Through Bilbao, and back to BCN

On Wednesday we got to sleep in again, then met with city officials for a few more hours.  Sarah and I had lunch and plotted our next move.  There is another slow city—Mungia—in the Basque country, but the contact person there had not responded to our calls and emails.  Mungia is only a few kilometers from Bilbao, so we decided to head in that direction and have a sniff around ourselves.  The drive, in the light of day, was gorgeous—green and winding.

Mungia is quite a bit bigger than Lekeitio.  We found our way to the historic center, parked, and walked around a bit.  Mungia is not as outwardly charming as one might expect, causing us to ask—Why is Mungia one of six slow cities and not, say Cadaques?  We are both curious about why a particular city wants the slow city designation, and then how the philosophy of the slow city lands in that place.  On the one hand, I’m relieved that Mungia, from the outside, seems quite average.  I’ve been a bit worried that we would find only overly precious, pretty towns in our work.  Perhaps if we had been able to penetrate the surface and talk to people, we would have discovered Mungia’s inner beauty.

But we didn’t, and it was 5:30.  We had a 9:30 flight, so we decided to drive to Bilbao and check out the Guggenheim.  I had been itching to go but the work came first, and Sarah had already been there so I didn’t want to push my agenda.  But there we were with a couple of hours on our hands, within spitting distance.

Even with all of the hype and buildup, the museum impresses.  The building itself is gorgeous and it relates fabulously to its site on the water.  We needed a snack, which we got at the museum café, and then had only an hour or so to see what we could see.  The Richard Serra installation on the ground floor completely drew me in, and took a bit of time to explore.  And then we checked out a temporary exhibition called The Luminous Interval—contemporary art from a the collection of D. Daskalopoulos.  Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith, Chris Ofili—it worked, some of it made me feel calm, some restless, some provoked.  I’m glad I went.

And then it was off to the airport and back to Barcelona, where I met my friend Elke—my fabulous friend Elke, who is visiting from Atlanta—at the airport.  After a morning of work and physical therapy today—my knee is feeling worse, not better—we had a great lunch in the light filled space of Cuines Santa Caterina and then soaked at the Turkish baths for a couple of hours.  We stopped by Formatgerie La Seu for a cheese snack from Catherine the Scottish Cheese Goddess.  She had read my blog post in which I had called her “a bit prickly” but seemed to embrace the label and not hold it against me.  And now Alec is making some sort of Spanish stew that features the enormous, gorgeous cabbage he and Milo bought me for Mother’s Day.

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Ratoncito Perez

In Spain, the tooth fairy takes the form of a small mouse—Ratoncito Perez—who comes at night to take the lost tooth from under the child’s pillow and replace it with some money or a small gift.  No one knows why it’s a mouse, or why it’s named Perez, but there you have it.  I am no fan of rodents, so the idea of a mouse—even an imaginary one—crawling into my child’s bed to take her lost tooth gives me the heebie-jeebies.  We have stuck with the American tooth fairy this year.

C.C. has lost so many teeth this year that her piggy bank is heavy with euros.  But earlier this week we found ourselves in a fix.  One day, the tooth was loose, and the next day it was simply gone.  C.C.’s theory is that she swallowed it while eating a pear.

With no tooth to put under the pillow, C.C. put her persuasive writing skills to work and wrote the following note:

“Dear Tooth Fairy:

I lost a tooth, but I swallowed it.  Honest, look in my mouth.  I’ll keep it open.

Love,

C.C.

ROAR”

See photo below for the original, as my transcription does not do it justice.

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Lekeitio

Yesterday I dropped the kids at school, scooted home for my Spanish lesson, went to physical therapy, spent a few hours in my office, picked up the kids, did homework, had dinner, and then caught a cab to the airport, where I met my collaborator, Sarah, to catch the last flight to Bilbao.  It was quite a day.  The flight was delayed (traffic over Pamplona), and by the time we got in and picked up our rental car it was heading toward midnight.  After making  a couple of wrong turns and driving 60 kilometers on a very windy road, we pulled in to our hotel parking lot after 1 am.  I was pooped. 

Getting off of the elevator, I found myself face to face with a lifesize mannequin in complete Basque country regalia.  A tad creepy for that time of night.  I opened the door to a very simple room, slightly worn around the edges.  But I quickly discovered that the windows open, and when I opened them I could see—and hear—the sea.  There is nothing like going to sleep listening to the sound of the sea.  And so I did, and I slept until 9:30 this morning.  Fortunately we had no early morning appointments.

