The Best of Europe: The Basque Country and Final Thoughts

It's indeed been long enough for a final post.  However, I feel the reprieve allows my final thoughts to be as concise and coherent as possible.

After Seville, in Spain, I ventured to the Basque Country in northern Spain for what would be a truly unique experience and great cap to my journey.  To start, the Basques are wonderfully enigmatic, and the region is very difficult to describe.  One thing I noticed traveling through Spain was that it's challenging trying to describe this country and its people.  Each region has an incomparable landscape, cuisine, style of architecture, history, and most strikingly, breed of people.  The Basque area is perhaps the best example of these ideas.

The Basques have long felt separate from the rest of Spain, certainly due to their language, but also culturally.  As a result, the Basque cities of Bilbao, San Sebastian, and Pamplona offer a feeling of community you don't experience in too many places.  There's a party every night, festival revelers sing carols deep into the late hours, and feast on the most delectable of local specialities

In a way, the Basque Country incorporated all of my favorite aspects of travel, and provided the perfect capstone

HIGHLIGHTS:

1)  The Bilbao Guggenheim--Apart from holding an impressive modern art collection, the Gehry designed building is one of the greatest architectural moments of the late 20th century.

2) Sanfermines "The Running of the Bulls"--While I didn't actually get much bull action, it was great to see the city that Hemingway cherished and experience one of the world's biggest and certainly longest parties.

3) San Sebastian--This city is like Spain and Rio De Janeiro combined.  Two of the most beautiful beaches in western Europe, are bisected by gentle hills and masses of smiling faces.  The greatest city beaches I've experienced. 

THE BEST OF EUROPE:  All together now

1)  Everything in Andalusia, Spain.  Being some time now since returning, the images of endless sunflower fields, chiseled cliff sides, white washed towns, and bustling cafes resonate with me everyday.

2)  Alhambra, Granada, Spain.  Just to further reinforce number 1.  

3)  Venice to Rome, and Everything in Between.  Two weeks traveling between these two very different gems reveals why people travel to this continent.  

4)  Berlin, Germany.  No city defines a century like Berlin defines the 20th.  The history is more tangible here than in any other city I've been.  The culture and people are quite infectious, as well.  

5)  Beer in Prague.  $1 for a liter--give me a break.  1$ for a liter made from the most expensive hops on the world market.  

6)  The Diversity of the Basque Country.  A trip highlighted by the Basque cities of Pamplona, San Sebastian, and Bilbao would be the perfect introduction to Europe.

7)  Eating in Spain.  If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm pretty big on Spain.  After visiting this country, I don't ever think I will eat in the same form or style again.  

8)  The Scenery of Central Europe.  The hills are very much alive, and my road trips to the Rhine Valley, Prague, Vienna, and Budapest very much proved it.  Highlighted by my two days in Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic, this part of the continent is seriously more beautiful than advertised.  

9)  The Art.  Coming home and being able to say I've strolled the Prado, sat beneath the Last Judgment, circumnavigated Michaelangelo's David, and perused the personal collections of the Austrian Habsburgs is truly a privilege.  

10)  Churches in Italy.  First, I love churches for the architecture.  However, I also believe churches are emblematic of how a city and community feel at a certain time.  That being said, after experiencing the duomos in Italy, churches like St. Vitus in Prague, St. Stephen's in Vienna, St. Patrick's in Dublin, and even the Seville Cathedral are minor blips on my memory's radar.

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LISTENING:

1)  The Beatles--Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's

2)  Neil Young--After the Gold Rush

3)  The Robert Cray Band

4)  Seu Jorge

5)  Miles Davis--Birth of the Cool

6)  Fleet Foxes

7)  Stevie Ray Vaughan

8)  Wilco--Sky Blue Sky

9)  The Allman Brothers Band--At Fillmore East

10)  Paco De Lucia

READING:

1)  Frederich Nietzsche 

2)  Ayn Rand

3)  John Dewey

4)  Henry David Thoreau

5)  Ernest Hemingway

I'd put more, but I don't think anyone gives a shit about this.  

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Anyone can do this.  It doesn't matter where you're from, if you speak the language, or if you've done anything like it before.  It may be expensive financially, but the value of experience is nearly priceless.  

You can travel anywhere, for that matter; in an abandoned hillside, your hometown, or some place you've been to a hundred times.  Travel is merely movement through a place that alters perspective.  

