotxo and watched the sunset

The day after Eder selflessly showed us around, another guy from Couch Surfing - who had likewise been unable to host us but who had offered to hang out anyway - took me and a Brazilian girl I had just met at my hostel to hike up one of the mountains which surround the city. The guy was also Basque - his name was Ander - and he was accompanied by a Polish friend, so we were a truly international group. The Brazilian girl had asked to sit with me at breakfast and we had struck up a conversation; when I mentioned that I was going on a hike with some Couch Surfing guys, she asked a lot of questions and seemed interested, so I asked if she wanted to come. She was in Spain for a conference that was starting in a few days and had come early to travel for a bit, so she appreciated the offer of companionship. She was also a really interesting person; she was involved in social work and apparently collaborated extensively with the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, focusing mainly on issues in the city's many favelas, or slums.

Some pictures from our hike up Pagasarri

As the pictures attest, the hike was absolutely beautiful, with incredible views of the rolling mountains all around and the city down below. There were even parts of the trail where cows were grazing untethered at our side, the clanging of their bells reverberating through the air. And, as with the day before, the best part was getting to make a connection and share these experiences with complete strangers. This - combined with our incredible luck in having gorgeous weather both days, when the region is normally submitted to perpetual rain and grayness - was what made this trip so special and one of my favorite ones we made all year. Beginning with our Brazilian hosts in Logroño, the unthinkable generosity of Eder and the cool connections with Rafaela, Ander and Daniel, this trip began to introduce me to the best part of traveling in Europe in this day and age - the ability to harness social media and internet resources to enrich your travels by meeting wonderful people along the way! For this reason, this brief but beautiful weekend in Bilbao will always stand out in my mind.

Logroño, La Rioja

If you’ve ever bought a bottle of Spanish wine from the international imports section in a U.S. grocery store, chances are good that it was from “La Rioja.” This is the name of the province where Spain’s wine country is located, and where most of their wine is made. It is only three or four hours north of Madrid, and in addition to good wine boasts some impressive landscapes, with gray, rocky mountains flanking green, rolling plains.

View from a lookout point where our ride stopped for us to take some pictures

A picture from Google of a picturesque town in La Rioja

Logroño is the capital of the province, and a quaint little city with a charming, old city-center cut by the Ebro river.

View of Logroño's old town from across the Ebro River

One of the many quaint, narrow streets in Logroño's town center

Logroño was a fairly significant place in the Middle Ages because of its location on the Camino de Santiago, the most important pilgrimage route in Europe, which leads from various locations in France to the city of Santiago de Compostela in the northwest corner of Spain, where the remains of Saint James, Jesus’ brother, are believed to reside.

A map showing the important stops on the Camino

With so many people undertaking the journey every year, towns began to spring up along the way to meet the pilgrims’ needs – as well as to take advantage of their money and foreign goods – and Logroño is just one of many examples which you can still visit in Spain today. The route continues to attract thousands of people every year, the pious and the outdoorsy alike, and you can still see signs of it around Logroño’s city center.

A church in Logroño dedicated to Santiago 

A pilgrims' hostel marked by the shell, the emblem of the Camino de Santiago

Of course, nowadays the biggest draw to Logroño is the wine. In addition to trying it in bars and restaurants, there are also many wineries (called bodegas in Spanish) where you can do tours and wine tastings. Unfortunately, we didn’t plan far enough in advance to reserve a tour, but that didn’t stop us from trying plenty of cheap but delicious wine in the plethora of bars and restaurants crammed into the towns’ tiny center.

Sampling wine in a lovely outdoor terrace

Me, my wine and the winery where it was made

While we only spent an afternoon and one night in Logroño, it was enough to see the main sights. Although the town was not necessarily the most exciting I've ever been to, it was a nice change of pace from the hectic, big-city feel of Madrid, which often makes you long for an escape, no matter how much you love it. The slow pace and calm, picturesque streets of Logroño were a great place to relax and take things easy, while the wide array of places to drink, eat and make merry nevertheless provided a sense of life and vibrancy. It was a great balance, and a nice place to spend a sunny afternoon and a cozy night out.

