Getting fleeced by Frank Gehry in Bilbao.

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Much has been said about the chaotic boarding procedures for Europe’s cheap-flight carriers, but it’s not until I’ve joined the devastating queue for EasyJet Flight 3775 that the rumors seem less than overblown. People are shifting with the deft choreography of an offensive line protecting against the pass rush. There seem to be eye signals at work. I’m holding my boarding pass with a dumb smile while around me, a frothing insurrection is surging toward the gate. By day, these same people kiss their wives and pat their sons’ heads and make stupid gurgling noises at baby carriages. Beside me, a little old lady is using her wide hips for leverage.

I take my seat beside a tearful young Spanish girl who’s staring bleakly out the window. Her shoulders heave and convulse; her mood shifts from crippling sorrow to Old-Testament wrath in a heartbeat. They’ve taken her make-up at the gate. She’s disconsolate, unreachable.

“They won’t let me take my make-up, but I can take my mirror and break it and stab someone in the face.”

I’m searching hard for the veiled threat here.

She snoozes through the flight, and I take pains to put some serious carpet between us in the terminal. On the bus to Bilbao, a gaggle of older American women are bickering over the use of possessive pronouns. One with a tall, fiery plume is deep in conversation with a Spanish woman. Her bangled wrists ring as she makes expressive hand gestures. She has an exquisite accent and rolls her R’s like they’re tumbling down a steep hill.

In the Plaza de Federico Moyúa I’m shanghaied by a girl who’d been eyeing me on the bus. She’s plump and sweet-faced and showing off a bit more skin than might make her mother proud. Her name’s Noemi. She switches fluently between Spanish and English and I do my best to keep up. Bilbao by night stuns me. For a place that’s one Guggenheim away from fading into obscurity, its streets ring with the sort of history that makes most American cities blush. The plazas and the fountains and the elegant facades are all lit up, and it strikes me for the first time that I’ve fallen in love already.

Noemi’s walked me further than I feel comfortable admitting. What did my grandmother always warn me about girls you meet on buses? At the door to my pensión, she says, “In España, we always kiss on both cheeks.” A smooth customer, that Noemi. She leaves me her number in case I need anything - anything at all - and then she walks her slightly bow-legged walk back toward the Plaza Moyúa.


Travel Tip #2911: When arriving in a strange country at half-past nine, weighed down like a beast of burden, it’s probably a smart move to have a room waiting.

I’m banking on a certain unquantifiable travel mojo that tends to follow me around, but it must’ve made a wrong turn somewhere near the Plaza Nueva. The place I’ve chosen is fresh out of singles, and it suddenly seems odd that I’d expected to wander around with my bags at 10 o’clock, looking for a cheap room. I reluctantly check into a double - at €35 a night, it thumbs its nose at my budget - and the owner helpfully offers a discount if I stay a second night. He’s a chatty, amiable old man who has no qualms about ashing his cigarette in my wastepaper basket. Seeing the distress on my travel-beaten face, he asks, “¿Te gusta fútbol?”, flipping through the channels for the Barcelona match. I drop my bags on the spare bed. Ronaldinho’s famous, toothy grin bears down from the screen. The owner opens the window, ashes again, and nods on his way out the door.


In the decade since Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim chose it as a home, Bilbao’s gone from a washed-up northern port town to a cultural heavyweight. Booming for the past ten years, there seems to be no end in sight to its growth. New buildings are rising along the river; bulldozers and cranes are tearing up everything in sight. Most conspicuous of all is the sound of American voices on the ticket line at the museum - a sure sign that Motel 6’s are looming on the horizon.

I’ve managed to catch the place between exhibitions, and a full half of the place is roped off - though the cost of admission (€12.50) is mercifully shaved. In its truncated state, though, the Guggenheim doesn’t take too much time to breeze through. Despite much brow furrowing and thoughtful reflecting, I’ve circled the galleries in under two hours. Intent on getting my money’s worth, I snap a few pics behind the backs of fierce, ever-vigilant guards. Part of me wants to make a bold statement about the need for art to remain in the public domain, where it can nourish the collective spirit of a nation. Mostly, though, I just like to get away with shit.

In the afternoon I get lost in the Casco Viejo, Bilbao’s centuries-old quarter. I meet a man outside a panadería while I’m ogling the sweets in the window. He has thin lips and gray hair swept neatly to the side, and he gets very close when he talks, in the European manner. When he hears I’m from New York his mild eyes light up; he’s been to the city before. His wife - a short, severe woman - comes out with a bagful of bread, but he shoos her along down the street, offering me a coffee as a light rain begins to fall.

We spend some time talking about the gaps between America and Europe. He has his hands in his pockets and his chin lowered to his chest, and he nods slightly when he wants to concede a point. I express my dismay at the pace of life in New York, the bitter dissatisfaction of looking for better jobs, better apartments, better gadgets - better lives. He’s sympathetic. He remembers an encounter with a woman in a New York elevator a decade ago. He nodded pleasantly and said, “Buenos días,” but she kept her eyes firmly fixed on the numbers lighting up above the door. Ten years later, I can see the wound is still fresh.

The Spanish, he contends, are more likely to be happy with what they have - happy to have enough. What they give up in salary they make up for with the precious quantities of tiempo that most Americans have to scramble for. They can enjoy a more leisurely life. “Tenemos tiempo,” he says, “para ir a la playa; para tomar algo con nuestros amigos.” He ticks off the modest pleasures of Spanish life on his fingers.

But the American advantage, he feels, is that for all our divisiveness, we still think as one living, breathing body. In spite of strides within the EU, the European countries are bound by their national identities. Too many centuries have been lived - too many wars have been fought - for all that to be swept under a rug in Brussels.

“It’s the same in España,” he says. “I am Spanish, sí, pero en mi corazon” - he proudly thumps on his chest - “I am Basque first!”


I duck beneath shop awnings and under long arcades to avoid the rain. Stopping to try some pintxos from a local bar, I sit for an hour in the Plaza Nueva as the skies clear. In the mild evening air, all of Bilbao seems to be enjoying a sudden break in the wet weather. Old women tug at their stockings on a bench. Mothers cradle newborns while nursing a glass of wine. Men of all ages are blowing plumes of smoke into the air, gathering in small, conspiratorial circles and laughing with massive heaves.

A group of boys is playing a riotous game of five-a-side in the square. The ball is caroming off the walls and off their feet and off the legs of reprimanding parents, but the game carries on with all the gravity they can muster. They trade goals; a boy with a precocious mullet makes a diving save. Two pre-teens - out-classing the others with their dexterous feet - make nimble moves and deftly tap the ball across the plaza. On the backs of their legs, the first traces of calf muscles are beginning to flex.

The ball soars high over the square from an errant kick, and an old man takes an ageless side-step, grinning bashfully at his burst of youth. A toddler pedals his tricycle in perilous circles through the square - through that tangle of bruised shins and scraped knees and fast-kicking feet. He pedals with an intent, serious face, now and then lighting up as his tricycle wobbles, leans far to the side, and then rights itself on solid ground.

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