Aroldo, Deborah, Flo and I went into the city via Euskotren—a company that runs very small trains that connect cities and towns in the Basque region. It takes less than ten minutes from Lasarte-Oria to get to San Sebastian and costs 1.40 Euro. The train is super clean, on the street level and never crowded. There are always open seats, never any shoving or pushing and no bad odors. Euskotren has the MTA beat. Hands down.
I am so overcome by San Sebastian. It is honestly one of the most beautiful cities I have ever visited. The architecture, beach and tiny streets remind me of Paris, Nice and Aix. It is small and easily navigated, charming and romantic. I am frightened by how easily I’ve fallen for it.
The Basque region, specifically San Sebastian and its outer lying towns, is known for having the best tapas in all of Spain. (The region itself has more Michelin stars per capita—a Michelin-starred cathedral of haute cuisine is how I’ve heard it referred to—than any other place in the world.) It is a worldwide gastronomic capital—people come here to eat.
In the few days I have spent bopping in and out of San Sebastian I’ve been dying to pop into a tapas bar. There are hundreds in the city. For the most part, they are tiny, lively and not necessarily aesthetically pleasing. They all have one long bar counter with plates of various tapas (pintxos or peen-chos in Basque). Some places have seating up at the bar, others have no seating whatsoever, and some have small tables alongside the bar. Regardless, they always seemed to be filled with old Spanish men chatting endlessly with each other. They remind me of the men in France playing petanque/boules in the parks.
We went into a tapas restaurant that had small tables alongside the bar. The eating process is similar to making your way through a buffet. Once the “tapastender” as I’ll call him, gave us each a plate, we were free to pick out whatever tapas suited us. We only had to keep track of how many we ate so that he could charge us accordingly.
I had a pickled olive stuffed with a small green pepper (RIDICULOUSLY good) with a chunk of tuna topped with minced onions and green peppers, a fried tostada with sautéed cod, crispy shallots and red peppers, a slice of baguette with thick layers of goat cheese, and sundried tomato, capped by a caramelized cippolini onion and a cherry tomato, tender calamari pieces in squid ink, a small tart shell filled with mixed mushrooms, and a a red pepper and eggplant relish topped with one single anchovy on top of baguette. It was crazy. I was in heaven. I can’t wait to go back for more.
It was also one of the first days I’ve had a proper lunch with my flatmates. Arolodo is one of my favorites. He is super tall, very lanky and from the south of Spain, so he sounds like he has a permanent lisp. The first night in the flat, he spent two hours talking to me—he was also responsible for driving me earlier that afternoon to the shopping mall to get a pillow. I know now that he was trying to make me feel comfortable. He said I looked terrified.
A number of years ago, Aroldo picked up and moved from the south of Spain to England for five years. He barely spoke English when he decided to go. He lived in different parts of the country, learning English and working his way through restaurant kitchens (he had never worked in a restaurant previously), and decided, during this time, to pursue a career in the industry. Aside from an uncle who is a pastry instructor at a highly reputable culinary school in Spain, no one in his family cooks. His mother is a kindergarten teacher and his father’s family owns a small business that makes foot models for shoemakers.
He is fluent in English now and uses words like lovely, stunning (everything is stunning, like the cucumber ice cream they made in pastry last week) and aunty, which make me laugh (he tried to tell me something was super cheap today and instead said the cheapest cheaps). He told me that his first year in England was one of the most isolating and lonely years of his life due to the fact that he couldn’t speak English. He was stunned by peoples’ impatience with him and the way they made him feel stupid. Consequently, he said, he became much more sensitive to people, their backgrounds and situations more so than he ever had before. I think I am partial to Aroldo because right off the bat he told me that I could always ask him to translate and that it would never be a bother. He is enormously patient with me.
One thing that makes me sad about this experience is how the language barrier prevents me from being able to get to know people that do not speak English. I am doing my very best to learn Spanish (I ask Flo every other minute what this is, or what that is, or how do you say this and what did she say), but at this juncture, I am extremely limited. For instance, Deborah, who had lunch with us in San Sebastian today, does not speak a word of English. The conversation at the table involved Flo, Aroldo and Deborah, or Flo, Aroldo and myself. Deborah or I were inevitably left out depending on which language was being spoken. We can speak to each other via Flo and Aroldo but it gets tiresome for them. I like Deborah. She’s a very hard worker in the kitchen and she remembers things that I say I need or want to learn (if it is translated for her) and she always makes a point to do some research and find a certain store for me or get a recipe for me to copy. It baffles me that I will spend the next three months in such close proximity to her—in the flat, in the primeras group, traveling on our days off—and yet, we won’t really be able to get to know one another. We had a hysterical moment during lunch today when we all exchanged phone numbers. Flo and Aroldo were imagining what would happen if Deborah and I called each other and one of us really needed help. Neither of us would have a clue…
This goes for a number of people in our group and in the kitchen. Valentina, a girl in my primeras group, also does not speak a word of English. We originally worked on the ensalada tibia together. Over the past two weeks we have developed a very funny way of communicating with one another. In place of words are a lot of physical gestures. She told me (via Freddy) that she was sad that we couldn’t gossip together. But Valentina makes up for the lack of verbal communication between us with a lot of physical closeness—she’ll put her arm around me or hold my hand quite often. She likes to tell me how many days I have left until I will see Ol.
One issue that is not hard to discuss despite the language barrier is food. We’ve spent hours (serious hours) in our flat’s kitchen talking about different dishes, techniques, and chefs we’ve been exposed to. We talk about it all like it’s a sport. We’ve exchanged numerous recipes from kitchens like French Laundry and El Bulli. It’s any foodie’s paradise. Sometimes I wonder if I will learn more from my flatmates and their experiences than I will in the actual kitchen.
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