San Sebastianings

We mentioned that our central Spain trip to start ’09 would be the last trip prior to coming home, however, that doesn’t mean we’ve been sitting in our apartment contemplating our navels (we limit that to once a week). For the last couple of weeks we’ve been slowly sliding back into our routine, seeing some of the sights that we’ve missed so far and experiencing San Sebastian’s BIG FESTIVAL known as Tamborrada.

The girls have returned to school, Dan to work (kinda) and Cindy to doing just about everything else. Kelsey and Audrey were glad to see their Spanish chica-friends again (they are already starting to lament leaving their friends here a little) and to have homework to do (YES THEY MISSED HOMEWORK). Dan had to give the final exam for the course he taught and assign grades (the system is a 10-pt scale here with MANY subtleties complicating things) and he is initiating initial research work with one of the PhD students at Tecnun - non-contact health-monitoring of truss structures using Laser Doppler Vibrometry for those of you taking notes. Cindy was able to restart her weekly conversation partner meetings and, just this week, she began taking a Basque cooking class that meets weekly until we leave. So, it appears that we are back in the “family saddle” again.

A little over a week ago Cindy and Dan went to visit the Eduardo Chillida museum (info at http://www.eduardo-chillida.com/index.php?id=1&L=3). As we mentioned in one of our first

posts, Chillida is the artist who did the steel sculptures that we often visit at the entrance to the San Sebastian bay and, from what we have seen, he appears to be the most celebrated Basque artist (he has works all around the world, including the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh). The Chillida-Leku museum is located where he lived and worked “outside of town” (which means about 15 mins by bus with multiple stops – a long way in Europe) and is largely outdoors due to the size of most of his works, although there is a wonderful Basque barn within which some of his smaller items are housed. We both thought it was amazing – probably of one of the best museums we have seen and, during the past year or so, we’ve been fortunate enough to be in MANY great museums. Chillida worked in steel, iron, rock, felt and paper and his abstract shapes were inventive but seemed to have central circular theme (we read that the circle is an important image to Basques) that makes them easily recognizable. Photos of some of his works (notice Danny “White Shoes” standing by his favorite –BIG and made of STEEL) and the interior of the barn are shown here. We have noticed that the kids are reproducing Chillida’s style, though with much more utilitarian materials (as evidenced in the pic showing one of Audrey's recent works, note Nutella on side of mouth - A TRUE REVOLUTIONARY IN THE ART WORLD).

Earlier this week was THE BIG DAY in San Sebastian – Tamborrada, always held on January 20^th (a big day in the U.S. for another reason) and a major, major event (a short summary is at http://www.spanish-fiestas.com/san-sebastian/festivals.htm). As indicated on the web page, Tamborrada is all about MAKING NOISE using bands with MANY, MANY DRUMS – Basque’s come back to San Sebastian from all over the world for just this day. The festival starts at midnight and ends at midnight and, as shown in the first pic, the road outside our apartment was one of the main imbibing and band parade routes so, like it or not, we enjoyed the music nonstop for 24 hrs (not surprisingly Dan slept 1 hr, the rest 6+ which was not bad – Dan was waiting to hear the band that totally killed the Ramones at 4am using a trumpet, sax, trombone, tuba and base drum). Most songs were traditional marches and folk songs of the area and, to be quite honest, the playlist was a bit short (those tunes will be knocking around in our heads forever).

The highlight of the whole festival for us was the kid’s parade that started at noon in the center

of the old portion of town. Most schools in SS have a band that marches in the parade andEskibel was no exception – they marched with their companion boy’s school, Erain. We were very fortunate that Kelsey was old enough to participate and was asked to do so (unfortunately Audrey was too young – she got into it though). We felt that this would be an incredible experience for her and it certainly was – truly amazing. Kelsey wore the school’s traditional band uniform as shown in the first couple of pics (she’s in the middle right above the gap in the 2^nd pic) and drummed to the official march of San Sebastian (music was piped in along the entire parade route – all schools repeatedly played the same tune in unison). After watching the opening ceremony, which is overseen by the “king and queen” of the kids parade (who were, ironically, from Eskibel and Erain – real lucky given there are over 50 schools that march and thousands of kids – pic of Audrey with her official SS Tamborrada and one of her chica-friends watching the ceremony), the rest of us walked the route and waited for Kelsey’s troupe to arrive. Look at the uniforms of the members of the band – they all either represent soldiers, cooks, lumberjacks (we think) and women carrying flowers and water. Each of these costumes directly relates to the history of the festival and is reproduced by every band that marches. After taking some pics we then tailed Kelsey the rest of the route, totally cramping her style. Everything worked out great - the rain held off and we found Kelsey at the completion of the parade (last pic). We believe this is something Kelsey will remember forever – she could very well have been the ONLY American that marched in Tamborrada this year. Pretty cool, we think.

Regarding the other, minor, event that happened on the 20^th – we were fortunate to watch the inauguration streaming on CNN after Kelsey’s parade and felt that we witnessed history. We have been asked how the Spanish have reacted to the change in leadership in the U.S. and while, like most of Europe, they were happy for the change it has been a reserved happiness. Spaniards appear to, justifiably, take a “wait and see” attitude with their leaders and this same attitude is being applied to Obama (who they view as moderate, if not slightly right, when compared to their liberal leaders). We have all been learning a lot about Spanish and Basque politics since arriving and, while fascinating, it is complicated, to say the least when compared to the U.S. system. Makes you appreciate what we have.

AND FOR THE FINAL BIG ANNOUNCEMENT – AUDREY LOST ANOTHER TOOTH YESTERDAY!!!!! She will be coming back to the U.S. next month with plenty off bling. Her front tooth gap is now approximately 3 meters wide.

