hi all

sorry we haven´t posted for a while...we haven´t had wireless so haven´t been able to post pics. anyway, we are now in barcelona and have come to the definitive conclusion that it is by far a better city than this country´s capital. There is so much getting built here, we rented bikes and have roamed all over the city, taking in the sites and the food...I have to say, it´s pretty tough to beat the basque region in terms of food, but the markets are great here and the food fresh, and that´s all i really care about.

i also feel very at home here as our hotel is in the Ribera district, which is not only covered in Filipinos...they´re all from Mabini, where my mom grew up. At this very moment I overhear the harsh sounds of Bantangueño Tagalog. My cousin Esther, my cousin in law Victor and their baby also swept through town on their way to Portugal and it was nice to see them. Bill of team ¨Huggy Wall¨ and his awesome girlfriend Liz are also here, so it´s been nice to see alot of friendly faces and not have to speak in broken Spanish to wary locals.

sorry this is short for now...we will post more details soon.

Diana

a message...

from god?

(a story i forgot to tell, a picture i forgot to take) well...just two days ago eric and I were slightly crisped and very hungry, finally pulling ourselves away from the glittering playa del laga (pictures to follow). while loading into the car...a sharp whistling noise...and then a CRASH. We were below a cliff and it took me a second to realize that a large rock had fallen off the face of the cliff and totally smashed the windshield of the car next to us. It was a good thing no one was in the car...but I felt so bad for whoever's car that was...but felt lucky that it wasn't us...a good lesson was learned by us...do not park anywhere near cliffs.

last summer

just in case you forgot what we did last summer, heres a reminder, we rode bikes and ate lobster...

so this here is my first post...i've been lazy...i haven't even informed a critical mass of friends, i wish i cared more, and ate less, asked more questions, made more life changing evaluations...whatever...we are in basque country and it's beautiful here! finally, lush landscapes! Rugged mountains covered in pine falling into sandy beaches...bonita!

In addition to being ridiculously beautiful Basque country is cosmopolitan to boot. Everyone here is so friendly and the food is AMAZING and cheap too! We had these pinchos in Bilbao...whole squid in carved potato cups, baguette slices topped with goat cheese, chorizo crowned with tiny fried quail egg, baby lamb skewers with something like feta and pickled red peppers...delicious! The olives here are younger, less vinagery...more woodsy...yummmm! But my favorite little dish in Spain are tiny fried hot green peppers...

As for the Basque peoples...they are a hearty bunch...of "mysterious origins". Their language is also mysterious...all Ks and Xs. They seem to all ride fancy bikes, and make no hesitation at tackling the most daunting looking climbs. The Basque also like to walk back and forth across their very short and very beautiful beaches. We are currently staying at a hotel in Ondarroa that is run by a group intending to inject Euskadi into everyday life. But so far the only words I've learned are "Presoak Etxera" which I think means something like "Free Basque Country" and "Komunak".
All the graffiti in Basque country seems to be political graffiti. The separatist sentiment is strong here.
Anyway...will write more soon.
sleepy d

more bilbao

more granada pics

super awesome.....

bilbao

we have finally made it to the promised land, or the basque country. we drove to bilbao from madrid, in a fairly quick trip and after some mildly stressful wrong turns and poor navigation in the maze of highways around madrid, we landed directly in front of the guggenheim bilbao. we have a car with manual transmission, we means only eric drives, which also means the car has killed a few times. although i must say it has never been in an embarassing situation. over the days, my driving has improved greatly and yesterday, there were only two kill situations, of which both were unexpected stops.
bilbao is a bustling little city, as the implantation of the guggenheim seems to have induced a second wave of building and architectural consumerism. the amount of high-end design stores was unexpected, we saw balthaup, Vitra and various high-end local versions. our days in bilbao were spend without access to wireless, thus the barrage of posts right now.
immediately upon parking in bilbao, i learned my favorite new euskati word, komunak, or bathroom, as i was in dire need of this komunak...
the nervion river that runs through bilbao is absolutely chock full of fish that swim in schools of 15-20 right on the surface. the water is black with them. it is a little ridiculous. we couldn't figure out what kind of fish they were, but i think they were a form of carp or something of that nature, as no one seemed to be interested in fishing for them.
at the guggenheim there was a show on Russian art from 1000ad to the present. an absurd timeline, but mildly interesting nonetheless. interesting to note was the huge section that they devoted to social realism, which was excellent, you don't get to see many of these works on display, but it felt that something was amiss, as the lack of transition between the constructivist period and "state mandated" social realism was conspicuous. perhaps it is because these works have been given all the play in art history, but if you are going to mount a show on art in russia, some better explanation of the futurist and constructivist period should be included. absent were el lizzitsky and much of kandinsky, amongst others. but what is to be expected from the guggenheim?
the serra pieces were great, as we figured out that they are, in essence, tunnels for amplifying and conducting sound. something much more fun than expecting to experience the sublime in the maze of ellipses.

