Sunday 27/11 in San Sebastian and Sam's birthday

not that we got up to much in the way of celebrating Sam's birthday!

Well, I've got a bit behind with the blogging. Since our weekend in San Sebastian we've had a fabulous weekend in Zaragoza and a wonderful weekend with Emma and Brit when they visited us here and tomorrow, Wednesday 12 November,  we're off to Barcelona for 5 nights & 4 days.

So, back to Sunday in San Sebastian. First up we discovered the trick of the tourist bus ticket because it didn't start running until 11am so there wasn't time to go to the other end of the city to where the funicular railway goes up to the top of the hill and then back to the hotel end before our tickets expired at 1pm. Lesson learned - check the timing of these things first!  We were disappointed but we'll get to do it another day.

We mooched about the pintxo bars for a while and then went to the Naval Museum. Not what we expected at all!!! More like an art gallery then a museum of any sort, certainly nothing 'naval like'. Still, we saw the plans for the rebuilding of the city after the destruction in 1831 and discovered that they'd designed all the buildings on the street corners with 'chamfered corners' so as to be PEDESTRIAN FRIENDLY - how's that for a people friendly city. Well, I was impressed. Unfortunately I didn't take a photo of what this looks like. I'll take a couple tomorrow while we wile away the couple of hours before we get the train to Barcelona.

The best thing about this museum is that it is situated right on the waterfront almost as an extension of the old town so it was a very interesting place to wander about. The photo below is looking from the museum to the old town.

We were going to go to the Museum of Basque History after this but we didn't have the energy so we decided to head back to Azpeitia. Also, the day had turned cold and if we didn't dally about we'd get to the station in time for the next train. So we hight-tailed it to the hotel, grabbed our bags and off at a trot to the station in 20 minutes. Once we were out of the tourist area the city was very quiet. Quite a contrast to the busyness of the old town. We made it to the station with 5 minutes to spare. We'd decided to train to Zumaia and then bus to Azpeitia for a change from busing all the way.

The statue and fort at the top,of the hill we walked up on Saturday

  the top of the hill where the funicular railway goes

  

  Self explanatory green leaf!

  on the edge of the old town, growing out of the hill?

  

    Hola!!!

  

  La Concha Beach -mid autumn, what will it be like in mid summer?

Almost at the railway station, looking down the river to the sea.

  and home to Azpeitia for a another week and then our weekend in Zaragoza. 

San Sebastian 26 - 27 October 2013

It was a good weekend. We both like the city, it has a really nice feel to it and is quite beautiful with lots of green trees and grass and bright flowers everywhere. Lots of the balconies have flower planters with lots of brightly coloured flowers hanging from them. As we were doing the tourist thing we hung about tourist places with all the other tourists - and there were lots of them. 

We had a cheap hotel and this time it was in a good location, not a motorway in sight. It was actually close to the sea, it's the brown building almost at the far end of the road. One of the main beaches, Zurriola, over the water opposite the hotel The water is actually the river. It was a very good location for what we wanted to do - be tourists. The road along the the buildings in the photo leads up to an enormous fort and and a gigantic statue of Jesus at the top of the hill, the other way and just around the corner is the 'old town' and a little bit further is the tourist bus stop which we've decided is a must do whenever we're in a new city. The museum of Basque History and Culture is very near the hotel but we didn't get there so will go there next time. I think it'll be very interesting, history in this part of the world is soooooooo long. We didn't go because we had been to The Naval Museum earlier in the day and 2 museums in one day would be museum overload, at least that's how we were feeling. 

    Looking from our bedroom window over the river to Zurriola Beach

We got the tourist bus to the walkway to the top of the hill and spent quite a bit of time exploring up the hill and hanging about by the sea. The main beach,  La Concha, is behind us.

   up the hill we went

  On our way up the hill, we had to go through this little tunnel

It was a tremendously interesting place. The fort buildings and the statue were freakin' enormous

High walls, olden day soldiers must have been rather taller than me!

   

   This is a tomb for British soldiers, couldn't see a date, on the side of the hill showing signs of old age and decay, slowly being taken over by the vegetation.

