San Sebastian (Spain)
24 SEP - 25 SEP
I had spent over a month in Belgrade and my time there had been fantastic. It always amuses me as to how my perception of time shifts in the last few days of a holiday or stay in a specific place. In the beginning I'm able to convince myself that I have all the time in the world and then as the final days close in days and the final hours dwindle away I get to wondering how exactly it was that I let all that precious time slip by. Don't worry, 'we all do it'!, apparently? Well, it's enough to convince myself that I'm not the 'standout' when it comes to this way of thinking.
Heading out of Belgrade on my final morning I encountered a taxi driver who for some reason was so enamoured and enthralled by 19th and 20th century Serbian writers that he thought it would be in his best interest to 'make a list'. By the way, this was no ordinary list, this was a list of such proportions that his cab was filled with foolscape notebooks of names, years and odd notes regarding major works of those that he enjoyed inparticular. Kind of startled and taken off guard at the life work of this man I kind of didn't have it in me to question him on the purpose of the 'end game' of such an endeavour and it wasn't even that I wanted to judge the guy in accordance to what his passion is, but mate,can you at least keep your eyes on the road when you're explaining to me that Laza Kostic was more than just a writer and more than just one of the greatest minds in Serbian literature, and please, stop flicking through your meticulously kept pages with both hands when explaining to me his legal career whilst in front of you all sorts of mad manouveres are occurring. I think what was more troublesome for me was the fact that he also went into some detail regarding a 'new list' that he was working on, one which would comprise his favourite 1111 songs of all time. Why and for whom this list was going created I had no idea but he seemed quite adamant that the golden number was to be 1111,determined also to cull all those songs whose lyrics did not have significant meaning to him, even if their sweet melodies had placed them onto the original first draft. As for the meaning behind 1111, well the best this man could offer was 'well everyone wants to make a list of their top 1000', 'Geez, do they? Alright, please continue', 'Well I then thought why not an additional 100, then why not an additional 11, and then finally why not just add one more?'. Please, if anyone can find any sort of meaning or sense behind that type of deductive reasoning then could you kindly let me know of the key elements than I'm missing!
Hanging out at Belgrade airport was an absolutely abyssmal affair. Not that it's the worst airport in the world, far from it, but because I had such a great experience with my family there it was kind of hard to bid farewell to all of that and know full that my most optimistic projections would have me back in this part of the world in approximately three years.I recall sending JJ a text text telling her that I was feeling somewhat soft and was suffering a bout of homesickness, asking her essentially to send me a reply demanding me to harden up! What I received in turn was 'Oh, princess, if I see you in Australia before the 13th of Oct you'll never hear the end of it'...well I'm kind of paraphrasing there but you get the gist, and what's more, it did the trick! So thanks JJ, I owe you for that kick up the tail! What's more, once Dina rocked up to the gates and it actually dawned on me that South America was now becoming much more of a reality than a cloudy dream, those sentimental feelings subsided and I hardened up, a little. Can't be a princess forever hey!
So there we were, D and I, about to board a couple of flights to Madrid and then take an extended ride to San Sebastian without really knowing a hell of a lot about one another and both wondering how exactly we would fit as travel buddies. In reality we both took relatively large punts based solely on a handful of facts and a bucket load of intuition hoping that the result would work in one anothers favour. That in itself however is another story best to be told in a later write up. In addition to this I did wonder in advance where the 'friends of friends' collision would station itself once we made it to San Sebastian. Cutting a long story short, Jay andI had decided to catch up in San Sebastian this specific weekend in September when we'd both settled on the fact that we'd be in Europe at the same time whilst D had piggy backed onto the plans that I had set in motion several months earlier. Kind of trusting my own instincts and I think, correct me if I'm wrong, being a reasonable judge of character, I assumed that both those personalities would gel in a productive manner albeit with a slightly debaucherousresidual effect of which I was hoping to be the welcoming beneficiary. 'Oh yeah, let the good times roll people!'.
San Sebastian film festival - throwing out the ´Welcome´mat
Flying out of Belgrade to Madrid via Stuggart meant that technically our first port of call on this two month escapade was to be in the Bundes Republik. This German city of disarmingly odd baggage carousels, Tweety bird soundtracks, flag conventions and Movenpick madness assisted in showcasing the talents that both D and I have in 'taking the piss' out of the most inane of situations. It could be considered to be somewhat 'droll' humour certainly and that in itself would not have been something that I would have quite understood until my travelling buddy quickly picked up on my incorrect use of the word. Damn, hate it when I'm wrong! Anyway, several hours later we were in the heart of Madrid for an evening stopover checking out the working girls on the north side of Puerto del Sol plying their trade. Old men and young Latin American girls make up a large part of the human traffic on Calle De la Montera, odd in itself as there is a police station located halfway down the street which operates with the full knowledge that illegal activities are taken place at the top of the street. Do the sums for yourself.
