San Sebastian

There are two ways to travel from Bilbao to San Sebastian, the Basque province’s less industrial, more inherently beautiful tourist city. There’s a one-hour bus ride, which favors brevity over beauty and cuts down a major highway, or there’s the EuskoTren, which lazily careens for two hours and 45 minutes through mountain and coastline, making a quick stop at nearly every village it passes through on its way. The choice was easy enough. We bought our tickets in the afternoon and boarded excitedly. Riding along with Genevieve and I was Ben, a friend from my program in Granada who had met up with us the night before after flying in from his adventures in Barcelona. As the train rolled on we passed through some 36 Basque towns, many with outrageous names like Unibertsitatea and Toletxegain. Each town also seemed almost surprisingly different than the next in appearance, due to the regions ability to change landscapes very quickly and dramatically from mountain to field to coast to hills in a geographical crossroads the likes of which I’d never seen before.

As our hostel manager, Anders, told us once we arrived in San Sebastian, there are two things that the city has to offer in spades: beaches and really, really great food, and since we were visiting in the middle of December, the latter was going to be our chief pursuit during our stay. And so, after profuse recommendation from our hostel manager and a bit of pressure from Gen, Ben, and the other hostel-stayer’s who’d be going with, my first night in San Sebastian brought me to Nestor, three-star Michelin rated restaurant. What business a broke student like myself has at a place like this I’m not sure, and at this point in my travels I was really, really broke, because I was nearing the end of my travels, and thus the end of my funds, but regardless there I was. Although I didn’t think about it while I was there, the place was very casual and cramped for such a prestigious eatery. We all ate standing up, crowded around a small circular table and surrounded by other clientele who were constantly bumping into us and also had no seats. In other words, it was like any other tapas or pintxos bar in Spain. No concern about appearance and every concern about the food was the apparent motto, and Lord was the food good. For round one we dug into some tomatoes, all smothered in olive oil and great flakes of salt. I hate tomatoes, and yet ate every last bite of these delicious green guys. Round two brought us pimientos de Pardón. These peppers come from, if you can believe it, a town called Padrón in Galicia, Spain, and if there was one Spanish food I could bring back to the states with me, it would be these. They’re not sweet peppers, and they’re not hot peppers, they’re just good, especially when they’re covered – like the tomatoes before them – in olive oil and salt. It’s important to note that with each round our group also ordered bottles of Chokoli, a very crisp, sweet and dry white wine, which must be poured from at least two feet above the glass, so that you look impressive and cultured, or like an idiot when you miss and spill super expensive wine all over the table as many of us, including myself, did. And then there was round three, the largest hunk of prime rib steak I’ve ever seen, seared so as to keep in flavor and served extra rare. We ordered round three twice. You could chew on this stuff for however long you wanted, and it would never lose its flavor. Reckoning came when the bill was brought to us. I’m not going to say exactly how much it was, but it was more than I had expected, and I had expected a lot. As my face started to go from wine-flushed to pale, Ben shrugged at me and simply said “merece la pena,” and he was absolutely right, it was well worth it. It really had been the best meal I’d had at least since I came to Spain.

The next morning Gen and I woke up early to scale the large hill that lies between San Sebastian’s old town and the sea, at the top of which is a giant statue of Jesus Christ, known as the statue of the Sagrado Corazón de Jesús. Along the way we passed through woods, old battlements and cannons that once protected the town a centuries ago, and some very intense weather. Storm clouds had been hovering around the area all morning and finally decided to let loose about a half hour into our ascent to the Jesus statue, in the form of air-soft pellet sized balls of hail. With the wind whipping and hail falling noisily all around us, Genevieve jokingly groaned that “it’s always a hard road to the Lord.” I had to laugh. By the time we reached the top, the weather had ceased, giving us a spectacular and hail-free view of San Sebastian’s colorful architecture in front of us and the green sea in behind us.

For lunch we dined on fried goat cheese, risotto, foie gras, or duck liver (which is apparently illegal in Chicago!?), rioja wine and a banana stuffed croqueta for dessert – basically a lot of things that I will not be eating again for a long time. It was delicious, exquisite, de puta madre. They say not to be cheap in San Sebastian and to spend those extra euros to really experience the culinary wonders it has to offer. This might be partly a tourist pull, but at the same time it’s hard to argue against; the food is incredible.

We returned to the hostel and to the amazingly diverse group of characters that were now putting themselves up there for the weekend, which included a South Korean who said absolutely everything that was on his mind the minute it hit him and was learning to play Beatles songs on his guitar, a culinary student from Venezuela and a culinary student from Boston (apparently San Sebastian is a good place to learn about food as well as eat it), an alarmingly bubbly girl who goes to a university back in the states that "doesn't have grades" and a film editor from LA named Waldo. Yes, it was quite the mix, and at the very least conversation sure as hell was never stale.

In the evening a group of us went out for pintxos, which of course ruled, and then Gen, our new friend Waldo and I headed to bar that we had heard was “local,” and “non-touristy.” The place ended up being pretty cool, with a good mix of tunes and muy buena gente. Gen and Waldo chatted, and as the brother reflex kicked in I found myself only wanting to contradict things he said or find holes in them. In all likelihood he wasn’t trying to hit on her, but I couldn’t help being a bit on guard anyway. Soon I found myself in a conversation with a fellow smoker (I often find myself meeting strangers over cigarettes), a Basque man, native to San Sebastian named Borja. Borja was tall, long -haired, loud and liked whisky, so we had some whisky shots. Apparently he had been raised in the area, had moved to Poland when he was around my age to work for a trucking company, and had now returned indefinitely. Like Marijose, he openly talked about the people and the culture of the Basques, stating that they can be the most evil and most kind people in the world at the same time, because of their compassionate and yet bold, uninhibited and brutally honest nature. I certainly liked this idea a lot. It made me sad, because since I was leaving Spain in two days, I knew this would be the best my conversational Spanish would be at for some time. As the night grew older, snow began falling outside, giving us that wonderful sensation you feel where you can watch winter’s beauty from a window and not have to suffer it because you’re nice and cozy and drunk inside.

The night ended with just Waldo and I back at the hostel (Gen had gone to sleep), chatting and listening to tunes on my travel I-pod player, which I bring everywhere. I’m not sure what time it was, but at some point, in the middle of a National album, the Swedish hostel worker stormed up to us and exclaimed “this is not ok,” repeatedly as she motioned at my I-pod player. I guess it was a little too late to be rocking tunes in a shared sleeping environment.Trying not to wake Gen, I climbed up my bunk and dreamed off peacefully.