  Not sure what this big building is, maybe the university, the building in the front with the lovely green lawn is a palace

  

La Concha Beach - this is the famous San Sebastian beach 

At the top in the old fort is a fairly extensive museum stacked with information and 'stuff'. We now have a better understanding of the history, as presented in this museum, anyway, of San Sebastian and this area. The city has been knocked down, burnt down, ransacked numerous times. The last ransacking and burning etc was in the 1830s and  everything was razed to the ground except for one church and one street of buildings. So the old town is part of the old, old town rebuilt and the rest of the city is built according to a well made plan so it is quite structured with straight wide streets with lots of trees.

After spending some time here we hoped on the tourist bus to go back into the city for some lunch and then back onto the bus to the end and back again. We really like the tourist buses and think that they're quite good value. This tourist bus trip was a warmer ride than the last 2, Bath and Edinburgh in winter = a freezing cold ride, but still we had fun. At the other end of the city is another hill which has a funicular railway to get to the top which we decided to do on Sunday but we didn't get to do that because we were a bit green as to how exactly the tourist bus worked and so didn't have the time we needed. The tickets are good for 24hours but the bus didn't start until 11am on Sunday and our tickets expired at 1pm so another thing to do on a return visit.

On Saturday night we headed to the bars for pintxos and beer in the old town, along with a few thousand other tourists. We had fun - good food and beer although some times we didn't know what we were eating.

 

  

We got a bit fed up with all the people not to mention the expensiveness of the food and beer so we wandered off across the river for a nightcap - a Tia Maria coffee for me and a port for Barry, here's what we got - a lot more Tia Maria than coffee, I didn't realise that the barman was waiting for me to say "stop" so he just kept sloshing it into my cup until I did. It was a very tasty coffee. The same with Barry's  port - which came out of THE FRIDGE!!!! There's a first time for everything, I guess. Wasn't bad for a 'cold' port. 

And then we called it a night. Sunday is another day

Deba

And now for our day in Deba

Deba is a village, population roughly 5,500, on the coast north of Azpeitia. We had to take a bus from here to Zumaia on the coast and then a train from there to Deba which is two stops further up the line which runs between Bilbao - SanbSebastian.  And why did we go there - because we can - and also because we had arranged to meet up with the kiwi girl we had met in Vitoria and spent time with in Barakaldo  and here after the induction days. She is living in the next village up the coast from Deba, called Mutriku, so we decided to spend some time together in Deba.

We met up at the railway station and decided to begin the day with a coffee so into the nearest bar we went. It just so happened that in this bar was a teacher that Bri, (short for Brianna) our kiwi friend, works with so we were invited to sit down with the teacher and her friends. We had a really great time chatting in a mixture of Spanish and English. So many people here are trilingual, at the least -  Basque/Spanish/ English or French. Suddenly they jumped up and said they had to get to the shops before they closed. Yes, siesta time was looming! Bri's teacher gave her some hurried instructions and rushed off. 

We wandered off to explore the town. First up was the church (there's always one) and this one is called the church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción and it is a Basque Gothic temple from the 16th century. We wandered in for a look . It was 'churchy' with an unusual feature hanging high in the dark near the ceiling. Here's a photo albeit a rather dark one

 

Can you see it? It's an old sailing ship which I guess it's a tribute to the  huge ship building industry that used to be all along this coast in the days of sailing ships and also the huge fishing industry that existed around here. Apparently Basque fishermen were 'the best'. 

Here's Barry and Bri discussing who knows what outside the church.

This church is on one side of the town square and there are cafes and shops on the other 3 sides. We got a real sense that  the square is actually still the centre of the town and that the town has grown around it. Azpeitia has grown along the flat land along the river in one direction because the old town end has big hills beside it. This means that the town square is no longer the centre and it does seem a little left behind as the town has grown away from it.

We headed for the beach to feel the sand beneath our toes.  It is a long time since I've had sand beneath my toes. A few winters in a row has meant no beach time for me. So here we are on the Atlantic coast with the town behind us - 3 kiwis together in Deba!

  with our feet in the Atlantic Ocean

We spent a bit of time hanging about here. This is the walk/ bike path along the coast

   ?????? maybe the signs not big enough!

