Otxandia to Bilbao
September 10th 1995
The next morning, i woke up fairly early, but i didn't feel like getting up straight away. I felt like shit really, after a stuffy night in a very dusty room. I'd been really tired the night before and gone to bed a lot earlier than the others, who'd sat around outside in the light of the full moon till late. None of them had slept well at all, and Mamen had been awake half the night coughing, but i hadn't slept too badly really, although it didn't make me feel any better in the morning. I didn't feel very sociable and didn't really want to see or talk to anyone. So i kept my eyes closed and didn't show any signs of being awake until everyone else had got up and gone downstairs.
Once i was on my own i felt a lot better - i think i was getting a bit "peopled out" from not having had much space to myself for a while. I lay there and contemplated.... well.... i don't know what i did contemplate, space probably!
After a while, i heard a different voice downstairs. It sounded like an old man. I'd been thinking about getting up, but that put me off a bit, as i'd just about psyched myself up to face the rest of the crew, but a stranger at that time on a morning like that seemed a bit too much like brain damage to me. However, i eventually managed to get up and stumble downstairs - and fairly quickly out of the door.
I walked around the house, across the grass of the orchard which surrounded it and then crossed the field next to that. It was nice to feel the ground and the grass under my bare feet and i slowly began to feel better than i had when i'd woken up. I stood for a while in the furthest corner of the field, as far away from the house - and people - as i could get. It was a weird little corner, there was something about it which had drawn me over to that place. I looked around at the trees and the plants growing around me and i wished i was back at Wyndham a bit. There was some yarrow growing amongst the grass near my feet and i bent down and picked a few leaves and ate them. It's quite bitter, yarrow, but it's got a pleasant taste to it at the same time. You can use it instead of hops, for making beer, apparently, and it's a good kidney tonic too. Perhaps that was what i needed that morning, a kidney tonic, because i certainly felt a lot better and less antisocial when i went back into the house.
I never did work out exactly what was the story with that house, but i don't think we were supposed to be there. The old man lived nearby and had spotted our cars and come to investigate. I don't know what his connection with the place was, but he seemed to be looking after it for whoever owned it. He was sort of pottering around and vaguely fixing this and that, although he seemed to be doing it more out of the need to be doing something, than because the things needed doing.
I went outside for a while and Konor came out with me. He was showing me some cats and chatting about something when the old man came along. Konor started talking to him about the cats and the old man said there were lots of cats living there, all colours, black, white and so on.
"There's no white one any more!" Konor said, seriously.
"Oh yes," the old man said, "There's a little white one around here somewhere."
"No!" Konor repeated, concerned about being misunderstood, "It's dead. The dog killed it last night!"
I thought this was my cue to wander casually away. I didn't want to get involved in any discussion with the old man about whether or not Mamen's dog had ripped the cat's throat out or not. I didn't know whose cat it was and i didn't want to find out. I wasn't in the mood for talking about anything really, and certainly not in the mood for discussing something like that with someone who i didn't know quite how he fitted into this increasingly weird situation.
Anyway, we packed up and went quite quickly. We had a coffee and sat around in the Herriko for quite a while and then said our goodbyes and me, Dione, Begoña and Konor drove back to Bilbao.
- - -
I spent a week and a half in Bilbao in total and had a great time. It was really nice staying with Begoña, Konor and Txamen. I got on really well with Konor and spent quite a lot of time playing with him. Like most european kids around the world nowadays, he had stacks of toys, mostly plastic junk, of course.
I really enjoyed Bilbao. I'd never spent much time there before, but i found it to be one of the most sociable and enjoyable periods i'd spent on this whole journey. I hadn't been having much of a social life in England, except in small bursts. This was partly because i didn't know many people in Maldon any more and partly because i didn't want to get any more attached to that country than i had to. If i made lots of new friends and got to know and like a lot of people it would only make it harder to leave again and to live again on the other side of the world. This wasn't really a conscious thing, i don't think, more of an unconscious defence mechanism probably.
I spent so much time wandering and wanting to spend time with people who i was close to, but were so far away, that i really didn't need any more. When new people came along and i got to know them by chance, i didn't behave any different to the way i always did. But as for going out and looking for a social life under those transient circumstances, i found that really hard. It was weird really, because i did need friends around me, people i could talk freely and openly with and share thoughts and feelings with them. And anyway, i always enjoyed any opportunity to crap on endlessly about nothing in particular to anyone who'd listen!