Fiestas de San Isidro

You’ve probably never heard of San Isidro, and even translating his name into English – Saint Isidore – probably won’t help. Nevertheless, he is the patron saint of Madrid, and provides the “excuse” for one of the city's biggest annual festivities. His feast day, May 15^th, and the days before and after, are celebrated in grand Spanish style by enjoying tons of food and alcohol, as well as concerts, fireworks and other performances in parks and gardens throughout the city.

The largest event takes place in the Pradera de San Isidro, a park which houses the shrine of the saint

San Isidro, whose full name is San Isidro Labrador, or Saint Isidore the Laborer, was a farmworker to whom various acts of piety and miracles have been attributed, including making water spring forth from the ground and saving children from wells. The fact that he is not only the patron saint of the city, but also of farm laborers and brick layers, is a good reminder of Madrid’s rural and humble beginnings as a tiny, backwater village. Nevertheless, he has remained the patron saint throughout the ages, and is still venerated on his feast day with in a handful of religious celebrations in addition to the more hedonistic festivities described above.

A picture of San Isidro praying in the field

There are also some tasty treats that are made specifically for the saint's holiday called rosquillas del santo. They are generally round and crunchy and covered in sugar, but each small village near Madrid has developed their own unique style of rosquilla throughout the centuries, so now you can find several varieties. My favorites were the Santa Claras, which were covered with a sort of meringue!

A picture from Google, but it looks just like the rosquillas on sale at the park!

I went to the festival with a British girl who I had met through the two hiking trips I've done. She and her roommates were already planning on going and she invited me to join in. It was one of the first times I've hung out with a new person in a long time, and I really enjoyed it! We get along quite well, and the best is that we have a very similar sense of humor. It's been nice to finally meet someone whom I feel like I "click" with, and it's made me hopeful for more similar experiences soon!

My new friend Kylia!

A fairground that was part of the festivities - we rode the ride at the bottom!

Berlin

As it has now been almost two months since we’ve been in Berlin, and since my sickness while we were there really inhibited my ability to truly experience and enjoy the city, I’m going to keep this post short and sweet, only covering some of the high points.

Berlin is an interesting place. I can’t say that I enjoyed it, but it’s hard to tell if that was because I got sick, or because of the city itself. As we all know, German history in the twentieth century is dark and disturbing – two world wars, crippling economic conditions, one of the most infamous genocides in world history, the highly-problematic fragmentation into “East” and “West,” the tight-fisted ruling of a police state, and the almost equally problematic reunification are just some of the “highlights.” Any one of these things would be a lot to overcome, but put all of them together and it seems impossible for a country to suddenly turn around three-hundred and sixty degrees and have no problems whatsoever. And although Germany has done an amazing job of getting its economy back on track and becoming one of the most powerful countries in Europe, the scars of this history are still everywhere, and its effects still being felt in many parts of life.

A nondescript piece of the Berlin Wall that illustrates well the ways in which Berlin's history is still intimately interwoven with daily life

Nevertheless, the city is now a fun and extremely vibrant place, with hundreds of first-rate museums, an exceptionally efficient public transport system, lots of edgy street art, plenty of enormous, peaceful parks and green spaces, and, of course, a world-famous nightlife.

Small green spaces along the river and a beer garden in the park!

Some images of Berlin's amazing public transport system

So Many Museums

In addition to being the site of so many complex historical events, and a contemporary center of international development, Berlin is also famous for being home to a wide array of first-rate museums and monuments. The best-known is probably the Pergamon Museum, which houses enormous pieces of medieval Islamic and ancient Greek architecture. 

The Gate of Ishtar from Babylon. It's beyond me how they got this entire thing from the Middle East to Berlin!

There is also a very interesting Jewish Museum on the history of Judaism and Jewish culture throughout the ages. The building itself is as interesting as the exhibits, with a very confusing layout that includes empty rooms with high ceilings or random courtyards meant to represent some phase of Jewish history - the Holocaust, continuous exile, the feeling of never being assimilated into "mainstream" culture.

