Blogs from San Sebastián, Basque Country, Spain, Europe - page 6

Right after the week of my disputation I was at a conference in San Sebastián, the 9th Conference of the International Test Commission (ITC). We had four poster presentations there, two of the posters I had to design. I did that just in time, prepared them on Sunday evening after getting back from the Karl-May-Festspiele in Bad Segeberg, took them – with Achim and Richard’s posters – to the copy shop on Monday morning on my way to work, and picked them up on my way to the airport on Tuesday morning. Richard and I arrived in Bilbao on Tuesday evening and met our Swedish colleague Mats at the airport. From there we caught the shuttle bus to San Sebastián, the journey took a bit over an hour. The weather was horrible, it was raining and ... read more

Another magnificent day. We awoke and immediately pulled the curtains to enjoy the sea view of this beautiful bay. There was a lot of activity going on early in the a.m. A street sweeper/washer was cleaning the boardwalk and a large piece of machinery was combing the sand (remember space balls movie where they were combing the desert!). The tide is really varied here as in the early a.m. it was very high and minimized the size of the beach as the waves splashed up towards the sea wall. By noon, the tide was so low that it was out away from the sea wall about 100 feet. We ate lunch at La Perla right on the boardwalk and enjoyed 2 glasses wine with lunch and the waitress told us that by 3-4pm the tide would ... read more

Geo: 43.3231, -1.98137 GÜN 31 GÜNLERDEN CUMARTESİ: Sabah, San Sebastian tepelerinde, yağmur karşılaması var. Tentemize aferin, bizi koruyor ..Dışarıda oturabiliyoruz.Yağmura rağmen Şahbazın kapısına doğru sokularak keyifler yapabiliyoruz. Şarjlarımızı tamamladık. Zırlak çocuk, tüm haşmeti ile geri döndü …artık ota, boka ağlıyor . Bir tarafta devamlı zırlayan bir çocuk öte yanda devamlı yağan bir yağmur bezdirdi bizi. 17:00 otobüsü ile kente indik.. Önce deniz kıyısında biraz dolandık .Yağmur kesildi.. Bugün kentte "Renk festivali" varmış.. Yine genç ihtiyar çoluk çocuk eğleniyorlar .. Dev kuklalar ortalarda dolanıyor..her halde rakip köy çocukları, en çok hangimiz gürültü yapacak diye yarışıyorlar..Eğlence kıyamet ..Her mahallenin bando mızıkası ayrı .. Böyle bir gün... read more

San Sebastian to Bilbao to Burgos 13 to 17 August 2013 On arriving in San Sebastian we left all the ‘bon jour’ and ‘merci’ behind and entered Spain so now hearing ‘buenos dias’ and ‘gracias’. The Spanish language was a lot more familiar to us after travelling through Sth America for 3 months in 2011 and learning Spanish back in Brisbane. We found a suitable park and rode our bikes into the city centre. Wow, we were struck by the busyness and summer celebrations that were going on in the centre of town. There were people everywhere, listening to the street music, watching the street puppet show, the painter at work and the unusual live statues as well as the clown blowing up balloons. Walking through the narrow streets we also saw peaceful demonstrations for political ... read more

Crossing from the long straight, empty roads of France in to Spain, where they were suddenly a tangled mess of twists and turns, was a bit of a wakeup call as we headed to Camping Iqueldo near San Sebastian. The sat nav had more in store for us though: as we passed through the town, it directed us off the main road and into the hills. The roads became narrower and steeper and it was clear that the three of us were lost (that’s Steve, I and the sat nav!). Steve persevered, as there was nowhere to turn around anyway, and negotiated Petit Van Blanc around hairpin bends and along skinny tracks with a sheer drop to one side! We eventually found the main road again but took one last wrong turn from which a local ... read more