(Bilbao, Spain – Porto, Portugal – Bordeaux, France – Istanbul, Turkey)
Good evening from Paris where it has been raining steadily all day, as it has on EVERY day I’ve been in France on this trip. It took the arrival at the Spanish border a few weeks ago for the rain to (then) stop.
As you can see from the title, Air France led me on a merry dance in Bordeaux, not just by omitting to tranship my luggage onto Paris and Istanbul, but then letting all SIX of us without luggage in Istanbul wait until the “bag-go-round” was fully empty at something past midnight before informing us that they had known for 4 hours that our bags were not on the plane. Then followed a fascinating half hour when my English and the flight agent’s Turkish were translated onto a form in French. I knew there was a reason why I’d bought some duty free deodorant on Porto. It took nearly two days of phone calls and half-truths before the bag, in a slightly searched state, arrived at my Istanbul hotel…
One day I must thank Air France for a striped red business shirt, multi-coloured Turkish underwear, socks and toothbrush which were my shopping expedition at their expense on Day 1 in Turkey.
I’d also got horribly lost in Bordeaux Airport which is vindictively designed to land travellers on the tiddler plane from Portugal either in the “small flights” terminal, or out in the check in lounge of the wrong terminal having bypassed Customs (?!) because there are NO bloody signs or departure indicators in the Transit “Lounge”. “Oh GOOD!” (you might enthuse), this means TWO full security checks and X Rays before you can even start searching for a departure gate to Paris. If there are any images left on my exposed film (yes, Techies, I still use a REAL camera…), it’ll be pure luck after regular airport radiation.
Since the last email, have travelled across northern Spain to Bilbao and San Sebastian (arriving in the Basque capital city of Bilbao on the day that the Basque Separatist Movement declared an end to their cease-fire with the Spanish government, so a security alert was in force because of threatened bombings). This was followed by a convoluted route (at least involving a very civilised sleeping berth before the odd local train experience landed me into the wrong end of Porto).
Also found myself arriving in Istanbul the day before a bombing near the airport as the Turks try to manage the fallout of generations of suppression of ethnic Kurds who now have new motivation following the highly(?) successful(!) war in Iraq. Turkey is also in the throes of being a secular state seeking access to Europe, but with a population increasingly voting for Islamic parties, especially in local government elections.
All very interesting to someone travelling through and trying to learn a bit about the country…
So (as usual) you are spared a detailed travelogue (it has all been a GREAT experience), but here are some bits and pieces:
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Northern Spain is physically like a kind of dryer Switzerland with trains climbing and travelling along the edges of precipitous alpine valleys, looking down onto chalet-style houses. Up close, you are confronted with very Spanish polluting industries, or mountains of scrap metal along sea fronts.
Spain, like Portugal and France, is spending up big on new tramways and urban rail to preserve the culture and heritage of the old towns which are the core of most cities. In Bilbao and Porto (and Istanbul) this means that inner city streets are traffic calmed, and walking tourists are regularly startled by a silent tram sneaking up on them until a LOUD bell is rung (scuttling tourists; amused locals). Bilbao has gone one better with piped music to accompany you on the bulbous tram to the Guggenheim Museum (Dvorak’s “From the New World”) and back (Beethoven’s “Pastorale”), before travelling to the Gustave Eiffel transporter bridge. This is a great piece of 19th century ironmongery where you are trolleyed across the river in a large box suspended by cables from a steel span a hundred feet above (“1812 Overture”). The narrow gauge coastal train to San Sebastian (“Quando, Quando, Quando”) and back to the Old Town (“A Walk Through the Black Forest”) raised my hopes of maybe hearing some Spanish guitar or “Concierto de Aranjuez”. It was not to be.
It’s hard to be disappointed by the tapas, vino and walking the medieval town to the the Guggenheim (although Mr Koons’ grinning floral “Puppy” is hardly a suitable introduction to the deeply depressing post-war Germanic art within). There is a real emotional “grab” to entering such an iconic building as this, especially when the interior has driven the shape of the “alfoil” confection which sits astride a rive and “cuddles” a passing freeway.
There were daily street marches through the Bilbao shopping district protesting the G8 Summit and supporting Basque separatism from Spain: very different to the suppression of Franco’s Spain which had been one of my early travel experiences.
What do Basque Spain and New Zealand have in common, apart from a sometimes impenetrable local accent?
1: Both countries have an array of humorous sheep on their souvenirs,
and
2: Both countries have chocolate fish – in the case of Bilbao, it’s chocolate sardines,
and
3: Increasingly like New Zealand, the local original language is featured on all signs. This is just as well, as San Sebastian has THREE names: one on the map, one in Basque, and a third one which only appears on ticket machines to utterly confuse visitors: ‘Donostia’.
