San Sebastián

The six hour train ride passed quickly by listening to Boy & Bear and missing Australia. The train ride pretty much passed by wondering and doubting whether Finland was really the place I wanted to study in. The cloud of doubt how ever was easily forgotten when the mist of San Sebastian was reached. I got out of the train and realized I should’ve checked the wther before swopping sunny Barcelona to rainy San Seb. Because I only had a one night’s reservation at my hostel, I decided to bounce ASAP to more bearable and surf-ier weather. I had no clue where my hostel was apart from the address I had so I asked a lady how to get there. After a 5 minute walk I reached my hostel, Olga’s Place, which was a really nice and tiny hostel. I met Simon (Austrian) and Anthony AND Josh who were from OZ. For the first time ever I was pretty over aussies and just couldn’t care less to feel thrilled about hearing their sexy accent.



 

 

The first thing I did was go online to suss out a hostel for the next day. I had extempore decided to head to Portugal – where the weather would be awesome no doubt. I found this cheap az hostel in Lissabon for 12,5€ so I booked it for 3 nights. Then I decided I should eat something and go reserve my train. I paid for my train and started looking for a cheap place to eat, which was pretty hard considering it was domingo aka Sunday = almost everything was closed. I bumped into Olga, the hostel’s owner on the street and asked where I could eat with the little 2.35€ left of my budget. Decided to buy a chocolate bar for lunch and save the kebab for later. Bumped into Simon, Anthony, Josh and Simon’s mate Franz who asked me if I would like to join them and some Austrian girls for a cup of coffee. So the rainy afternoon was spent drinking hot drinks and playing cards. We played many rounds and decided to spice things up a bit -the loser of the game (asshole) would have to go swim in the ocean tonight (freaking cold), pretty sure naked too. Can’t remember who lost but it was one of the guys :D Whoever lost cheated though and didn’t keep his side of the promise.. boo.



We went back to the hostel and got ready. The guys + Tim (Australia) and I were going to this openning of a Marc Jacob’s clothing store which was more of an art exhibition for us, since we wanted to see someone’s mate’s, Carlos’ , painting which was hung on the wall. I REALLY liked the painting and just couldn’t help to stare at it. I talked with Carlos about his piece which was this really nice portrait jazz players. It was kind of done in this charicatyr way and I loved his use of color and imagination. We swopped facebooks and hetold me to contact me if I was ever in Barcelona (where he is from). I’m pretty bummed that later on when I was in Portugal I lost my phone and thus lost his contact info :( I would’ve loved to by a piece of art from him one day... It was nice though to be at the opening. They had free beer, which is always a bonus whether being a poor backpacker or a poor student ! Also Marjolein, the girl from Neherlands and from our hostel joined us.



We went back to the hostel to drink cheap wine and we also went on chat roulette cause I don’t think I had ever gone there properly :D Cheap wine was maybe not a good idea though because later on when we went to the beach to watch bands play at the Heineken Jazz festival for free, I pretty much lost my memory after it... I remember watching this nice, mellow band called Dawes and finnishing my bottle of red (yes – wine STRAIGHT  from the bottle... ewww... But there were no plastic cups a the hostel, the shops were closed and Tim said I didn’t need a cup...) and thinking ”hm, i’m not even drunk 8)”. HA. After seeing this french hip hop group I don’t remember much anything...... I remember that we went to a night club with Tim and yeah.. that’s about it. Autopilot mode: seems like I did make it to my bed at least. Waking up the next morning was pretty funny: ”hmm wonder what time it is... 12:30 ?! fuuuck i was supposed to check out 1,5h ago.....” Thankfully the hostel is so small and the owner is very chill, so I didn’t have any problems with that :)



I was a bit bummed though that I picked a bad time to come to San Sebastián. Without the rain the town looked like it has a lot of potential. It was very cute town and I LOVED how there were no masses of tourists everywhere. I also think that it would be a cool spot to maybe spend a month in and just surf and relax. Read a book and eat well. I already decided that one day i'll come back so that I'll also experience the sunshine of San Seb :) Nevertheless, I had a really nice time.