Stuck inside of Euskadi

It was definitely in my best interests that my friend missed her train last night. Because when she went back to the train station today to change the ticket, she found out that the trains to Barcelona from both San Sebastian and Pamplona are booked until Wednesday. And the one rental car company in San Sebastian has no cars. My plan was to take the bus to Pamplona tomorrow and then take the train back to Barcelona Monday night, and I had just assumed that getting the tickets would be no problem. Wrong. Turns out all of Spain came to the Basque country for the Semana Santa, and getting out isn´t so easy. So we spent this morning in various lines at bus station ticket counters trying to figure out how to get home. We thought we might be stuck in the Basque Country forever, but it all worked out. My own plans are basically unchanged--I´ll take the bus to Pamplonea tomorrow and instead of taking a night train home on Monday I´ll take an afternoon bus. My friend, who just wants to get back to Barcelona yesterday, has to wait until tomorrow and go through Pamplona to get there. But at least we´ll get home, as long as no more pork products get between us and the bus station. Or I may starve to death in Pamplona first, because I´ll be there on Easter and the whole town will probably be shut down, leaving me foodless. We´ll see.

They make cider here in the Basque country, and between January and April (the time that the cider finishes fermenting and becomes ready to drink) you can eat at the cidrerías. They set up tables (no chairs; you stand) in the cider houses and serve bread, tortilla de bacalao (cod omelette), some other fish dish, a giant grilled wonderful omigod I´m still thinking about it cooked over flames bloody hunk of steak, cheese and walnuts for desert, and all the cider you can drink. And wow was it good. Mostly because of the steak, but all of the food was very good and I really liked the cider. It´s not sweet like the hard cider you get in the US, and a little more yeast-y. You pour your own right from the barrels. It´s a little bit complicated with the cider, because you´re only supposed to pour a little tiny bit at a time, then you drink it and go back for more. I gues it´s not supposed to be exposed to air for very long. I had poured what I thought was a pretty small amount, and was still told I was doing it wrong. So it´s really hard to know how much you´ve drunk or do any sort of pacing. You can read about cidrerías in guidebooks, so they´re now a little touristy, but there were definitely locals there, too. (More on that below.)

Getting to the cidrerías was an adventure. We had the address of the place where we wanted to go, but it was in another town, required a bus to get there, and we didn´t have a map. It took a while to find the right bus but finally we did and the bus driver said he´d tell us where to get off. The bus was packed with people, including what appeared to be some kind of bachelor party--they were really drunk and loud and smelly and singing. Eventually the bus cleared out and a little later the bus driver told us we could either get off where we were and hike for an hour up a hill to get to the restaurant, or get off later and take a cheap cab ride there. Uh, we´ll take the cab. But then everything got all confusing; my friend speaks fluent Spanish and it was still a mess. The bus driver told us that the place we were planning to go to isn´t a real cidrerías and we should go somewhere else insetead. He had a lot of suggestions, but couldn´t seem to give us a straight answer about where we should get off and whether or not places were within walking distance. We ended up staying on the bus until the end of the route, then riding halfway back to San Sebastian before we got to the bus driver´s cidrerías. He was going on and on about where we should go and how it´s a little late in the season for cider, and kept seeming to almost drive off the road because he was paying more attention to talking to us than to driving. After a lot of conflicting information, we finally found the place. The bus driver also suggested we hitchhike back to San Sebastian after dinner. Well, I may starve to death in Pamplona tomorrow anyway, so why not live a little?

A while back my Spanish teacher was telling me about Spanish regional stereotypes. I forget most of them, but Catalans are cheap; Madrileños are snobs; and Vascos son brutos. There´s some traditional Basque game that´s all about picking up and throwing big rocks; you get the idea. We made friends with some Basques at the cidrerías. (Real Basques, del pueblo. One of them told my friend they don´t get out of the pueblo much.) They were singing really loudly, and they kind of started fighting a few times at the cidrerías. Then they started throwing bread and walnuts. This really tough-looking Basque girl with a mullet and dreadlocks overheard someone refer to me as American, and she came charging at me, yelling "American? Bush?" I saw my life flash before my eyes. I guess being beaten to death by an angry Basque is a better story than starving to death in Pamplona on Easter, but if possible I´d rather just keep living. She didn´t beat me up, though; in fact, I think she made friends with me. She was very drunkenly telling me in English that her English sucks (I had been speaking Spanish) and that her friend plays fútbol. Okay. We went out with some of the guys after the cider house. Brutos or not, being European the Basques still did some things that few self-respecting heterosexual American guys would do, like unashamedly fixing their hair in mirrors on the wall and man dancing to slow songs. The Basques (these particular ones anyway) are much friendlier than most Barcelonans, and we had fun hanging out with them. Definitely a cultural experience. And a pretty good last supper, if this Pamplona thing doesn´t work out.