School trains in Spain are like school trains at home: catching one is a mistake!
I had to change trains in a dry and windy place called Miranda del Ebro. I think “Miranda del Ebro” translates into English as: “Northern Spanish Industrial Armpit Best Avoided”.
Portuguese sleeping cars are old, much rebuilt and groan a bit during the night. The white-coated attendant keeps your tickets and passport so you cannot escape until after the mandatory dining car breakfast of bread and jams. Next to the bunk was a small bottle of the fortified national product to assist sleep. It did. The rest of the train was a bit reminiscent of a NSW mail train from the 1960’s. In the morning, my travelling companions on the local train from Pampilhosa to Porto were downing their breakfast beers on the platform.
Porto also surrounds a quite wonderful Gustave Eiffel construction: the Punte do Luis bridge over the Douro river gorge, towering above he old town (which is a bit scruffier and tad more dangerous than the centre of Bilbao – and possibly somewhat more authentic…). The cobble stones are a clever plot by bar owners to get tourists to sit regularly to allow sore feet to recover with the odd cafe con leche or caipirina… or to coax you onto the restored trams which grind along the riverfront and which are being re-extended through the inner city.
The café under my Porto guesthouse was an art nouveau haunt of local, genteel poets and musicians. Getting in and out was difficult due to tramline construction. The poets did need to shout a bit over the grind of century-old trams when their ageing motors started to tackle the hill outside. I stumbled into a polite recital, in what is otherwise a corner tourist café, to find the tables occupied by bejewelled twin-sets, suits and rosy-faced bored children on their best behaviour for a Sunday soiree. One felt that one was lowering the tone.
Portugal still has large Communist street murals advertising party congresses and seeking the votes of the proletariat.
I’ll save Istanbul and Gallipoli (where I was absolutely determined to go, and it took some doing AND it was a great experience) for the following email. It’s getting late and a 3 course “Menu Touriste” beckons from next door, however I must first share with you some more joys (not) of travelling through Charles De Gaulle Airport. It’s gargantuan in a concrete monolithic kind of way, and very dysfunctional, but never boring.
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On the way through from Bordeaux to Istanbul our 30-minute-long security check in queue was entertained by two things: panicking Romanians as the queue was taking so to move that the Sofia plane looked like leaving without them – and they were pushing out the odd French business class traveller who was trying to knuckle into the queue … AND … the crash-tackle arrest in front of us of two large and bejewelled thugs by by three even larger French plain-clothes police. And this is INSIDE the security area.
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Last night, on the way back from Istanbul into Paris, the customs gates were suddenly closed as three flights arrived, all looking for baggage (should Air France have deigned to deliver it) and we mob were directed to the far end of the building to exit. Problem: there was no door; no explanation except excited, shouted French from the Customs police, telling us to go, and steering us to a counter where a puzzled Lost Luggage man was a tad confused about why a couple of hundred people, WITH their baggage, were suddenly his nightmare. Much shouting into two-way radios. Much very Gallic shrugging and talking LOUDLY and S-L-O-W-L-Y in FRENCH to planeloads of non-Francais then followed until a woman in an Air France uniform and an “I don’t give a bugger” expression pushed open as emergency door. This allowed three planeloads of weary travellers to enter France without a customs check, but not to change money or to receive any travel or transfer advice because all of that section of the terminal was closed “for the security”. The one policeman fending off the crowd suddenly found he was giving directions to transfer buses and the rail station using newly discovered PR skills.
Can’t wait to see what Air France and CDG Airport turn on when I fly out next Tuesday night. I’ll get there early in case I miss the next floor show.
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I WILL be getting to CDG Airport by train. When transferring last fortnight from Orly to CDG airports (on the the journey from Morocco to Edinburgh) I was “encouraged” (directed) by Air France to take their amusing transfer bus across the eastern side of Paris. What followed was a dreadful stuck-on-freeways-in-peak-traffic experience. Most of the freeways pass through deeply depressed, somewhat derelict suburbs, fenced in by graffitied sound barriers, infested with the overkill of peeling advertising posters, and much of it in clogged, dank and degraded filthy road tunnels: so depressing that the Di and Dodi option was starting to look good.
I did make CDG Airport look (momentarily) welcoming, until the thunderstorm and 5 hour flight delay…
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PS: While you are at work on Monday, I’ll be cruising the Seine and wandering the D’Orsay museum. It’s borrowed time: I’ll be back in the rat race with the meretricious “rats” on Friday (but possibly too jetlagged to be feeling much, until the reality of the following MONDAY!).