The other possible explanation for this could be that i didn't need to go out to communicate now. I could do it sitting at home with my computer. I sent and received dozens of emails every day to and from all round the world. Some of them were from people i knew in real life - friends in Australia, mainly. Others were from people i'd only got to know through the internet. It was a strange little world and although i used it a lot and felt comfortable doing it, i didn't really like the effect it had on my life over the period i'd been in Europe. Before, i'd used to do that sort of thing a lot, when i was in certain places. Melbourne, Brisbane or Sydney, where there were computers available to work on. But whenever i was anywhere else, which was most of the time, i hadn't had access to computers and never felt the lack of them.
Another reason for my continued relative social isolation could have been that i'd got so used to not being around many friends over the five months previous to arriving in England, that i'd lost some of the need for it. Or, more likely, i'd forgotten how much i needed it and how to go about finding company. Apart from Nicki, the only people i'd seen that i knew beforehand were Barny, in Darwin, and Gretchen in Taxco. And those had only been for short periods. In Mexico, particularly, there were times when i suffered from severe loneliness. In Puerto Escondido, for instance, i felt it strongly. That was probably made a large contribution to my decision to go to Britain soon after.
Whatever it was, my stay in Bilbao was a welcome break from the long period of virtual solitary confinement. As well as catching up with quite a few old friends, I met a lot of really good people, people i got on well with and liked a lot.
They were all regulars at the "Pirata" bar, which wasn't far away from Begoñas place. It was run by a bunch of anarchists and was a good place to spend a bit of time drinking and chatting. The two people who worked behind the bar most of the time, Luisme and Elasne, who ran the place, were friendly and i got to know them quite well. Other regulars were Jon and Ken, a woman known as Gonzo, Mendi (who was the only other person, apart from me, who i saw wearing shorts in Bilbao!), Begoña, Dione, Txamen and others.
I had quite a few late nights, getting to bed at three or four in the morning, after being out on the piss for quite a few hours. The custom in Basque Country is to move around from bar to bar all night, in a group. They get restless if they stay in one bar too long and have to move on. It's a great way of passing the evening. You inevitably end up at the same places, but do an unorganised tour of all the group's usual spots during the evening.
Often we'd be in the Pirata at midnight, when it closed. Then Luisme or Elasne would join us in our wandering and we'd head off to the K2, which was next door to the Jaunak, or somewhere else in the Casco Viejo.
I met up with Concha one afternoon. She was another old friend from London, but wasn't part of the group that Begoña hung around with. Later that evening we ended up doing a tour or some bars in the Casco Viejo, but they were all different ones to the normal territory i'd got used to.
All the bars we regularly went to were run by people with much more advanced political and cultural ideas than you normally get in Britain or Australia. They were all decorated in their own individual styles, to cater for the sort of people i'm used to spending my time with. Every bar we went to had a sign on the wall behind the bar saying:
En este local no se aceptan comportarmientos homofóbicos. Por ello invitamos a las lesbianas y los gays a comportarse con entera libertad.
Which was repeated in the basque language, Euskera:
Toki honetan ez dugu portaera homofobikorik onartzen. Beraz, askatasun osoz lhardutera deitzen ditugu gay eta lesbiana.
It means "Homophobic behaviour is not accepted in this place. Therefore we invite lebians and gays to behave with complete freedom".
Another universal sight behind the bar in every place was an asphalt brick with a handle on top, and yellow writing on the side, saying asfaltoan ere bai and, in smaller white letters below, bilbo euskalduntzen. This puzzled me for quite a while, until i got someone to explain it to me. "asfaltoan ere bai" means "it's in the asphalt too". Which apparently means that basque country isn't just the fields and forests, "it's in the asphalt too". In other words, it's not just a rural thing, it's the cities and towns as well. I'm not exactly sure of the context this fits into, but i more or less understood its meaning.
The afternoon meal was a bit of a ritual in Bilbao. Everyone had something organized every day for eating at such and such a place, or so-and-so's house. I was invited to eat at a few different places during my stay there. I could have had my afternoon meal at a different place every day if i'd wanted to. But being a vegan, i was a bit conscious of the difficulties that having me as a dinner guest caused and i cooked at home two or three times. I tried to cook for other people, but it never actually happened. I'm not sure why. A few times, too, we ate in restaurants. You could still get a decent three course meal with wine in Bilbao without having to take out a bank loan.