Language and resistance in the Basque region of Spain

San Sebastian in all its glory.

Last year N. and I spent three weeks in Spain and France, circling the border on trains and sampling food, wine, architecture and sun everywhere we went. It was a gorgeous three weeks, with far too many highlights to mention. It was one gigantic highlight.

After some time in Barcelona, we took the train to San Sebastian, on the Atlantic coast. It's a tourist destination, and the only place we found was a dump of a hostel, but the beach, food and architecture was enough to keep us there for a while.

In the bathroom stall at the public library, I saw this graffiti:

españolitos, go home!

Why I love Vancouver

Yep, it's spring already in this rainy city. Photo by Galit Mastai.

There are so many reasons to love Vancouver, but here are a few of them for those of you that need a pre-Olympics pick-me-up.

The weather

It's already springtime. One year I played tennis outside every week starting the last week of January. It's not uncommon to see our first flowers coming up in the middle of January. Yes, we'll have some shitty weather in February, and then it will rain until the end of April, but right now it's sunny. Here are some photos my friend Galit took recently in our Mt. Pleasant neighbourhood.

The neighbourhoods

Today, to enjoy the sun, we went over to Commercial Drive to grab some coffee and pastries for breakfast. I miss two things about Commercial after moving over to Mt. Pleasant last year: Italian cafes and Chinese grocers. I was once a denizen of Abruzzo, the best place to watch soccer in the city, and it feels very good to go back to order an Americano con leche para ir (the servers are always Spanish-speakers). We got our coffees, and while waiting were treated to a goal by Messi in Barca's match against Getafe.

Abruzzo, Magpie and Highlife, the Saturday trifecta. Sadly Magpie

closed down a couple of years ago.

From Abruzzo we wandered up to Fratelli's, an amazing Italian bakery at 2nd and Commercial. A spinach and feta brioche and chocolate croissant complimented the Italian coffee perfectly. From there we wandered back down the street, stopping at Highlife World Music to buy some records, a new offering in an excellent music store.

The bookstores

I've written before about Pulp Fiction, the best bookstore in the city, and I'd like to mention another. Bookstores, more often than not, accurately reflect the neighbourhood they are situated in. Like Pulp Fiction, like Little Sister's in the West End, the People's Co-op Bookstore on Commercial embodies this principle well. In addition to the standard fare, it also features local and Canadian writers, labour theory and queer fiction, and a great selection of magazines. Unfortunately they were out of Charles Demers' excellent Vancouver Special, a book I highly recommend to anyone with an eye on Vancouver's history and politics.

I tried to pick a good quote, but there are too many.

I almost never leave a bookstore without a book, so I apologize, PCB. I've been on a tear recently, and need to read the ones I already have.

It's home

On my way home from coffee, pastries and shopping, I stopped in at Tino's, my barber shop on Commercial. For $15, and about 12 minutes of my time, he gives me a perfect haircut with only the briefest of instructions. Here is a typical exchange:

Tino: A trim?

Me: Yep. Pretty short.

And that's it. Really. I'll be good for another couple of months, then when my hair's to shaggy again, over to Tino's I'll go.

Then I stopped in at Dollar Grocers for some Avalon milk and to say hi to Quoc (who asked for my autograph... guess I haven't been in in a while).

So, yah, the Olympics may suck for some folks who commute to downtown to work or need to take transit during the gold medal hockey game, and homelessness may still be a huge issue, and the Downtown Eastside may still feel like a warzone on occasion, and there are huge swaths of South Vancouver that deserve zero attention and gang warfare may spill over onto our streets, and it may rain for a month straight at times (for real, it did a few years ago), and there might not be many corporate headquarters and we may all dress in Gore-tex and it might be hard to find a slim-fit dress shirt...

But I sure love Vancouver.

Spanish adventures

Hey all. I may try to write some travel stuff here, depending on how often Nina and I make it to an internet place. So far:

Travel was 24 hours from door to door. Ugh. The Seattle airport is dreadful: crap food, crap appearance. Amsterdam airport, on the other hand, was quite pleasant. I had a beer on the flight from Amsterdam to Barcelona, 10am local time. Free. Nice work, KLM.

Barcelona is hot and sweaty. If you know what I mean, and I think you do. Wine is cheap, food isn´t. Our room is tall and small and has a balcony overlooking a pretty street. There are Bar Cafeterias on almost every corner that sell coffee, booze, pastry and sandwiches.

So far we´ve seen only a few homeless people, and only been asked for money twice. Maybe they all stayed away after being moved out for the Olympics in 1992?

Every building here is interesting. Every single one, for real. And the beach is right downtown. We went swimming in the Mediterranean last night, and it was warm and cleaner than Kits Beach. The benefits of not being a major port, I guess.

My Spanish is so weak, I couldn´t even remember how to say ´bed´.

Until next time.
B