2008 started with a mouthful of raisins and a brief conversation about separatist groups in Spain. We kissed strangers on the cheeks in the kitchen of a hostel in San Sebastian (Donostia, I guess I should say) and then we rambled out into the new year.
San Sebastian has a Medieval district which is basically just a little hive of tiny bars distinguishable from each other only by the Basque lettering over their front doors. In the light from the street lights and through a veil of cava, everything looked the same to me. Stew, Caitlin, Heather, Summer and I were giddy on our way out of the hostel. There was Stewart pushing Caitlin in a baby stroller, popping wheelies and careening crazily from side to side; then there was confusion when a stranger on a rooftop sprayed a garden hose down at the people in the street. We finally shouldered our way into a bar, grooving and grinning. They were playing American dance music, there was no wine, and everyone was French. We found this hilarious. Back in the street, everyone was still French. In the rest of the bars, there were French people spilling their cerveza everywhere, but nobody was Basque, and nobody was Spanish.
I decided to call it a night around 4 AM. Stewart had taken Summer back to her hostel so she could sleep, but hadn’t come back; Caitlin had disappeared entirely; and Heather and I were being followed around by three French boys : one who spilled beer on my foot, one who had fallen in love with Heather and one who kept repeating, “t’es cool, tu sais.” Heather and I said goodbye to them and crept into the dark, warm hostel, where we decided Stew and Caitlin would have to turn up eventually. They did at 5:30 AM, and the three of us walked back to the place where we were staying, a room with shelves of trinkets in a nice old lady’s apartment. As we left the Medieval district and crossed the river, I was surprised at how many people were still out, and not looking like basket cases. I realized they were speaking Spanish. There were no French people to be seen. The actual residents of the city must have finally come out around 3 or 4 and effortlessly outpartied all of us tourists.
I had been expecting some kind of exciting Spanish / Basque fiesta on New Year’s Eve; I guess all of the French people who populated the bars that night had had similar expectations. Instead, the atmosphere was kind of like that of the night of a soccer game in France, except that you had to order your drinks in Spanish.
I’m actually pretty happy that NYE was different than I had expected. We wouldn’t have been able to talk to Spanish people (la barrera linguística), but since everybody was French, we got to play the Speak Loud English So They Think You’re Just Some Random Anglophones, Then When They Say Something About You, Zing Them in French game. This is how we made all kinds of one-night friends on New Year’s Eve – I probably talked to as many nice strangers that night as I have in the past six months in Toulouse. The next day we agreed that French people are much easier to meet when they’re not in France.