That’s it for our latest report – the next one will probably come within a few weeks and could possibly be our last from here. We shall see – the end is coming soon.

We hope you are all healthy and happy and enjoying 2009 so far. We miss you one and all.

Central Spain to Start '09

As we alluded to in our last lengthy post, we made a trip to central Spain from San Sebastian to start the New Year. The trip had both planned and unplanned stops but, thankfully, no catastrophes (such as…batteries dying in rented vehicles in a parking garage in the middle of Paris, just as an example…).

We left on the 3^rd, ready to take our rented Seat Ibiza (translates into “typical European 4-door hatchback”) to Madrid. Unfortunately, the rental agency screwed up and did not have the right size car seat for Audrey (a problem in Spain since it’s against the law for someone her size and age to travel without one). The best solution was to stop in Burgos on the way to

Madrid, a town that we had considered seeing (since only the BEST are named Burgos – right Bill, Karen??) but were not sure we could fit in on this trip. This unplanned diversion ended up great, however, and not just because it broke up the trip. Burgos is home to a famous cathedral, located on one of the pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostella, and it is really a great place to see (see Cathedral pics). In addition, the historic center of the city is great and the girls loved walking through the tunnel of trees along the creek near the cathedral. We were also able

to eat a great lunch at a restaurant just off the cathedral plaza, the first of many great meals we’d have during our travels.

We arrived in Madrid the evening of the 3^rd and decided to see the holiday decorations that we had heard about during our time in San Sebastian. As we discussed in previous posts, Reyes Magos is the

BIG DAY for kids in Spain and, as a result, all of the decorations were

still going strong during our time in Madrid. They were amazing to see at night – with many streets in the center of the city having series of lights strung across them and each street having a different color or theme. Walking from block to block with all the shoppers and lights really got us into the holiday spirit, if only a week or so late.

We spent the next two days visiting museums and other sights and busing/training/walking the

city. The museums included the Prado to see some of the great resident collection and a BONUS Rembrandt exhibit (girls pic out front), and the Reina Sofia to see Picasso’s Guernica and th e other great modern art there (TRAVELER’S NOTE – if you have to wait in line to get into a museum and see some kids between 5 and 10 milling around, BORROW THEM BECAUSE IT WILL GET YOU INTO THE MUSEUM QUICKER – we were pulled from long queues in both Paris and

Madrid and taken to the front of the line because we had the girls). We crossed through the Puerta del Sol many times (Madrid’s equivalent to Times Square – see the Tio Pepe sign), went to the Plaza Mayor (yep – that’s Yoda in the Plaza in the 2nd plaza pic – he’s A LOT bigger in person) and attempted to visit the Palace (see the sign – royals think they can do WHATEVER THEY WANT).

One night we went to dinner and a flamenco show (yes, that’s AJ McLean ofBackstreet Boys fame, or at least his twin, Jorge, in the 2^nd pic) and on

Reyes Magos-Eve we attended the parade (Spain’s equivalent to the Macy’s Day parade) with 1,000,000 of our closest friends. We are not sure if all holiday parades start with large bugs and involve small children on REALLY tall stepladders jockeying for viewing position or continual floats throwing candy, but this one does. Our entire time in Madrid was great.

On our trip out of Madrid, we planned a stop in Segovia to see the huge Roman aqueduct which still stands in the center of the city. This is one stop that was high on maxo-geeko-gearhead Dan’s list (it’s listed as one of the greatest engineering structures in the world) and, since he was driving, well… The girls were not so sure about this diversion or the way to our one night in a “castle” (see below) but it ended up working out fine since we (a) had tapas for lunch and (b) they went ice-skating.

Our last stop on our adventure was in Lerma to stay at the “castle”, actually called a parador (www.parador.es). A parador is a government owned and run hotel (NOT the type of government run hotels that you are thinking of, U.S.-wise - they are VERY NICE), which is usually in a former castle, palace, or other structure that probably has a history and/or view. This one is located in the former palace of the Duke of Lerma – built in the 16^th century in his hometown (a small hill town - he located his palace at the top of the hill, not surprisingly) using money he fleeced from the country via his buddy, the king. So, while it does not necessarily have a completely honorable past, the place was great and we enjoyed our one night there. The former courtyard was enclosed and now houses a huge lobby, into which new age music was piped and coffee, hot chocolate and snacks were served. Needless to say WE HUNG

OUT THERE FOR A WHILE. After that, we did dinner in a big way in their dining room having traditional dishes from the area (for certain members of the family pasta counts as traditional and from the area). The girls’ meals were presented in really cool fashion as shown in the pic – main course in the center and the supporting cast around the periphery. We then slept well in our nice room and the next morning we toured the town QUICKLY

(freezing cold temps! - photo looking through a church at the surrounding

countryside) and headed back to SS.

The trip was everything we had hoped for – much fun and good food and drink – and we arrived back to our apartment safe but wiped. This was probably our last trip during our time here and we could not have asked for a better swan song.

We hope you returned from your holiday travels happy and safe, as well. We miss you one and all.

Oh, the irony

We hear winter is coming to the Midwest this weekend - this past week it came to Spain as well (see http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/01/09/madrid.snow.airport/index.html for what it did to travel in Madrid yesterday). As a result we witnessed some ironic things on the way back from our holiday trip Tues/Wed (blog post in the works...) and after we got back to San Sebastian on Thurs. Thought we'd post a couple of short clips to show you what we mean.







One video we did not get was of people walking through the snow, barefoot, in their Euro-mini suits to swim in the bay after the storm Friday morning - air temp 28 deg F, brisk wind, water temp MAYBE 50 deg F (muy loco, si???).