Hendaye is a small beach town in the fiercely proud Basque country, a mere 20 minutes drive from the gorgeous city of San Sebastián. It is also within an hour of the equally pricey and famous surfing partying cities known as BAB (Bayonne, Anglet, Biarritz) and the scenic beach towns of St Jean de Luz, Bidart and Hossegor.
Back to the Basque region
My granparents (on my dad's side) are from the north-east of France, but after years of travelling and when their 7 kids were finally grown up, they settled in the Basque country near Biarritz. The Basque region is technically split between France and Spain, but locals prefer not to talk about that.
So this is where I used to spend all my summers and a few winters. Since we travelled a fair bit, their home (called Oroitzapena house which means memory or resonance as it happens) and the region was a welcome anchor. Being here brings back great memories of impressive beaches, mighty thunderstorms, lots of fun with my sister and cousins being rolled by gigantic waves. Back in the day, there was a whiff of concern for our VW camper since the Basque independentist group ETA had a habbit of blowing up non Basque vehicles. Our licence plate was Algerian so we never had a problem, parisians probably had more to worry about. ETA has been disbanded, but the spirit of difference strongly remains!
Everything screams Basque at every street corner: most houses are the colour of the Basque flag (red or green and white).
It's hard to convey just how much the Basque are a proud and fiercely independent people. They have their own unique language (Euskara), which is unrelated to any other known language, their clothes, hats (people over 50 often wear a black beret which has to have a 3 finger fold in the front to identify a local, if not, you will be unmasked as a tourist), their custom, dances, shoes (espadrilles), and whevever you go, whatever you eat, whatever you wear, whatever you do here, it is BASQUE. Scooters, cars, houses, shops, gyms, pharmacies, etc etc are adorned by the Basque cross (Lauburu) which represents key 4 regions of the Basque country. Most signs are written in French and Basque, sometimes French and Spanish, sometimes only Basque. For food, you can add Espelette chilli pepper (red of course) on pretty much any dish and that makes it Basque: chicken à la basquaise, paté à la basquaise and so on.
Basquitude
Victor Hugo famously said: "a Basque is neither French nor Spanish, he is Basque and that's all."
Activism is at the core of Basque culture since they have always fought for their independence from both France and Spain. Here's a tiny collection of the many tags and banners we passed in Hendaye and neighbouring cities:
Frenchitude
Our first impressions of Hendaye were a bit delayed by Didi’s visit to the vet and the aftermath.
Didi is an old bitch. We had planned a visit to a vet on arrival for a much needed dental clean and to give her time to heal, since we are staying in Hendaye the whole of December. Turned out the vet was a necessity rather than a luxury, because with no warning, she also caught an ear infection and a UTI within a few days.
I usually have some anxiety about going to a doctor or a vet with 3 problems, but the way the vets dealt with it here made me realise the French have some habits which can both be infuriating and inspiring at the same time:
Inspiring: they don’t rush things that could be deemed non essential, but can be important: in England, before going to the vet or doctor, I would run in my head the shortest way of communicating 3 issues within a maximum of 5 minutes and a suitably apologetic tone. I would expect some irritation as a result and to be out of the practice within 10 minutes regardless of how severe the problems were.
Here, the receptionist was sad and took the time to apologise and explain she just had some bad news and what those were. Then, the vet arrived, took several minutes to say hello to Didi, gave her treats, spent over 10 minutes to chat about Didi's ailments, another 10 to discuss what he could do about them, another 10 to mope about the cost of the Brexit pet passport which is a “total rip-off to UK nationals”, another 10 to reassure me about what he was going to do, then 5 to chit chat goodbye and pet Didi. The price was half that of in the UK to sort out the lot.
The day after the anaesthetics, Didi was trying to reach her sore bits, so the vet saw us immediately without appointment, reran the routine of hellos- chat-treatment-chat-reassurance-treats, then gave us a cone for her to wear, additional medication, and charged zero euros. During the review one week later, a second vet behaved exactly the same way.
After a week of looking like she was going to die and banging into all the furniture (that's when you're half worried and half laughing your head off), Didi fully recovered and is back to her puppy waggy self. We are relieved that she is fine, but mostly that she didn't accidentally scoop with her cone one of the millions of poops scattered in Hendaye streets while she was sniffing about on her walks. On a side note, activism here includes fight against serial poopers...
The flipside: it took me over an hour to post 2 parcels and a few postcards at the post office because a couple in front of me were chit chatting with the clerk, who refused to be bullied into rushing or phased at all by the long queue and near closing time.
All in all, we are learning to resist urges to get annoyed at wasting our time by appreciating that professionals here take time to be friendly outside of the transaction scope, be it at the market, the supermarket tills, the vet, the post office, the tabac-presse, the restaurant.
Our wasted time is someone else’s good day, so it is worth it after all, and sometimes their wasted time can be our good day!
Road and poop issues
All towns along the coast have incredible beaches including Hendaye, but the town feels a bit built up without much of a town center. It is laced with hundreds of smallish streets with narrow sidewalks at 30 degree angle from each other with lots of roundabouts and one way systems which means it’s very easy to lose your North, and you have to be switched on not to be run over. That's because:
The French (or should I reduce this to the Basque?) tend to indicate ‘sometimes’, I might just say ‘rarely’ or rather ‘once in a blue moon’. It would be safer if they ‘never’ indicated at all but the French don’t like absolutes for philosophical reasons...
Noone, whether French, Basque, or foreigners, really knows whether to respect or not the ‘give way to vehicles coming from the right even if you are driving on the main road’ rule. It’s applied on a case by case basis.
This ancient rule is acknowledged as stupid by most people (it only made sense back in the days of horse carts), but the government can’t figure out a way to retire it without lots of people dying in the process. They made a valiant attempt by adding stop signs on MOST roads from the right which cancel the rule, but the French also have this ‘apply sometimes’ attitude so that didn't work.
On top of that, on a ten minute car journey here, there are about five of those so you need to lookout for cars coming from the right but they alternate with about three mini roundabout meaning you have to look at cars coming from the left. In both cases, you have about one second to stop if a car comes to avoid collision. Add pedestrian crossings all over the place, locals driving over the limit, and you have a perfect combination for brake slamming pedestrian near-deaths.
Compounding near-death factors:
Poop. If you look up, you step in one (yep Cuong) and risk a nasty fall . If you look down, you save face but you risk being run over
Undertaking scooters
Occasional gives-zero-shit granma jaywalking
Thankfully the French seem to be very good at braking violently, so MOST people survive. Still, it makes Hendaye quite a stressful town to drive or to walk in.
Keeping fit
We traded Crossfit for a gym called BasicFit, it's similar except less intense which is a good thing since we would not have been able to run to avoid cars if our muscles had been too sore. We had intended to go to the lovely pool 5 minutes from here, but were overwhelmed by too many rules.... Seriously!!!!
The usual other goodies...
Basque bandas (walking bands), popular gigs, christmas walks, gorgeous beaches, peaceful estuary, a frustrated Didi tangled in the curtain, and our sunny Airbnb.
I'll write shorter posts about our Weekend visits to neighbouring San Sebastián and Biarritz separately, we loved both! Then next week, we'll be heading to Barcelona. First logistical glitch of our trip, we literally just realised there is an ecological zone there which we won't be able to drive in (takes 15 day to register a foreign car for a special permit), only our next Airbnb is bang in the middle of the ecozone (and in a pedestrian street, and on the 4th floor without a lift). We'll have to find a creative solution 1) not to be fined 2) to carry our luggage and Didi in the flat. For once and ecological restriction is actually applied, How ironically annoying, I have one word to say. Poop!! 😋😫
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