Snow in Spain

In case you are not all weather junkies and thus have been doing other things besides checking out weather patterns over Southern Europe lately, there is snow falling like mad in Pamplona, a new coating of snow on the hills surrounding Bilbao and sleet falling in Bilbao itself. It is pretty amazing to see.

Nine Stories

I just finished reading the collection of nine short stories published by J.D. Salinger. Quite a while ago I read and enjoyed Catcher in the Rye but an article in the New York Times or on NPR, I cannot remember which, about Salinger reminded me that he actually had many other works I had never experienced. Anyway, I figured these would be great to read along with War & Peace because when I was feeling the need to actually finish something I could pick up a story and read it. These little gems are incredible portraits of a post World War II America trying to deal with the ramifications of the war, find its identity, adjust to its prosperity and regain its humanity. There are some stories with surprisingly abrupt tragic endings, but also stories with real hope embedded in them. Anyway, if you happen to be looking for quick enjoyable read or especially if you commute using public transportation, each story would be perfect for a subway or bus ride, so I highly recommend picking up a copy.

A Day In Bilbao

Today I made it over to the Universidad del Pais Vasco in order to meet with Professor Luis Vega. He is a harmonic analysis/PDE expert who has done a great deal of important work in my field over the course of the last 25 years or so. I thought he was going to be at the University of Chicago during my time here, so it was a pleasant surprise that he was actually here this week and I was able to talk with him about some interesting problems. Finding the UPV was my first order of the day, which turned out to be a bit harder than I anticipated. Strangely enough, Bizkaiabus, the system of buses that travels the most locations, has the least information posted online and only has innocuous blue signs with no route information as bus stops. So, after taking the rather nice Metro to a location near the university, I asked around and eventually found the campus, then strolled until I finally found the math department. I wound up getting there 20 minutes early so I worked until we had the chance to talk, grab a nice full Spanish lunch at the University cafeteria and drink a coffee. Fortunately, I found a much more efficient route home, so I read and worked a bit more after I got back.

Upon a recommendation, I went to the cafe affiliated with a famous restaurant here in Bilbao called El Viejo Zortzi. It is a small restaurant and when I arrived all the tables were reserved. However, since I was only one person and got there when they opened, they let me sit down as long as I promised to be out before 10 PM. Since I did not feel I needed to eat for an hour and a half by myself, it sounded like a fine deal to me.

To eat, I had local cheese, duck and even an ice cream made from a local citrus fruit. There was a soft cheese that I literally would have bathed in if given the chance. It was such a delicious meal on the whole that I could not help having an after dinner espresso. I know I should not have caffeine after 4 PM, but if a meal is good enough I like a coffee afterwards dammit. So, it is truly a measure of a meal's success for me if I am willing to sacrifice a night's sleep to complete the experience.

Tomorrow is my last day here so I am headed up to see the coastline. Once I have a more reliable internet connection I will be posting pictures from everything I have been doing here. Basque Country really is beautiful with fantastic food and great people. The people have to be great since otherwise you would never figure out how to get anywhere!

War & Peace Update Part III: The Half-Way Point

So, I am officially through half of War & Peace and have admittedly become rather enamored with the book in all honesty. All I can say is that in college I wanted to write a book that encapsulated many of the inherent contradictions of our society and humanity in general, but obviously I did not have the patience to read a book that captures those contradictions beautifully. Good people do bad things with profound consequences, bad people do bad things with no consequences, good people do good things with no consequences and bad people even once in a while do good things to great acclaim. Sometimes life seems to be so beautiful you can hardly contain your excitement for even the simplest of pleasures and sometimes life feels so frivolous you wonder how you can get from one day to the next. The book is a journey through the human condition, which makes it painful at times. It often will depict how one inane action in one single moment which one might think inconsequential can drastically alter the course of your life. Though it is hard to accept that someone you have come to care for could make a disastrous decision against all better judgment, fall in love with the wrong person, or cause harm to anyone or anything, it happens from time to time in the course of a life. People tend to recover and life continues onward for most if not all parties involved. Anyway, I cannot wait to see how it all turns out in the end, though that is still another 700 pages away. Ha.

Arroz Negro con Bacalao

Tonight I went to a Spanish restaurant with another postdoc visiting Bilbao. This place had been recommended to me by a friend who had visited here to do some work at the Guggenheim at one point. It was a delicious meal with a relatively inexpensive but decent Rioja. I was going to order a paella but the waitress suggested this arroz negro, and I am extremely glad I listened to her. The flavors, spices and textures were all perfect. As a perfect cap to the evening, we tried the apple tart and the cheese tart, both of which are totally local ingredients and absolutely delicious. In some sense it reminded me of how much I used to love going out to eat. I mean, I do like German food. It is largely rather hearty, nutricious and filling, and I do always enjoy a good beer. However, sometimes a nice local wine blends perfectly with subtle spices, bold flavors and interesting textures to stimulate the taste buds, then a slightly sweet and well-paired local dessert coats your mouth, cleanses your palate and leaves you fondly recalling the meal for hours to come. This dinner did all that.