  A house

   

  Pedestrian tunnel. I love this kind of thing

another house at the beach end of a street

We wandered around the town, took all of 10 minutes and then it was beer and pintxos time and a discussion about what the teacher we met in the cafe had told us to do. From what Bri understood she had asked us to go to her house after we'd looked around. The trick was to find her house from what little was understood of her instructions - " from the town square go down the road and over the main road and behind the houses there is a house." Off we went to find the 'house behind the houses' We felt like we were on a treasure hunt following cryptic clues. Eventually we were on a street behind some houses and the only problem was that it was a row of houses/ apartments not one house stood out. We walked past a place which had an open gate and I thought maybe she's left the gate open for us so Bri and I worked put what we'd say to whoever opened the door and then knocked. A lady opened the door, we said what what we hoped was asking if the teacher lived there. No, she didn't but the lady said "follow me" so we did, down the road a little bit to a locked gate so clearly this wasn't the house. By then both Bri and I had got our Spanish language tongue working and were able to tell her more about this teacher so it was "follow me" again. This time we went to the other end of the street across the road, across the park, across another road and up a path. Bri and I thought it was a really funny but Barry was hanging back scratching his head. The lady pushed a button to speak to someone in an apartment in the building and then followed a shortish conversation which, from what we could understand, we began to think that this was the place. The conversation stopped amd around the corner came the teacher. We were so surprised - it seemed like a miracle - from the open gate to the teacher coming around the corner - well, there is magic in the universe!

So up to her apartment we went. Unfortunately, what wasn't understood was that she wanted us to come earlier so we could wander around together and then all have lunch together. We then felt really awful and awkward about the situation. However, she and her lovely husband insisted on making us lunch - 1st plate of salad, cheese, salami, bread, tomatoes, tuna; 2nd plate of artichokes and a potato thingy, more bread and then dessert of fruit and cheese - along with a bottle of red wine and some good conversation in a mixture of Spanish so we could practice, English so she could practice and Spanglish when the going got tough. All in all a very good lunch and a very nice, interesting afternoon. It was a shame that we mucked it up because to walk around a place with a local is a completely different experience to doing it as a tourist, just looking. Also, getting to know another local is always a treat.  On the other hand, we were totally amazed by how we got to the right house. 

She walked us to the bus stop for Bri and then the station for us and we were on our way back to Azpeitia.

We want to do more exploring along the coast and have been told that a famous chef from the Basque Country has his restaurant in another coastal town not far from here so that is now on our 'to do' list.

Here's a couple of photos taken while we had a short wait for the train in Zumaia. 

  I just can't resist chimneys. The coast is just at the end of the row of houses with chimneys.

 It was twilight and I liked the loght.

  Jet streams

That's it for now, there'll be more soon

some happenings

I thought it was time to write about some of the things we've done - first, our visitors - 

About 10 days ago we spent the day with a couple of young kiwis, Ruth and Karl, who visited us here in Azpeitia. They have been driving a very small homemade campervan, bought in London, around Europe for the past few months and they found their way to our little town. 

Here they are with their campervan. We were impressed by the skillful job of the hand painted flag

Ruth is the daughter of good Auckland friends of ours and we were very excited when we heard that she and her lovely partner, Karl, were coming to see us. There is nothing like having visitors from home - there is certainly a 'kiwi perspective' and it was just great to chat with people who share this. For example, so many people tell us that we, as in New Zealand, have to belong to somewhere else, but NO WE DON'T. Oceania is a common suggestion but the only time, I think, we hear this in NZ is to do with sports competitions and Oceania is an area of competing teams. 

 So we chatted and laughed the day away fitting in pintxos and beer, and a good 20 - 30 minute stroll up to Loiola to the Basilica de Loiola, icecreams on the steps of the big hotel beside the Basilica.

     Pintxos and beer ...

    .... and icecreams

We went into the Bascillica and had a look around.  Ruth and I had a great time looking at everything and reading everything and wondering how it would have been 'back in the day' a few hundred years ago. We looked out of a window at the top and there were Barry and Karl outside way down below. Ruth and I thought it was quite interesting but don't think that Barry and Karl were that fussed about it.

I must say that this is the very first time I have ever spent a day with another Ruth and never have I written 'Ruth and I' before! 

