Oh, the places you'll go...

...on public transporation. This is a bit late, considering I'm already home, but so exciting things happened at the end of my trip that I wanted to add. I started this in Spain and now I'm finally finishing it up.

Here is a lovely shot of my makeshift workstation. This is where you can find me whenever it's rainy. I don't have a desk in my room so I bought i TV dinner table from a china bazaar. It looks a bit wierd, but it gets the job done.

Now that the weather is so nice, it's a bit hard to stay in the room and capture footage. I try to save it for rainy days so I can go and film and explore when it's sunny. We finally got some beautiful weather so I got some great footage of the mountains and the ocean. Tomorrow, if the weather's good, I'm going to the other side of the city to try my luck at filming on another Mount that I haven't explored yet.

I just recently discovered the wonderous Cercanias. It's somewhere between the train and the metro. You buy tickets like you would a metro, but it runs on the train lines. It only goes to towns around San Sebastian, but it's perfect for my purposes. You can buy train tickets to some towns that cost 12 euros  oneway and you can buy Cercanias tickets to the same place for 3 euros roundtrip. I have now used Cercanias 4 times in the last week and I'm hoping to have a few more goes before my trips done. 

Since I've found Cercanias, I've been traveling out of the city quite often. I found out about an open air market in a nearby town that has been going on once a week since the 12th century. The other day I took the train over to check it out. I got there so early (7:30am) that the people were still setting up. I stopped in a bakery to get some bread and it was so hot it steamed when I ripped it. I am telling you there is no better breakfast than a fresh hot baguette. Whoever came up with that sliced bread saying was crazy.

Not only is the market a very old tradition, it is still important to this day. The prices in the market in Ordizia set the prices for the rest of the country. I don't know exactly how it works, though. I was kind of expecting to see a bunch of old farmers coming together to discuss the supply and demand of the market, but I saw no such thing. What I did see was a rather small market under a grand, Romanesque roof with huge pillars. I filmed a lot and then got to try a lot of the food. I am a big fan of the Basque cheese.
(this photo is from Mt. Igeldo looking down on San Sebastian)

I also got to visit Salamanca, where I studied abroad. My foreign mentor, Javier, was my cinema professor when I studied in Salamanca. He and his girlfriend, who is from San Sebastian, came here for a few days to visit their family. I got to hitch a ride with them to Salamanca when they went home. I was concerned I would get carsick on the ride (5-6 hours long), but I had no problem. We drove through the tall mountains of Basque country. They are really distinct from the ones in NH in that they have much steeper slopes and many precarious pastures scattered around them. The mountains also stop quite abruptly on the edge of the opens plains of the center of Spain. You don't see such expansive land in NH. It was really beautiful.

In Salamanca I got to hit up all my favorite spots. I went to my favorite cafe for chocolate con churros and walked all around the city remembering everything I did last time I was there. I instantly felt like I was back at home. When I went out at night I even ran into 3 of my friends from Salamanca at one bar! How crazy is that?

I really had a blast walking down memory lane in Salamanca, but I also had a great opportunity to sit down with Javier and talk about my documentary. We looked at a lot of my footage and discussed possible storylines. I still think there are a few perspectives that I haven't been able to get in my documentary, but I'm pretty excited about what I have. Javier liked the footage and helped me brainstorm a few different ways to present it. Hopefully I can get some of the other perspectives within the next week. 

After Salamanca I've been running around all over the place. There was a Basque fiesta in town that lasted a few days. It was for Saint Carmen, who I'm assuming is the patron saint of crabs because the entire fiesta was covered with crab drawings. I got to film children performing at the fiesta and people cooking sardines, but no one would let me interview them. I asked a few people and they either pretended not to understand me or would talk to me, but not in front of a camera. It's too bad because the people I talked to were much more pro-independence. At all of the fiestas there are tons of independence posters and other Basque political posters. At fiesta de Carmen the people I talked to pointed them out and explained that even though this is a celebration, they need to remember that they are still fighting. Hopefully I can find someone who is willing to say that to a camera.