Urumea river - San Sebastian - Spain
The next day it was five hour bus ride out of Madrid and myriad of picturesque landscapes and moody weather pattern shifts that decided to frame themselves in the gallery of my memories. After 52 runs of the shorts for the Anthony Hopkins film Fracture on the 'inflight monitor' we finally entered into San Sebastian-Donastia, a town in the Basque country of Spain situated quite close to the French border on the southern coast of the Bay of Biscay. Taking a short ride from the bus station and heading north alongside the Urumea river for a few kilometres we crossed over onto Avenida Zurriola and parked our bags at the door of the apartment that Jay had lined up in the truest form of the travelling gypsy. Without a way of contacting Jay and with no method of entry into the apartment complex where our Bris-Vegas protagonist was residing I had the briefest insight into our potential future as globetrotting destitutes,being stranded on the streets of a magical town in the midst of the cities greatest yearly event - The San Sebastian film festival. It was only then that I heard it, those fimilar 'Skippyesque' whistles floating gently along the Basque coastal seas breezes which I inherently knew meant that another Australian was in close proximity. How my Kiwi travelling partner picked on that unique sound I'll never know but I'm kind of thankful that she did otherwise I would have been staring at the empty balcony of a second floor apartment situated directly above my head for what may have been hours.
View of Monte Urgull from Zm´s - San Sebastian - Spain
Now I don't know what it is about catching up with a good mate on the otherside of the world but there's always something about being the odd men out in a foreign land that galvanises that nationalistic notion of solidatary and paves the way for all sorts of possibilities. So after doing a quick round of introductions and getting that intial 10-20 min 'feeling out' process out of the way we headed down to Z'ms, a place located right on playa Zurriola which Jay had expertly scouted out during his days of solo reconnonasance. This was to be the testing ground for the three dimanond dynamic that would need to successfully negate its way through several Donastian autumn days. So with cerveza's in hand (please see canes for the Basque equivalent), a magnificent outlook onto the beach and a mischeviously cloudy, tempermental Gipuzkoan sky, we settled into a holiding pattern of good 'ole fashioned banter that would have us on a sustained laughter loop for the entire weekend.
Like true Donostiarris we attacked Parte Vieja that evening,(the Old Part of San Sebastian and the traditional core area of the city), with vigour and intensity. I kind of had it in my head to let Dina know in advance that with Jay on point it was going to be inevitable that a late Friday evening was going to transition into the orange and pink hues of a Saturday morning,but really, why spoil that surprise? As we wondered the streets in search of various forms of liquid poison and the Basque-style tapas called pintxos I tried to absorb as much as possible the unique architecture, cobble stoned streets and general atmosphere of this town. What I did notice once again, much the same other destinations in Spain, is that this place is alive. Conversation, activity and life simply flows out of all cafesand bars. It only takes a moment to be intoxicated by the buzz and activity, to immerse yourself in that welcoming atmosphere before you're fully invested. After those initial few hours in the town had drawn us into its clutches the party hats made their appearance, the eventual 'end game' for the night was now to be anyone's guess.
Bar hopping through an old district filled with tapas bars, restaurants, streets traders and Friday night donostiarri revellers, the 'Jungle Spanish' that both Jay and I had picked up in our time got a bit of a Basque spanking. Not that our attempts at Spanglish weren't amusing to the locals or that they didn't appreciate the attempts, you could tell by the trail of smiles that we left behind us that at least some of what we left behind was amusing...and the more we drank the more our jungle Spanish turned into plain old jungle boogie. It was somewhere around this time that Jay suggested that we set up shop at a placed called the Bee Bop, a relativeley small venue with a wooden dance floor, old school tunes and fun lively atmosphere.
With my man Jay at the BeeBop - San Sebastian - Spain
That my friends was the last we all saw of the small carrying bags of 'sensible' that we had politely carted around for the few hours whilst we were getting to know one another. As we were drawn into the open and inviting Spanish way of doing things the night marched on, leading us further into debt by which recovery would only be allowed with the aid of the surplus hours of sunlight available the next day. From memory it was somewhere between the point where a Colombian guy by the name of Mike had ordered our fifth round of 'tequila surprise' shots and where Jay had commenced his 16th random discussion with a Donnastiarri innocent that we decided we'd walk back to base for a little recovery.
Passing through the early morning drizzle with all the misguided finesse we could muster I realised that San Sebastian was more than likely going to leave us all a little dishevelled come early Monday morning. With Jay making a b-line for his room and crashing out on impact and Dina setting up shop with her sea salt chips on the living room floor I knew than San Sebastian was going to end up having a lot to answer for at the completion of this mission.
Jay and Dina @ the BeeBop
