Making the most of my youth

Taking advantage of my last day as a young person, at least according to the French national rail system SNCF, I caught one last youth-discounted train yesterday afternoon headed south. I woke to my 28th birthday in the Basque Country, hosted by a few generations of a lovely, hospitable, local family who made me feel like I was waking up at grandma's. The Basque grandmother I never had, that is. I split the day between Ciboure and Saint-Jean-de-Luz, which wrap around the two halves of a little bay:

Ciboure's claim to fame is the composer Ravel's birthplace, which still stands. (it's the cream colored one toward the right.)

On the other side, Saint-Jean-de-Luz made its mark when it hosted Louis XIV's marriage to Maria-Teresa of Spain.

This is the house in Saint-Jean-de-Luz where Louis XIV and Maria-Teresa spent their first month as newlyweds. And while I only spent time on the Saint-Jean-de-Luz beaches, both towns boasted beautifully sandy coastlines.

The Basque cross and the unusual local font immediately caught my eye. They were surprisingly modern and trendy for such traditional marks of the community. Over tea at L'Acanthe, I even treated myself to a Basque cross brownie. It paired well with my Ceylon-blend chocolate, vanilla, and rose flower tea. Happy birthday to me.

To wrap the day up, I hopped the border into Spain, about fifteen minutes away by train. Though staying in the little town of Irún, a former Roman town, my hostess (with whom I could only speak Spanish-- oh, but that was just the start of the adventure!) insisted that I use my evening to explore Hondarribia, a nearby hilltop town whose Renaissance walls still encircle the old town. Without enough Spanish to argue with my overly enthusiastic hostess that I was just looking for a simple dinner and an early evening, I soon found myself directed to the nearest bus stop after dropping off my backpack in her home. Some sort of confusion or miscommunication between us, totally plausible given my Spanish level, led to my completely missing the stop. Eventually, I hopped off the bus and wandered back in the dark along my best guess as to the route the bus had just taken. At least I had a brilliant moon to lighten the moment. (Bad pun, sorry.)

And eventually, I even managed to trace the bus trail all the way back to what turned out to be Hondarribia, whose walled hilltop city was completely charming.

I hadn't bargained on missing my stop again on the way home, nor ringing half a dozen random doorbells after 10pm to ask in my broken Spanish if my hostess were there, but I suppose these moments make the trip more memorable. Though I was much more ready to laugh after finally making it back into a warm home and slipping into some cozy pajamas. 

In between the evening's confusion, I found myself completely fascinated by the linguistic division I'd observed today. For centuries, this region was united by the Basque language, a linguistic isolate with unknown origins. However, I think my host family in Ciboure is fairly representative of the current situation: the grandmother spoke both fluent French and Basque, though a local Ciboure-variant which doesn't totally line up with the "unified Basque" since codified by the region in an effort to preserve the language. Her daughter, a middle-aged woman, spoke mostly French and just a little Spanish, no Basque at all. On the other side of the border, Spanish was clearly the lingua franca. I was shocked by the stark contrast in communication between cities which so strongly resemble each other. How is the culture of this region that straddles a national border, this region with centuries of shared history, with the same traditional symbols and architecture, evolving in response to the rise of the national languages and the disappearance of their shared Basque over the last several generations? Unfortunately, that was a question which would require more than a day and a significantly more advanced Spanish vocabulary.

This was undeniably one of my more unusual birthdays. I'm looking forward to what the rest of the week, and my 28th year, have in store.