In the meantime, I'm still getting other great material. I read about this small fishing village, Pasaia, 10 minutes from San Sebastian and on the Cercanias line. The other day I went there to check it out. The train dropped me off right in a huge industrial port. It was really ugly. I tried looking for an easy way to get to the other side of the port and soon realized that I would have to walk all the way across town lugging my camera equipment. When I got there I realized that the place I wanted to get to was on the other side of port. I was about to call it quits and go home when I realized that there was a little water taxi that takes you from my side of the port to the pretty little town that I wanted to explore. I'm so glad that I made it there. The old, beautiful part of Pasaia is only a few streets and it is secluded from the rest of the city. It's right on the water and has a path that weaves along the edge of the mountains to the ocean. It's has much more Euskera than San Sebastian. Everyone in the streets speaks Euskera. It was really cool to see that 10 minutes away from San Sebastian these people are very different from their urban neighbors.
Another adventure I've had recently was a bike trip through the Valley of Leizaran. It used to be a train track, but they converted it to a dirt road for pedestrians. I rented a bike for the day, put the camera on my back and took the train to the town of Andoain. The only thing I knew was that I was looking for this valley, but there were no directions at the train station. I had to ask a lot of people to get directions, but I was amazed at how helpful they all were. Spaniards can often look intimidating because it is not customary for them to acknowledge or smile at strangers on the street. Yet when I asked them for help, they were more than willing. People in stores will even come outside so they can point out things to you to make sure you understand.
One of the interviews I did a while back was with Xabier Mendiguren, the president of a big network of organizations that promote Euskera in all parts of Basque Country. He suggested I visit the town where he was born (in a house from the 16th century) and meet his brother, Iñaki. I was supposed to take a train last weekend, but when I spoke with Iñaki he suggested I come another day when he could pick me up from the train station because his town is very rural and has no public transportation. He called me 2 days later to tell me what train to take and where he would pick me up. I thought he would just drop me off at the house which now has a museum built next to it. Instead he took the time to tour me through the whole museum. He explained the history of how the Basque houses in the region used to be built around GIANT cider mills. The  size of the cider mills determined the size of the house because the mill was the frame of the house. That's how big they were. Iñaki also showed me that most houses were expanded on 3 sides to provide space for drying Indian Corn which became popular after Columbus returned from the Americas. After going through the museum he took me to the house and explained what it was like when he lived there and what everything was for. He told me that the animals were treated like family and lived in the house on the same floor as the family. There were even windows into the kitchen so the cows could look in on the family from their stalls.

After the house we went to Iñaki's current house which was right on top of the same hill. His brother lives on the bottom of the house, his old house is in the middle, him mother and sister live in the next house and he lives on the top. His house has a breathtaking 360 degree view of all the Basque farms and mountains in the area. I spent a long time taking with Iñaki and his wife, Sarah, from England. I got them do let me interview them together. I told them they could do it in whatever language they wanted and they chose to do the whole interview in English! I forgot my list of questions, but I had done enough interviews that I felt comfortable without them. I knew I didn't have many interviews left so I asked them about politics, conflict and ETA as well as questions about their identity. It was a different perspective because Iñaki was born Basque and spoke it as his first language, but Sarah learned Euskera and became Basque. They were very open with me and gave me great information for the film.

After the interview they invited me to stay for dinner. We sat out on their porch watching the sunset, drinking wine and eating salad and bread--a very traditional small dinner. We talked about Basque culture, American politics, why Americans are fat and whether civilians should have guns. They were so interested in America and so eager to share their culture with me. I ended up leaving their house around 10 at night. I had expected them to take a hour out of their day to let me interview them and they took off half a day to show me around and entertain me.  I felt blessed by their incredible hospitality.
A few days after that interview I headed back to the US. I did some last minute filming of sunsets and sunrises, as well as filming graffiti and different attractions in the city. I have a lot of material to put in the interview, but I don't think I was able to get all perspectives on the issue. Yet the perspective I got is one that is not often represented in the media. The media focus on extreme nationalism and terrorism, but I spoke with a lot of people who feel strongly about their culture, but don't have impossible goals. They want to protect their language and culture. They don't want to feel ostracized in their own region. I am excited to form these opinions into a documentary. I will keep you updated on when the documentary will be finished and how you can see it.

Agur!