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Sun blogger Blogged so far...Sun, tapas and siesta? You haven't been to the Basque country yet, have you?Having studied partly in Spain, working and living in this wonderful country seemed to be both to me, an adventure and another challenge with calculable risks. Some job hunting, some paperwork and HERE WE ARE. Job hunting turned out to be a nerve-wracking activity - notionally switching between various offers that are located hundreds of km away from each other asks for some flexibility. And the closer you come to the end of your selection process, the more nerve-wracking it can be. The paperwork turned out to be a nightmare, but more about this later. Let's go back to the HERE WE ARE
The first thing you have to learn when entering the Basque country is that it's different. Not because it feels pretty different compared to other Spanish parts, but mostly because Basques insist that it is different. Cynically speaking, it's separatism at its best! "Sun? Did you come for the sun?" was one of the first questions I was confronted with - even though not literally expressed like this, but carefully wrapped between the lines. Nevertheless, the "answer" has always been the same: "Here, we have as much raining days as in London, welcome to the Basque country!". Okay, okay, I didn't come for the sun, so with a smiling face I can say: I don't care. "Tapas? We don't have tapas, we have pintxos!" - okay, this is the part where you learn some Euskera, the Basque language. And no - pintxos are not tapas with sticks! The last thing you should never come up with in the Basque country is "la siesta". All over the world people think that Spanish people are sleeping half of the day, eating another 45% and working during the residual minutes - well that's the exaggerated version of the most common prejudices. As mentioned before, Basques are different. Here "la siesta" is regarded as an ancient Andulisian tradition. And comparing Basques with people from the south of Spain is probably the worst you can do while one of them is listening!
Finally, the good things about the separatism is that as German you feel pretty comfortable. Comfortable in comparison to what people from Madrid must have to listen to when visiting the Basque country for the first time.  10 Aug 2011 - 12:37 Good Bye, Merkel!After 8 months of preparation, it's time to go. We say "Good Bye, Merkel! Hola, Zapatero!" and finally leave our mother country. 8 stressy months of evaluating different options on how to get to Spain will now be followed by at least another 8 stressy months of getting settled. We are looking forward to a great, challenging time. Some skills in project management came very handy in preparing our next steps - and finally, our project called "prepare and move to Spain" enters a critical phase. 12 cubic meters of our household are securly packed and stored in a long distance truck... the rest has been sold to reduce costs of shipping. Whenever you plan to move abroad, keep in mind that every cubic meter generates costs of about 40-45 EUR per 1,000 km of distance. And this is rather cheap due to the fact that we used a commercial liner, no professional household movers. But in times of a significant lack of engineers throughout Europe, even negotiating cost coverage with your employer might be an option! 12 Aug 2011 - 13:17 Found 2 topic(s).
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