Seville, Spain

In the beginning, God created the world by means of divine incantation, and on the sixth day, he created man to be regents over his creations.  He granted his first man a partner and planted them in a garden east of Eden, which was to be paradise.  Apparently, and I've recently discovered, this paradise spoken of in the book of Genesis, is Al-andalus, or Andalusia in southern Spain.

What a fucking place this is, and what a fucking place it's capital Seville is.

For two months, It is only sunny and hot everyday.  The food is amazing.  The architecture is a curious melange I've never seen.  The people are pleasant.  The bars are great.  The prices are reasonable.  The guitar players are renowned.  The history is deliciously complex.  And the food--I know I mentioned the food, with hams, cheeses, peppers, calamari, potato and egg creations, and alcohol flowing from every corner of any room.

Vines and flowers hang from white washed building sides.  Vespa riders zip and whirl through an impossible grid of lanes and alleys.  Ornately decorated tiles adorn door frames and window boxes.  Glued bull fighting posters, advertising the next festival, line the many cobble stoned ways.  Seville is a city to get lost in, and enjoy every second of it.  I walk, snap endless pictures of scenes straight out of your mom's home and garden magazine, and at the precise moment of overheating, I sit, and drink beers under a mist machine within one of the endless cantinas in town.

Andalusia is all the more impressive, as over the last couple weeks, I've become harder and harder to please.  As I tire from traveling, churches don't seem to compare to those seen in Italy, architecture doesn't come close to that in Prague, and no city is as fun as Berlin.  Everything has become an endless cycle of comparison and relativity.  My impressions gained an armored resilience to new experience.

However, Al-Andalus, which translates literally to paradise in Arabic, easily surmounted my developed notions and fragile defenses.

READING:  For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway


LISTENING:  

Granada, Spain

How great is Granada, Spain.  It's a little frying pan of heaven.  Temperature topped out at 102 today.

Also, I got to speak English for the first time in a while last night.  That's not so much a testament to my Spanish abilities, but rather, an indication of my isolation in Madrid.  The hostel situation in Madrid is no bueno, and I was relegated to a pension room in a residential building downtown.

On the fifth floor, there was a ring of rooms around this square building, with one little bedroom standing sentinel in the middle.  That room, of course, was mine.  The room was about the size of a double bed, and the bed that was in there allowed for my legs to hang off at about halfway, or what you would call the knees.  Everyone say it together now, "the knees"--yes, very good.  The room had a sink, a tiny indestructible looking TV in the top corner, and as a result, resembled a prison cell in every way.

I spent my evenings plotting my escape, carving little weapons out of toothbrushes, and befriending a local Morgan Freeman looking guy who's good at "getting" things.  The pension operators, or "wardens", were Cuban, and of course I made the mistake of claiming to be American.  Great stay!!

Cuban:  Mark Mathew Mueller?----hahahaha.  That's a real American name, Yea??  Hahaha.  (Speaks something indiscernable to his counterpart)
Me:  Yea, yea.......(trailing off into the sunset)
Cuban:  You like that name?  You think it's a good name?
Me:  I sort of lacked a decent amount of choice on that one.
Cuban:  What?
Me:  huh?
Me:  So, my room is down here?

Alright, Granada is my favorite stop thus far, and for two absolutely irrefutable reasons:

1)  The Alhambra
2)  Granada is the last city in Spain to adhere to the tradition of free tapas.

So, in Granada, you hop around from bar to bar, buy a drink, and with every drink you purchase, they bring you a little plate of food---Yes, free food.  It's glorious.  Some bars are famous for particular tapas, like calamari or spicy potatoes.  So, you go to a particular place, have a drink and their house specialty, and then you're off to the next place.  Not to mention, by night, Granada is a dry and pleasant 80 degrees.  It may be hot as biblical hell here during the day, but there's not a drop of humidity, and it makes for beautiful evenings.

As far as the Alhambra, I will let the pics do the justice.  But I will tell you it was a Moorish palace, seat of the Nasrid Emirate in Granada, and maybe one of the most spectacular places I've ever been.

READING:  For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway.  For me, nobody evokes images of Spain like Ernesto Hemingway.  


LISTENING:

  

I'll separate the pics between Granada and the actual Alhambra.

ALHAMBRA