Sarah and I have come to Lekeitio as the first stop on our Spanish Slow Cities research tour.  There are six slow cities in Spain and we intend to visit as many as we can before both of us head back home—Sarah to the UK and me to New York City. 

The Slow City movement was established in Italy in 1999 as a reaction to the perceived problems associated with an increasingly globalized economy fueled by growing levels of material consumption, and leading to unsustainable, placeless communities. The Slow City movement remains primarily a European phenomenon, though the number of Slow Cities has expanded over the past decade and now includes 135 small cities (Slow Cities must have fewer than 50,000 residents) in 22 countries. In the US, three communities in Northern California (Fairfax, Sebastopol, and Sonoma) have joined Slow City.

Cities that join Slow City must adopt the Slow City charter, which contains 54 policies, programs and technologies designed to promote local heritage, preserve the environment, and increase overall quality of life. Slow City shares the goals of the Slow Food movement from which it emerged: the right to (and value of) pleasure and conviviality, the importance of tradition, concern for preserving and celebrating local identity, and the need to maintain biodiversity, ecological integrity, and social equity. These goals are achieved through the adoption of wide ranging municipal policies, from measures to protect artisanal craft producers to programs to develop culinary knowledge among school children.

We spent our day today with Lekeitio’s mayor and the two-person economic development department.  Lekeitio’s economy is based on fishing and tourism and, although there appear to be no official statistics, it seems quite obvious that the balance has shifted from the former to the latter over the past few decades.  Home to only 7,000 inhabitants, Lekeitio is a very small town arranged mostly around a cove that harbors a small fleet of fishing boats and sailboats.  When I woke up this morning and raised the shades, locals were beginning to gather on the beach—a few young people, grandparents with their grandbabies.  A couple of people swam, although the air did not feel warm enough to entice me in.

We started our day of fieldwork over coffee with the economic development director, and another woman who works for the town and has lived in Lekeitio her whole life.  Apparently, this is quite common.  As the deputy ED staffer later told us, “People are born here, they live their lives here, and they die here.  We don’t have museums, and the cinema is only open on the weekend, but it’s the quality of life that keeps people here.”  Indeed, it seems as if there is only minimal outmigration of the young people.  By the time it was all over, we had walked the two historic centers—the neighborhood where fishermen originally lived and the neighborhood where artisans originally lived, had a long and filling lunch, and toured the new attraction that features the old lighthouse—complete with 4D theater simulating a boat in a storm.  All in Spanish.  Sarah is quite fluent, but 7 hours of Spanish thinking speaking, and taking notes taxes me.

As we wandered back, the plazas began to fill with children kicking soccer balls, parents chatting, older people taking it all in from the benches.  I retreated to the room for an hour to do some yoga, and then Sarah and I met for pintxos (Basque country tapas), local wine called txakoli.  It stayed light very late, and we just sat out on the harbor watching the day end as the lights went on in the homes around us.

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Mother's Day

While I was out at the movies yesterday afternoon, Alec and Milo went to a local garden center to buy some flowers for me, which they successfully hid until this morning. Apparently, some other shoppers overheard them talking and became concerned.  A couple approached them and said, “Sir, I’m not sure if you realized it, but Mother’s Day was two weeks ago.”  And so it was, in Spain.  But we elected to celebrate these particular holidays (mother’s and father’s day) on their American dates.  The biggest advantage, apart from the fact that we’ve both had extra time to prepare?  You could walk into any restaurant today without a reservation.

I had made plans with a friend, before I realized it was Mother’s Day, for our families to have brunch together today.  Karen knew about the holiday, and suggested we meet at a local restaurant.  So I slept until 9:30, was feted with flowers and gifts and homemade cards, and then I went to the gym.  Not only did I get a good workout in, but I got out of the whole come-on-hurry-up-we’re-gonna-be-late routine.  I arrived at the restaurant first, right on time, and had a moment to sip a decaf café con leche before anyone else arrived.  The food was good, the children behaved and, although the forecast promised rain, not a cloud appeared in the sky.  The forecast is often wrong in Barcelona, and that usually means that if they say it might rain, or will rain, it doesn’t.  I’m not complaining.

We walked to the park, got some gelato, and spent a restful hour or so throwing the football with Milo and watching the other kids catch snails and play in the mud.

After we got home, we engaged in a half hour, all-family cleanup session—some of us more enthusiastically than others—and then I made cookies with the kids, which they decorated with the dinosaur sprinkles Alec brought back from Montreal.  We called our mothers, and Blanca, read stories, fed the kids, put them to bed.  And now my husband is cooking me dinner.  All in all, life is good.

Photos of the Day