We hope that zombiness isnt a permanent state, but its hard to be sure as we awake from our travel in the late afternoon. As we head off to stock up on some supplies from the supermarket, I remark to Issy that it feels like were in Europe. Hang on, was a left over from Quebec. We are in Europe, which doesnt do too much to ease any lingering concerns we might have about zombiness being permanent.
Travel is great, well except for the part where you actually have to travel. Arriving at and exploring destinations really is great, but with airports the way they are at the moment, hopelessly understaffed, and the staff that are there hopelessly undertrained, the actual bit where you have to:
(1) get there three or four hours before your flights even due to leave (yep, thats the at the moment, even for flights that might only be an hour long),
(2) spend hours standing in queues moving at a glacial pace because the staff dont know what theyre supposed to be doing,
(4) get abused by menacing looking but security dudes because you dont understand whatever it is theyre barking at you in some foreign tongue,
(5) get identified as a potential drug runner by someone whos probably been on the job for about five minutes and as a result get strip (well thats how it felt) searched, and
well that bit just sucks, really sucks. We hit the jackpot yesterday, six out of six in one day. And then of course if you manage to survive all that you get to spend, as always, some long quality hours trying to get a few minutes sleep in seats that werent designed to be slept in. And the food. I think our dog would have struggled with the excuse for breakfast we were served yesterday morning - something vaguely resembling ham and cheese shovelled into a rock hard roll. My jaws still aching. Anyway, thats probably enough ranting for now. Its all just part of the zombiness I keep telling myself.
resting up while I go for a wander. The city of San Sebastian sits around La Concha Bay which seems to be a hot spot for swimming, sailing and sea kayaking. The old town lies at the east end of the bay and is a maze of very cute narrow streets lined with bars and restaurants. Highlights include the ornately carved facade of the 18th century Catholic Church, the Koruko Andre Mariaren Basilika, and Constitution Plaza.
I collect Issy and we get drinks and tapas at a bar down by the waterfront. Its all very pleasant. The menu is in four languages, in order Basque, Spanish, French and English. The translations for the last three look vaguely similar, but the Basque version bears no resemblance to any of the others whatsoever. I think Spanish, French and English are all vaguely related to Latin and came about largely as the result of the Romans pushing their way through these parts. Did the Basques just manage to avoid the Romans somehow, or were they perhaps jetted in from outer space while no one was looking. The latter seems as good an explanation as any given that according to the ever reliable
Wikipedias take on Basque little is known of its origin, and its unrelated to any other language in the world. It seems that whilst about 30% of the locals still speak at least some Basque, virtually everyone also speaks Spanish. The aliens have clearly integrated well.