All too soon it was time to head back to Azpeitia and for Ruth and Karl to be on their way. But not so fast, as it turned out because there was the 'little' problem of locating the campervan. "where oh WHERE COULD IT BE" came the cry -  "was it this street or that one or maybe the other one". Up and down a few steps to the next street, round a couple of corners and then backtracking a little bit and then"there it is" and there it was, just where they'd parked it. 

We had a look inside and marveled at how compact it is and what a tiny space it is to live in. They did say that they were getting a little weary of putting the bed up and down every morning and night and having to pack everything away before they could move on. I really hope that their leisurely day in Azpeitia with us went a little way to rejuvenate their wanderlust. 

You may be wondering why their campervan wasn't parked up by our place. Well, sometimes GPS's are not exactly trustworthy and negotiating little narrow streets with dubious instructions sometimes means that it's better to ditch the technology and go for a walk. Added into the mix is the fact that the campervan is a right-hand driving vehicle which is fine for the UK (where it comes from) so Karl, the driver, is on the outside of the road instead of the inside. Sounded rather freaky to me but he said it wasn't a problem. Ruth said they had got a lot of strange looks when people realised that she wasn't actually driving but is sitting where the driver should be!

Then it was time to say goodbye and off they went, straight ahead ... then turned around and came back and onto the road that would actually take them out of the city and to the coast. 

   There they go ....and then they came back ...

    

    .... onto the right road and this time they really were gone.

It certainly was a very lovely day and both Barry and I felt a little sad to wave them goodbye. 

The next day, Saturday, was the day we went to Deba and that will be my next post.

school

27/10/13 and some catching up to do so first a bit about my school. 

It's all good so far. I walk to and from school every day except Fridays because I don't go to school on Fridays. Sometimes I have a few hours between classes so I will leave school and go back later on in the day so I'm getting plenty of exercise and slowly regaining my fitness from my time on Zaragoza and then lost while I was back home lying on the couch after my knee operation.  

My schedule is kind of easy with 2 or 3 classes a day of either 50 minutes or 1 hour. The smallest class has about 14 students and the biggest is 26 - 30 and that's a lot of faces looking at me. The youngest are, I think, 11 - 12 year olds and the eldest at the school in Azpeitia are 15 - 16 years old. I do 2 classes at the school in the next town, which is called Azkoitia. 1 is students 16 - 17 years old and then 1 class of adults. The school in Azkoitia is part of the school in Azpeitia and I have to confess that I'm really not sure how that works. I just go where I'm told and try to keep a low profile. Fortunately, the teacher I work with in Azkoitia lives in Apeitia and she picks me up and drops me back and the 2 towns are only about 10 minutes drive apart. This is just as well because our 1st class starts at 8am! 

Like everywhere, some classes are better then others in terms of behaviour and interest levels - 'group dynamic' is certainly an interesting phenomenon. Sometimes I would like to tell some of the kids to just go away and see what happens. Most of the time it's ok and I guess in time we'll get used to each other. I don't know what the school population is, it's not a big school so probably a few hundred from the equivalent of our year 8 - year 11.

This is the front of the school, from the car park. The entrance is along the path at the far end.

This is the back of the school and the only piece of grass there is.

and here is the front entrance

There are some interesting differences between schools here and in NZ. In the high schools here the teachers move classes and the students stay put. This means that there is no subject material in the classes and the walls are mostly bare, there are no 'school fields' and they have a 11/2 hour or 2 hour lunch break and most kids go home and then come back to school finishing for the day at around 5 o'clock. Apparently, there is talk of changing this set-up but it fits with the 'siesta' arrangement of just about everyones day - most shops, banks, offices etc shut for 2 - 3 hours in the afternoon - although I have been told that 'sleeping' doesn't happen, people do other 'work', so it would involve a huge shift.

The main language here is Basque so that's what everyone at school speaks and all classes, except of course, the language classes, are in Basque. The Spanish government has recently passed a law which makes it compulsory for all schools to use Spanish for teaching. This hasn't been accepted very well by teachers, staff and students alike. 

