Cataluña, Navarra & Gipuzkoa

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Buenos dias, ¿cómo estais? ¡“Porqué no te callas”! (why don’t you shut up!!!) that’s what the King of Spain told the Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez Frias to do during a conference in Chile. This sentence became famous across whole Spain just in a few hours and now there are songs and ringtones about it!!!

Girona & Sant Felui de Guixols
I arrived at Girona airport, where I took the bus to Girona station. There Paul was waiting for me and we went home. I knew Paul because we studied together in Rotterdam, but he did Mathematics. He also went to Curacao, where we did our practice at the MIL (stage), which was almost 5 years ago now! Paul is living for more than 1 year in Spain and is doing professional cycling in a team from Girona. He has a very good potential and will continue doing this for at least one year, and of course his dream is to become a very good professional and winning prizes at the mayor competitions. I spoke a lot to him about his plans etc. and I'm very impressed by his positivism and discipline to reach his goal. He left Holland to live in Spain, not knowing a word of Spanish basically....but now he speaks the language pretty well and really feels like home there.

The first thing that of course caught my attention here, is the language: here they speak Catalán, the language of Cataluña. But everybody can speak Spanish (Castellano). I have heard many times before about the language but I didn't know exactly where in Spain it was spoken. At most places the signs are only in Catalán, at schools and at the university they teach in Catalán. The feeling to be independant from Spain seems to be stronger here than in the Basque Country. The language is like a mix of Spanish and French and that's why I was able to read and understand some of the signs, but just some of them! But when they speak I don't understand much. Girona is not a big city, but it's (one of) the most important cities in Cataluña after Barcelona. It's like a student city.....many are styding and living here, also many foreigners. Girona is nicer than what I expected....I loved especially the coloured houses with the laundry hanging outside along the Oñar River, which really looks similar as Florence in Italy. We took also a walk on the old wall of the city, from where you can see almost the whole city. The older part of the city, where the cathedral is, has many narrow streets, beautiful and quiet gardens and also a Jewish neighbourhood. Paul also took me to Sant Feliu de Guixols, at the famous Costa Brava. This is a small village with a beach and surrounded by hills and pine forests. It was a 40 min. bus ride from Girona to get there. There we walked around a bit, looked around the town, had some drinks. In the summer of course this town is quite busy with disco's, bars and many restaurants open. One of the most beautiful monuments and things to see here were for example an old monastery, the first to see when walking to town from the busstation. There is not much else to do and see here if it's not summer.

Paul lives in a nice neighbourhood near a campus of the university. Pilar is the owner of the house, she's renting rooms to people, especially students. She's a very very nice and friendly lady. For a cheap price I stayed there for 4 nights, including food....sometimes she also cooks for al of us! Goica is a guy from northern Spain, studying in Girona for more than 1 year now and there was Davide as well...an Italian from Sicily. In front of the house, exactly at the opposite side of the street, there is a family from Curaçao living! We went once to visit them. The man, who wasn't home at the time, is an ex-pilot of ALM - DCA and he's working now for Ryan Air. The wife and their 12 year old son were home. What a coincidence to meet them here in Spain!

Pamplona & San Sebastian
After Girona I took the train to Pamplona. First I had to go to Barcelona Sants and to take another train there. Totally it was a journey of 7 hours!!!! Once there Adriana and Luis were waiting at the station and we drove home. I knew them both in Florence, Italy back in July. I wasn't planned to go theere, but when they found out that I'll be in Spain they asked if I could manage to come here for a few days. Luis is 25 studies philosophy right now and loves literature! His room is packed with books of all kind....he must have at least 2000 books! He's very intelligent and knows a lot, loves to talk and discuss...about everything and he interviewed me for his website http://www.luiscortesbrinol.es . Adrianna is 21 and studies law at the moment, in her last year. She's very sweet and intelligent as well....but doesn't talk a lot like her brother. Pamplona is a city with about 300.000 people in the north of Spain, in Navarra. I was tired of the journey so we didn't do much after I arrived. We went to eat outside, near their home, and later we walked around the area in the neighbourhood. It was VERY cold at night, everyday I was here! They live in front of a big park, Parque Yamaguchi, where there's also a space observatory (Planetario de Pamplona). We visited this observatory but couldn't get to the telescope room because there are just a few moments during the week when this is possible. But there was an interesting exhibition in the observatory. The city has a large amount of parks, many many parks. They told me that Pamplona has the most square meters of parks per inhabitant in Spain. The city is very nice, especially the older part of the city with it's old city walls, churches and narrow streets. Pamplona has a big citywall, from fortresses of the past. In the middle of the city when seeing a citymap, in a form like a star, you'll see the Ciudadela. It's a fortress, surrounded by a huge park. Of course Pamplona is famous for her bull race on the streets, which takes place in July. We went to the downtown, and saw a part of the route that the bulls run in the summer, finishing in the bul-arena (bull-stadium or whatever you call it)....here it's called Plaza de Toros. The most beautiful area of the city, to me, was the Plaza del Castillo with it's colourful buildings and many terraces and restaurants.