summer reading

thus far...
Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree- Tariq Ali
Exercises in Style- Raymond Queneau
Men in Prison- Victor Serge
The Lost Steps- Alejo Carpentier
The Harp and the Shadow- Alejo Carpentier
The Chase- Alejo Carpentier
Explosion in a Cathedral- Alejo Carpentier
Genesis- Eduardo Galeano
Faces and Masks- Eduardo Galeano
Centry of the Wind- Eduardo Galeano
Hopscotch- Julio Cortazar
Obscene Bird of Night- Jose Donoso
Collected Marti- Jose Marti
Writings of Bolivar- Simon Bolivar
On Materialism- Sebastiano Timpanaro

all highly recommended

madrid

as we walked around the city center of madrid, increasingly parched and sick of the sun, we pondered what the hell made philip II make madrid the center of his empire, save for the convient geographical location in the center of spain. indeed madrid is not a terrible city and had we known someone there and had more interesting things to do, it would have been different, but as it stands our experience of madrid has been a touch unsatisfying.
but, in addition to this, we have been experiencing mild existential drama concerning what it is that one does while traveling. i.e. do you race about all day in the draining sun desparately attempting to see everything you can in the short amount of time you are given, only to return home and have someone tell you that "you really should have seen this while you were there." or do you have a restricted itinerary full of empty time to read, daydream, cultivate anxiety about the future, sleep, dream up possible experiences, etc. work for school and future interviews seems to be more productive time spent than waiting in lines to see warehouses of art, yet the desire to actually see those goyas and bosch paintings is still strong. its funny, but i still seem to learn more about europe from an alejo carpentier novel than from actually being here and yet it is the ease of reference, culled from the actual experience that marks carpentier's novels so strongly. walking through the maze of glassy eyed tourists at the prado, or the louvre really makes you want to claim some sort of priority, because "i've studied these things, these artifacts of culture" but in reality, you are just as much of the horde. yet, is this something to be detested? i'm not sure. i waver constantly between a philistine notion that europe is degraded and my experience cheapened and the dull realization that this is the world, how it is, in other words.

granada

we decided to leave madrid a little early and go visit the alhambra in granada, which turned out to be a touch disappointing, as we missed the best part of alhambra, due to a misunderstanding, in which you are only given a half-hour window to enter the palacio navarres, after which you can stay as along as you like. strange logic. the palacio navarres has all the good stuff at alhambra, such as the court of lions, the bathhouses, and other various attractions that one shouldn't miss when visiting alhambra. but miss them we did and seeing that it would have cost another 20 euros to visit them, we gave a rude gesture of the hand to alhambra, got some ice cream and walked back to our hostel.
granada is a beautiful place, but bursting at the seams with tourists. we nearly heard more english than spanish there, of which we were obviously another case. unexpectedly, granada also seems to be a party city, as we ran into more young people spilling out of clubs while walking to catch our train at 7am. the noise from this, in addition to the heat allowed us to sleep about 3 hours a night. i see more and more why the spainards take siesta, as they don't seem to sleep at night.
a little disappointed with granada, we went back to madrid to pick up our rental car and head north to basque country, which we were eagerly anticipating.

uhhhh

for those interested, we do have a flickr account, if you click on any of the empty boxes below, it will take you to the account, but for now, its located at http://www.flickr.com/photos/71657421@N00/ or at least i think that will take you there. or click on those empty boxes above the london post... we will try and figure out this link situation soon, but seeing as internet time is limited, we don't have all day to figure this shit out. plus, we're laaazy. but on the upside, we are in madrid, where that is socially acceptable, along with long afternoon naps, which i thought would rule, but its really just because you can't do anything else seeing that it is scorchingly hot.
yesterday we waded through the crowds at the prado to see the not-quite-justified-because-the-line-was-so-f'ing-long picasso exhibition and all the Goya, Velaquez, El Bosco, Breughel, and lots of other godly and kingly painting. times were dark in those days, as evidenced by Goya's Saturn Eating his Children, which is oddly, still disturbing. Maybe its all the darkness that i associate with the brutal spanish christian empire, the inquisition, the war against the moors, and the institution of slavery and all that, but whatever the case, all that technique is colored with the wrath of an angry god.
other than that, we've been racing around looking for modern architecture from the fascist era, which is quite fascinating, seeing as most all of the buildings were built without "modern" elements such as steel and iron and required about twice the labor power to build. We are staying right next to Francisco Cabrero's Obra Sindicale, which is presently one of diana's favorite buildings. yesterday we visited the torres blancas and some old spanish witch yelled at us for taking photos in the lobby, a weird, weird building, somewhere between concrete surrealism and frank lloyd wright, made entirely of concrete.
its the 25th anniversery of guernica being in spain and it is on prominent display at the reina sofia, which also houses jean nouvel's somewhat garrish extension. the library is alright, but they don't let you study there. they will only let you bring in a notebook and you can only read books from that library. frustrating, but an alright space nonetheless.

more photos

london

we were in london for a few days staying with a friend of diana's from school, now working in zaha hadid's weirdly sprawling complex that used to be a victorian school or something to that effect... when we arrived in london, we had no way to contact the people we were staying with (johnny, jolanta, melodie, thanks!) and ended up storing our luggage at king's cross and wandering about london. we bought a cheap map of london while buying tickets for the tube which had some landmarks on it, one of them being the marx memorial library (karl, not groucho), so we immediately set out to find this bastion of communist critique. after about 45 minutes of pointless searching, we were about to give up when i walked down a street and ran into zaha hadid's office! melodie was there, we got keys to the apt and were vagrants no more.
the rest of london was spent riding bikes, looking for bookstores, fighting jetlag, seeing the tate, trying to go to a marxism 2006 conference that cost 16 pounds a day! (needless to say, we left), looking at the not-open serpentine pavilion and spying on Rem (we saw him hurrying in to the swanky invite only opening), and sleeping in various parks, squares and tube stations. sweet. on to madrid......