I have learnt a few basic words in Basque and use them when I can, however, most people are bilingual Basque/Spanish or Castilian as they call it and seem happy enough to talk in Spanish with me. Not, I must add, that this involves long and meaningful conversations, discussions and debates, not by a long shot. My Spanish is still rather rudimentary and I use it when I have the chance but the people who speak English want to speak English with me and that's ok and, as was my experience in Zaragoza, a lot of people know some English and seem to relish the opportunity to use it. They always seem to be able to tell that English is my natural language as soon as I begin to talk and I always wonder "how come?", my Spanish doesn't sound that bad, at least not to my ears. 

Our 'home away from home' apartment

Our apartment is really nice, well, in comparison to the hotel room, it's luxury. It has 2 bedrooms so we've got  space for visitors (hint hint). The views out the windows aren't up to much but given that mostly it's dark when we're here that's no big deal. Daylight savings finishes in a couple of weeks so we'll have the shutters closed earlier and won't be looking out the windows. We're on the edge of Azpeitia in the 'old town' 10 - 15 minutes walk to school and it's probably another 5 or so minutes walk from there to the other side of town. here's the photos so you can see our place for yourself.

Looking down the hall from the doorway

the kitchen/ Barry's space. We found a kettle!

the sitting-room from the hall

the sitting-room from our bedroom door

The bedroom

View from the window of the room at the end of the hall

the spare room, the sofa turns into 2 single beds

the view from the kitchen, sitting room and bedroom

Our building, the 3 open windows on the first floor is our place

this is our street. Our building is the 2nd to last one on the right

Our address is - Soreasu, 2 - 1° Dchr, Azpeitia 20730, Gipuzkoa, Spain. Just in case you find that you're passing through here you'll know where to find us.

Our landlady is totally wonderful and looks after us very well. Anything we need she brings and, no, we're not taking advantage. Pretty much everything was here apart from sheets and blankets for the beds in the spare room, mugs, plates, cutlery, and such like and she's brought it all to us. She's even orgainsed for us to get intercity bus cards which will make bus/train travel a whole lot cheaper. For example the cost for 2 of us to San Sebastian is almost €9, with the card it will be between €3 - €4. 

Talking of cards, last Friday we went to San Sabastian to put in my application to renew my NIE which is my identity card and proof that I'm legally allowed to be here. Last year the process was so, so stressful and only with the help of 2 teachers it got sorted. So with that in mind we set out on the first bus, 7.35am, thinking it would take most of the day and not really looking forward to it at all. We found our way to the Oficina de Extranjería, through security, got our number and sat down to wait. Not for long, it turned out so off we went to the designated desk and to our surprise, on the other side of the desk was a really lovely, friendly lady who took the opportunity to have a little English language lesson, and helped me with Spanish, while she helped us through filling out the form, made sure everything that needed to be attached was there etc, etc and then sent us on our way to find a bank so we could put money into a bank account to pay  for the NIE. That done and the form duly stamped we went back to the oficina, handed in the form and that was that, all done and it wasn't even lunch time, english lunchtime that is, not spanish lunch time which tends to be between 2 and 3 o'clock. 

We spent the rest of the day wandering around the city. We walked along beside Zurriola Beach and La Concha Beach after eating some very tasty empanada atún and patata tortilla along with a couple of beers outside a bar looking out across the Bay of Biscay. Oh yes it was lovely.  

there were a lot of hopeful surfers sitting on their boards out in the bay on a rather flat sea, probably be hundreds more in June and July. Then around the old part of the city which was really lovely and very interesting. Full of people, though. I can only imagine that it is jammed with people in the summer time. The bars had lots of very delicious looking pintxos, small portions of finger food, out along the counters, sometimes 2 or 3 tiers of them. We thought that when we came back to San Sebastian we'd wander the bars having pintxos galore and maybe the odd beer or red wine to help us along the way. I've read that most of the people in this part of the city are tourists so I imagine that the prices will hiked up a bit. We wandered our way  to the bus stop and back to Azpeitia and home. no photos because I didn't take my camera, didn't even think about it given the time of the day we set put, it was still dark, along with feeling somewhat anxious about what was ahead of us in getting the NIE.  Next time we get to San Sebastian there'll be heaps of Photos.

It is a really nice feeling knowing that we can hop on a bus and be back in San Sebastian within an hour when ever we want. Nice to go and nice to come back to our little town.