San Sebastian and Barcelona

Uff, this was so long ago I almost forgot I went. I’m not sure if I just couldn’t find it now or really didn’t even mention it anywhere. Thank god for the pictures, looking at them brings back the memories even though it is more than 3 years since I was in San Sebastian, Spain.

In middle of June of 2017 I had another project meeting, this time in San Sebastian, Spain. I was so happy to go there, not only because I have a thing for Spain, but also because Mikel, one of my best friends from Sweden, lives (or rather lived there).

I touched down in Barcelona, from where I thought it would be an interesting experience if I took the train to get from there to San Sebastian, which is on the west coast of Spain, and I was not sorry I took it, the train was fast, clean, nice and the best part was I was able to enjoy great vistas and see a bit of Spanish landscape which you otherwise just fly over.  The ride took over 6 hours if I remember correctly so in the evening I just made it in time to crash at my hotel.

The city of San Sebastian is very nice and quite different compared to the rest of the Spain. It is belongs to Basque country and the natives there consider themselves Basque before Spanish, they have their language, which is actually spoken there on the streets, but everyone also knows Spanish. The city is also quite rich, not sure from what, but just by watching the houses or rather mansions you can tell.

Other than that the city lies inside a gorgeous bay surrounded by small hills. Perfect for watching sunset.

As luck would have it, I arrived as usually during the extreme and unusual heat wave. It was way over 30 C all the time I was there, which is really unusual, so ofcourse no-one has ACs. Luckily the beach was large and nearby so it was not so bad, when I was not at the meetings.

Besides travelling, these project meetings are also great because of the social aspect and dinners that accompany them in the evening. I still haven’t eaten anything like the year before in Haliklidi, Greece. Though the Spanish variant wasn’t bad either. Up for eels anyone?

In the northern (I think) part of Spain the so called tapas are very popular. When you go into a bar or hang out with friends you don’t usually go for a dinner but into a bar, where the whole groups orders various bite sized snacks called tapas. They were very very good and the idea that you can try many different ones alongside nice cold beer, huh, really fantastic.

I said that Mikel lived in San Sebastian, well that was not actually true anymore, he moved to Valencia, where he had work. But luckily he came back just in time for me to meet with him. We spend a wonderful day of chatting, remembering the Sweden and all our friends from there. We even went to a nearby town just across the French border just, so we could send Jean a postcard from France. All in all it was a great day, well worth suffering the heat for the whole week.

I usually I also wrote some postcards to send back home and to co-workers.  I have slowly started abandoning this practice as it is becoming incredibly hard finding post stamps lately. But in San Sebastian I had a different problem, I couldn’t find mail box. After complaining to Mikel about it, he actually drove me to the post office in the end I was not surprised how I couldn’t find it earlier.

After the day I spent with Mikel I had to return back to Slovenia. To go back, instead of going by the train again I took a plane to Barcelona, which gave me whole day to explore the Barcelona.

The city is really amazing, I’m always overwhelmed with such big cities, since in Slovenia we have nothing like that. Since it was summer it was full of people, literary everywhere, on the buses, underground, I don’t think another person would fit on the beach and don’t get me started on the other tourists attractions. The  city is also notorious for the pick-pockets so I was kind of nervous whole time there, but luckily survived without any incidents and managed to see quite a lot of it. Still, I don’t think I would want to go on vacation there.

In the evening I returned back home, back to Slovenia. Huh, again, thank god for the pictures otherwise I would completely forgot about everything. But still I should be more diligent in the future and do this thing more real time like, otherwise what’s the point. 🙂 So now I’m off to the next overdue trip from memory lane.