Recently, I made a two-month trip to the United States to visit my family and friends. Within just a few hours of my arrival, there were several things from my time in the Basque Country that I was missing. Some of them, like missing my friends and all of the other people I had met, are things you would expect, while others may seem a bit strange. What follows is a list, in no particular order, of some of the items I wasn’t expecting to miss.
1. Walking and Public Transportation
I do not have a driver’s license. In the U.S., this would mean that to go any kind of reasonable distance from my house, I would either need to use the public buses, or bum a ride off of my family members or friends. I usually preferred the latter because I could arrive at my destination in a reasonable amount of time, traffic permitting of course. I don’t have any problems with public transportation except for the fact that it takes me significantly longer to get where I need to go. The suburbs of Seattle aren’t known for great access to public transportation, and since I live “two buses from everywhere”, travel takes me twice to three times as long as it would in a car.
Here, on the other hand, I walk everywhere. In fact, riding in a car is a rarity for me nowadays. Most of the places within the city are easily accessible on foot, but for longer journeys, I use the excellent public transportation system. To travel the 30km (18.6 miles) from Durango to Bilbao by train, it takes a mere 40 minutes. The same trip by bus takes between 20 to 40 minutes depending on the route and traffic conditions within the city itself. Once inside the city, it is possible to take many forms of transportation to get where you need to go, including, buses, trams, the metro (subway), and just plain old walking. In Seattle, on the other hand, it would take me that long just to get from my house to the downtown area, a distance of approximately nine miles. Once there, I would have two choices: take another bus, or walk. While working on an activity on tourism in Seattle, several of my students were shocked to find out that Seattle did not have more efficient means of transportation. "You have no metro? But Seattle is bigger than Bilbao. How do you go anywhere?" I often wonder the same thing.
2. The Letters K, X, and Z
At this point, you must be thinking, "This girl has gone completely off her rocker. How can she miss something that still exists?" Over the past year, I have grown accustomed to seeing words spelled with these letters not too commonly seen in the English language. The most common letter in Basque is the letter a, which accounts for approximately 17 percent of all letters. While ranking significantly lower on the list of commonly used letters, k, x, and z are used to a much greater extent than they are in English. If you are wondering why I know this, it is because I was trying to create a set of Bananagrams so that I could play in Basque. You can ask my family how long I spent figuring out the correct percentages and number of letters I would need to be able to play. Using a combination of several sets, I now how have enough tiles to be able to play in either English, Spanish, or Basque, as long as I can find someone to play with.
When I first arrived in the Basque Country, I was daunted by the fact that I was constantly surrounded by such unfamiliar letters, but I have grown so used to them that their absence was significant in the United States. How could you not miss spelling chocolate "txokolate"?
3. Dinner After Dark
I never thought I could get used to eating lunch at 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon and dinner after 9:00pm. I have not only gotten used to it, I found that I quite like it. I hadn't thought about it much before, but now it makes perfect sense to me. I tried to impose this timetable on my family while I was visiting, but unfortunately, they didn't take to it like I had. Although it made more sense with our schedules, they were still committed to eating early.
I'm sure I'm forgetting some of the things that seemed strange to me at the time, but these are the three that most stood out to me. What are some unusual things that you miss when you travel to other places?
At this point, you must be thinking, "This girl has gone completely off her rocker. How can she miss something that still exists?" Over the past year, I have grown accustomed to seeing words spelled with these letters not too commonly seen in the English language. The most common letter in Basque is the letter a, which accounts for approximately 17 percent of all letters. While ranking significantly lower on the list of commonly used letters, k, x, and z are used to a much greater extent than they are in English. If you are wondering why I know this, it is because I was trying to create a set of Bananagrams so that I could play in Basque. You can ask my family how long I spent figuring out the correct percentages and number of letters I would need to be able to play. Using a combination of several sets, I now how have enough tiles to be able to play in either English, Spanish, or Basque, as long as I can find someone to play with.
When I first arrived in the Basque Country, I was daunted by the fact that I was constantly surrounded by such unfamiliar letters, but I have grown so used to them that their absence was significant in the United States. How could you not miss spelling chocolate "txokolate"?
3. Dinner After Dark
I never thought I could get used to eating lunch at 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon and dinner after 9:00pm. I have not only gotten used to it, I found that I quite like it. I hadn't thought about it much before, but now it makes perfect sense to me. I tried to impose this timetable on my family while I was visiting, but unfortunately, they didn't take to it like I had. Although it made more sense with our schedules, they were still committed to eating early.
I'm sure I'm forgetting some of the things that seemed strange to me at the time, but these are the three that most stood out to me. What are some unusual things that you miss when you travel to other places?