Pamplona is officially not part of the Basque Country, which means that most of the people speak Spanish (Castellano) here, but most signs are in Spanish and Basque (Euskera). The Basque Country is a small area in northern Spain (and southwestern France) which wants independance from Spain. The ETA, a terrorist group from the area, caused several hundreds of deaths in the past 45 to 50 years in whole Spain by commiting bomb attacks....trying to pressure the central government in Madrid to give the area it's independance. They told me that the area is always associated with the ETA and the local people dislike that, since almost all of them are against the ETA as well. We went to San Sebastián one day, which is in the Basque Country, in the area called Gipuzkoa. Luis and Adriana's grandmother is from San Sebastián. Here most people speak Euskera and in this city the feeling to cede from Spain is higher than in any other city. The city lies at the coast, almost in the "corner" near the western part of the Spain-France border. The city attracts a lot of visitors in the summer, but even now in autumn it was pretty busy. There is a long beach along which there are several hotels, restaurants, clubs etc. and a long promenade along the whole coast which is always busy. The city is very beautiful, more than I expected. Some houses look very similar to the houses in Madrid, same architecture, and most houses have a lot of nice balconies and windows. This city is famous for the San Sebastián Movie Festival, which attracts several well known celebrities to the city every year. In San Sebastián there was a drunk/drugged woman who made some racist comments to me (¡Negro de mierda, vete a tu país!) and I shout two/three things in Spanish back to her, which I prefer not so write down here....but then I realized that it's not worth it and I just threw her a kiss, hahaha. May God bless her because she didn't know what she was doing 😉

Barcelona
And then....Barcelona! Originally I didn't plan to come here...but I decided to go there for two days before going back to Holland...and I'm glad I did. It's a very nice city and it's a pity I couldn't stay longer. The city is very international, many tourists and foreign students...it's a city most people would like. Here I stayed also in the best hostel I've ever been so far....and of course I met some people here too. On the "citytour" I went together with Caio from Santos, Brazil, who was travelling alone as well. We went to the Gaudi Park first and also visited the small museum here, which was Gaudi's home in the past. The park is really nice, from there you have a nice view over the whole city...which doesn't look beautiful at all from here. Gaudi was an architect and his designs are very unique and beautiful!!! Some houses look like houses from "fairy tales", hahaha! After the park we went to his most famous project, the Sagrada Familia church. They started to build the church back in 1882 and it's still not finished!!! They're still building and it could take until 2090 to finish...so probably many of us won't be able see the building when finished! Gaudi has some other nice buildings in the city as well. Very famous and nice is the Rambla. It's like a long promenade in the middle of two streets and with several restaurants, bars, shops etc. etc. It's busy most of the time.
On the street we were asked to dance in front of the camera for a TV Show called "Mira quien baila" (Look who's dancing). They were doing a kind of "promotion" for FAO (Humanitarian aid) and they ask people on the street to dance just a while with a hot dancer of th show (Lorena Bargallo). I had to dance tango with her (first time I did tango) and we had to repeat it three times. Then I had to say "do something for FAO) in my own language in the camera. These acts will be shown in Dec. 15th on TV1 in whole Spain. At the hostel we also met with Kylie and Melanie, two sisters from Newcastle, Australia but living in London, and also with Gerardo from Monterrey, Mexico. They are all very nice people and we were talking at the hostel in the evening until late! We had dinner once with the sisters at a local restaurant, where they served us some good seafood paella! The idea was to go out, but I was tired and once of the sisters was tired too so they probably went out yesterday, but I had to fly back to Holland. Barcelona for sure is a city I'd like to visit once more!

That's all for now. Tomorrow Francesca will be arriving from Rome and stay until Tuesday!

¡Hasta luego y cuídanse!

Elton

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