A strange room in the Jewish Museum with metal faces on the ground that make a lot of noise when you walk on them. I think it was meant to symbolize the people who died in the Holocaust, but I don't remember.

And, of course, perhaps the most famous monument in Berlin is the Holocaust Memorial, a huge installation of gray concrete slabs right in the center of the city. It's an interesting monument, because instead of creating a statue or symbol which viewers are supposed to reflect upon and thereby remember the corresponding event or personage, the Holocaust Memorial has to be experienced. Looking at it doesn't really reveal very much, but entering into the maze is another story. The blocks, which seem homogenous when viewed from afar, are actually each unique and different, either in height or in the angle at which they rise from the ground. What's more, the ground is not even, but descends and rises as you move through the grid, so that the blocks seem to be getting taller and then shorter. I can't say that I necessarily understood what I was supposed to get out of it, but it was definitely more interesting than a more traditional "monument" that you can only look at.

The Holocaust Memorial

A Little Bit of History

One of the highlights of our time in Berlin were the two walking tours we did. One of them covered all of Berlin history in the course of a two and a half hour tour, and the other focused on street art and the “alternative” side to the city. They were both really interesting, and shed a lot of light on some of the historical and contemporary issues facing Berlin.

Berlin also has its handful of lovely old buildings which managed to survive the violence of the 20th century

To give just one illustrative example, the most interesting fact that has stood out in my mind was about the Berlin Airlift. As I'm sure everyone knows, the Airlift was when the Western Allies flew supplies into West Berlin to keep the city alive despite the Soviet Union's blockade. Like everyone else, I obviously knew about this moment in Cold War History, but I had not realized how long it lasted - nearly eleven months - nor the sheer mass of supplies which the Allies were able to deliver. They brought over not just food, but also household supplies, gas, parts and machinery needed to keep factories and shops running, and things like candles and heating materials to keep the nearly one million West Berliners warm during the harsh Northern European winter. Our guide told us that there was, on average, one plane arriving every sixty seconds without rest throughout this nearly year-long period!

A historical picture from Google of the Airlift bringing supplies

To me the Airlift is an ideal snapshot of one moment in Berlin history to help understand the overall tenor of what the city underwent in the twentieth century - in my opinion, nearly each and every major event goes above and beyond one's power of comprehension in both scale and intensity.

Alternative Berlin

A little bit of street art to "lighten" the mood

The other tour we took, which was called "Alternative Berlin," dealt with the city's more recent difficulties. Our tour guide talked a lot about gentrification, which has drastically changed the arts scene in a city which was known for its abundance of artists’ squats less than ten years ago. When the wall fell and former-Soviet East Berlin was suddenly opened to the world, there was a mass exodus which left tons of buildings unoccupied. This, combined with incredibly low realty prices and legal protection for squatters, led to an influx of young artists and creative types who took over these old buildings and made new life out of them.

Tacheles, long the largest and most active squat in Berlin, was recently closed by corporate pressure

However, one of the city's initiatives to provide economic growth and productivity has been to invite international and multinational corporations to take advantage of all this unused property to install offices and headquarters. While this has arguably been good for the city's financial development, it has put a lot of historically and culturally significant sites in peril. The largest and most famous Berlin squat - Tacheles - was recently closed by corporate pressure, and the unrelenting construction of upscale apartment buildings on or near important cultural sites is placing even more of them in danger. Perhaps the most worrisome example is the East Side Gallery, the largest extant portion of the Berlin wall which has become an open canvas for world-famous street artists to paint important and provocative works.

The East Side Gallery; in the background, you can see the new high-rise apartments that are threatening these gritty, alternative gems in an ever-evolving Berlin.

As I said at the beginning, I got sick on our second day in Berlin and was therefore unfortunately not in the best of moods for exploring and experiencing new things. Nevertheless, as you can see, I was still able to learn more about both Berlin's and Germany's history than I could have done without seeing everything firsthand. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll be able to go back next year to experience the delicious food and the incredible nightlife!