My Night.

Tonight after work I walked the 40 minutes or so from my hotel to downtown Bilbao in order to meet some other people from the Basque Center for Applied Mathematics for dinner at a traditional cider house. The food was great and the local cider delicious, but for me it was all about the walk. The night was cool with a subtle sweetness from the hint of salt in the air blowing in from the sea. The river flowing through the town was shimmering beautifully from the soft lights coming off the many bridges and buildings. The architecture blended modern and ancient into a rather beautiful, serene landscape. The night was dry and cool, and many people were out near the river to exercise or simply walk with their families. It made me feel at peace ... at home. At least as though this was the kind of night I hope my eventual home has once in a while.

The Guggenheim

I arrived on Sunday afternoon in Bilbao after a relatively uneventful flight. It is amazing how nice it is to arrive at the airport and have your scheduled flight both exist and leave on time. For me, that is a rarity these days. Anyway, after finding the bus from the airport to town, asking a few people and walking 20 minutes or so, I found my hotel. Best of all, I did all of this without uttering a word of English. As it turns out, my hotel is rather pleasantly located only about 10 minutes from Guggenheim Museum. So, after dropping my stuff off and puzzling a bit over the remaining clues from the New York Times crossword puzzle I had picked up on the plane, I headed off to see the museum.

I started in a room where was one room with some work from the Guggenheim permanent collection. The particular pieces I really enjoyed were by artists named Matthew Ritchie and Javier Perez.

Perez had designed a mask and garment for a street festival in Brazil. They were both stored in a separate room from anything else with dim light except for a spotlight shining on the white garment hung on the wall and the gray mask suspended in the middle of the room. The garment was a simple white linen robe that hung gracefully. The mask was made of braided pieces of gray rope with small almost translucent strands sticking out all the way around it. The face had a rather horrifying expression, and the whole room left me feeling rather haunted. It certainly had the desired effect and it was interesting to think of how the lighting and design had elicited those emotions.

The Ritchie piece was a large, sprawling piece that seemed to me to model quite well the combustion and chaos of the cosmos. It featured a large, steel sculpture full of interweaving lines in the form of waves suspended above a cardboard mat with similar structures but done in various colors. Protruding through the holes formed by the steel waves were thin steel rods with small round objects welded to the tops of them. Surrounding the sculpture were both brightly colored paintings and a black and white wall mural featuring similar interweaving patterns and small, ill-defined protrusions. The whole exhibit felt vibrant and alive, so it left me feeling energized and refreshed.

The main exhibit features several rooms of work by Cy Twomby. Apparently he is from Lexington has been producing art for over 50 years. The pieces were often centered around creating something with inherent natural beauty in unexpected ways. He had sculptures made of discarded wood and plaster which me made to look like growing plants, gigantic paintings of bright flowers filled with texture and color and depictions of water from simple, repeated patters. It is always interesting to me to see esteemed art that has been created through rather simple means. Some of the pieces portrayed the great skill and techinique this artist had crafted, but some seemed strewn with random flickerings of paint or carelessly drawn scratches a child could make. Of those that seemed simple, some when viewed from a distance revealed new layer of depth or perspective I would not have suspected or thought about. However, some did not connect with me in that way and the simplicity of the piece drew me a little bit out of the exhibit as a whole. Overrall it was an impressive body of work spanning several galleries as well as decades, which left me thinking about the beautiful symmetries and textures in nature we so often take for granted and how they are present in many unexpected forms around us all the time.

The permanent collection is a series of large, steel sculptures by Richard Sera. These pieces are interactive in the sense that you can walk through them and experience how the geometry and coloration of the walls paired with the lighting shifts your perception of space. Many of these pieces would curve in a direction with one wall curving having an inward or outward bulge and the wall opposite bulging similarly. As these things twisted and turned it would shift the space you were in, alter your relationship with them and change your perception of words like middle or straight. Plus, the walls would tower above you making you feel small and confined, though from the outside the objects seemed perhaps only 12-15 feet high. Some of them would spiral, some were simply bent straigh paths and each had a unique shape and curvature so each created a different sensation when exploring their interior geometry.

The building itself is rather beautiful and full of interesting geometries. Even though it is a giant stainless steel piece of abstract art, it rather seamlessly blends into the surroundings and to the river below. It was a great start to my trip, though I wish someone was here to share it with me. Tonight I was going to head to a paella place a friend recommended near the museum, but due to an accident on the highway delaying my bus and difficulties getting the internet set up in my room, I left for dinner later than I intended. So, I simply went to small place near the University. However, I have the whole week so hopefully I will get to tell the story of the paella restaurant on the river another night.