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.