Gernika and San Sebastian, again
Let me begin this post with an apology and a foreword. I am sorry I haven't posted anything recently on here, as I've had one of the busiest times of my life recently. As you've probably seen in the posts above, I've done a lot of traveling in the past 3 weeks, and my work piled up on me as well. Here you get the beginning of this period.
So there went our last CIDE excursion, as a group, to Gernika and the surrounding area. We set out later Friday morning than we were used to, at 9:30, for a short bus ride to Gernika (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gernika). For those of you who don’t know, I’m currently living in Basque Country, not only Spain. There’s really no way to describe it if you don’t know much about the Basques or their culture, but they’re essentially a different population with a completely different language (that stems from, the closest, Aquitainian, a currently dead ancient French language) that has no ties to Romance languages at all. Anyway, during the Spanish Civil War in the 30s, a town called Gernika was bombed by German fighters, allies of soon-to-be dictator General Franco. This town has a special significance to the Basque people, as it is the historical capital of the whole region, and the attack was a brutal air-raid bombing at mid-day in 1937 to demoralize the population and kill as many people as possible. Picasso’s famous work, Gernika, is his interpretation of that day’s events. The link is helpful for description of the town.
So, we went to see the government buildings in the city along with the Peace Museum, dedicated to international peace, not only education about that horrible day in 1937. It was a very interesting museum, as I’ve never seen anything like it, but I was a little too tired to really soak in everything I could’ve.
We went to lunch, this time having a good meal for once on the Program. However, dessert was an interesting story. I didn’t really want pastries, I just wanted to try someone’s flan, so I got the fruit option, which was supposed to be mixed fruit. What arrived in front of me was straight out of the Spanish version of a Sysco can of canned fruit, with a dollop of whipped cream. I was shocked that a nice restaurant would serve a dessert like this among good cakes and pastries. However, my friend had said before that he didn’t want a dessert, but when the waitress was leaving I informed her that he had indeed changed his mind and wanted flan. So, I got my flan after all.
The rest of the trip was supposed to consist of an amazing church on this rock cliff extending into the sea. We got there, and our leaders then informed us that we could not walk down to the church. What!? Oh, evidently it was going to rain, even tho the skies to the west were all sun. They told us that not everyone was prepared for the rain—like that mattered to me, just let half the group go and then the other half go to the beach down the road that they said was our next stop. And, as soon as we got there, the sun came out and it got really hot outside. I was enraged, to say the least. I’m still trying to get to this church, because earlier in the semester I discovered it in a magazine and was delighted to find out that I could go with the Program. Anyway, we headed home after that, and soon after arriving home, I passed out from exhaustion.
Saturday. For our Basque Civilization class, we formed groups and were assigned cities locally in Basque Country on which to make a presentation. Sadly, as all of us had already visited it, we were assigned San Sebastian. So, we chose that Saturday to visit it. I have to admit, it was a good trip with an opportunity to have a more focused visit of the city than I had before, as we had missed things the first time. My friend, Kara’s roommate, who’s from the area, gave her ideas of places to eat and where to go. We had some AMAZING pintxos (tapas) and bocadillos (sub-like creations). For that I was very glad, indeed. The beach was nice to stroll on again, and it was a rather relaxing trip.
So there went our last CIDE excursion, as a group, to Gernika and the surrounding area. We set out later Friday morning than we were used to, at 9:30, for a short bus ride to Gernika (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gernika). For those of you who don’t know, I’m currently living in Basque Country, not only Spain. There’s really no way to describe it if you don’t know much about the Basques or their culture, but they’re essentially a different population with a completely different language (that stems from, the closest, Aquitainian, a currently dead ancient French language) that has no ties to Romance languages at all. Anyway, during the Spanish Civil War in the 30s, a town called Gernika was bombed by German fighters, allies of soon-to-be dictator General Franco. This town has a special significance to the Basque people, as it is the historical capital of the whole region, and the attack was a brutal air-raid bombing at mid-day in 1937 to demoralize the population and kill as many people as possible. Picasso’s famous work, Gernika, is his interpretation of that day’s events. The link is helpful for description of the town.
So, we went to see the government buildings in the city along with the Peace Museum, dedicated to international peace, not only education about that horrible day in 1937. It was a very interesting museum, as I’ve never seen anything like it, but I was a little too tired to really soak in everything I could’ve.
We went to lunch, this time having a good meal for once on the Program. However, dessert was an interesting story. I didn’t really want pastries, I just wanted to try someone’s flan, so I got the fruit option, which was supposed to be mixed fruit. What arrived in front of me was straight out of the Spanish version of a Sysco can of canned fruit, with a dollop of whipped cream. I was shocked that a nice restaurant would serve a dessert like this among good cakes and pastries. However, my friend had said before that he didn’t want a dessert, but when the waitress was leaving I informed her that he had indeed changed his mind and wanted flan. So, I got my flan after all.
The rest of the trip was supposed to consist of an amazing church on this rock cliff extending into the sea. We got there, and our leaders then informed us that we could not walk down to the church. What!? Oh, evidently it was going to rain, even tho the skies to the west were all sun. They told us that not everyone was prepared for the rain—like that mattered to me, just let half the group go and then the other half go to the beach down the road that they said was our next stop. And, as soon as we got there, the sun came out and it got really hot outside. I was enraged, to say the least. I’m still trying to get to this church, because earlier in the semester I discovered it in a magazine and was delighted to find out that I could go with the Program. Anyway, we headed home after that, and soon after arriving home, I passed out from exhaustion.
Saturday. For our Basque Civilization class, we formed groups and were assigned cities locally in Basque Country on which to make a presentation. Sadly, as all of us had already visited it, we were assigned San Sebastian. So, we chose that Saturday to visit it. I have to admit, it was a good trip with an opportunity to have a more focused visit of the city than I had before, as we had missed things the first time. My friend, Kara’s roommate, who’s from the area, gave her ideas of places to eat and where to go. We had some AMAZING pintxos (tapas) and bocadillos (sub-like creations). For that I was very glad, indeed. The beach was nice to stroll on again, and it was a rather relaxing trip.
posted by Anthony Damelio at 12:41 PM
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