Txotx!

This weekend was full of experiencing Euskalkultura. Thursday I went with my intercambio to a gastronomic society, which is a traditional Basque institution wherein Basque men buy a bunch of food at a grocery store, then cook it for themselves and everyone eats a bunch of good food. This is because historically, Basque society is supposed to have been matriarchal, and evidently men got tired of women ruling everything in the house and decided to make their own societies in which they could cook and call the shots and associate with other men. For this reason, also, the societies are historically for men only. Now, however, in many if not most of the societies, women are able to come and pay to eat, but it is still only men that prepare the food. I imagine there are some where women are fully integrated, and some where women are still not allowed, or welcomed, but the one I went to I´m pretty sure was of the medium sort. It was definitely pretty much all dudes the whole time, except for about half an hour when one woman came in, who was at least friends with a few of the guys and may have been one of their girlfriends. It was really a good experience overall, though. The people were very friendly, there were bouts where people were just speaking to each other in Euskara and in which I just had to eat and deal with not understanding, but there were plenty of other times that people would speak to me in Castellano, or often in English, and as the food and drinks went on the atmosphere got more friendly.

*Sidenote: Three weeks ago, I went with my intercambio to the old part of town to see some bertsolaris(sp), traditional Basque singers, which had helped to keep the language and its rich oral literature alive over the centuries. The songs involve different set meters and tunes, into which the singers weave jokes, satire, or elaborate stories. It was very interesting to see, but probably would be more interesting if I could understand Euskara. During this time, a person from a Basque news channel came up to me and asked me something in Basque, to which I responded by staring blankly while my intercambio whispered that I would not understand because I was from Washington. After they found out I was from DC (kinda), they were even more interested in having me speak on camera, and asked me something about DC, which I responded affirmatively saying thats where I came from, and then the same question from before, with hand motions which I assumed to mean something like "What do you think of this?" to which I responded with really bad Castellano something along the lines of,

"Its good, I like it, I´m here with him, and he knows a lot more than I do", or rather
"Its good, I like, I´m here with him and he knew much better about than I"

After that, I never knew if I had in fact made onto television or not, thinking that, on the one hand, there was really no good reason to put such meaninglessness on the air, but on the other hand, Basque people would be glad to see someone from America at one of their cultural events, and it would also provide a decent laugh.

I finally found out on Thursday, when one of the people that I met said that they had seen me on television at the bertsolaris, haha.

The second chapter of my Basque weekend was Saturday, when 4 friends and I went to a cidreria, which is supposedly one of, if not the, most import things to experience in Basque culture. I can´t give you the whole history, but in Basque culture cider is one of the most important things there is. In past centuries, some of the most strict and specific legislation had to do with cider, and apple orchards. It is intersting to note that along with many other advantages that worked in their favor(experience from whale hunting, ship building techniques learned from Vikings, improved upon techniques of drying cod for long voyages, etc), another reason that the Basques had such good luck in the area of navigation was cider. While many other explorers brought harder drinks on their voyages such as vodka, rum, etc, because they took up less volume, the Basques had to have their cider. Although leaving less room, this turned out to be to their advantage. While voyages like that of the pilgrims were plagued with sickness and death from scurvy and the like, the Basques had been able to travel to North America to fish and whale with relatively few sicknesses or deaths, because the cider they were drinking provided them with vitamins, most importantly, vitamin C to prevent scurvy. The role that cider houses play is this: in the past, most people would make their own cider, and sell it in various markets at different times of the season (selling times for different regions were regulated by law), but it was common to have a decent sized house and your own cider. As population and industrialization increased, the market for cider increased, and while some people moved to smaller houses and worked in industry, others specialized in cider making, and sold their cider to the people who no longer had their own. To buy the right cider, you had to test it out, so you would go to the cider house and drink a small taste from each of the barrels (kupelas), and decide which one you wanted. To test a small amount of 70 kupelas, however, is difficult to do without catching a buzz, so the cider houses would provide food that people could eat between tastings to keep from getting too drunk. The traditional food to be served in cidrerias is tortilla de bacalao(sp) (cod), txuleta (giant steak), and cheese, marmelade, and walnuts, for which I don´t remember the Basque names, all of which is delicious. You don´t have plates for individuals, and most often, don´t have seats (although the one I went to did) because you are not there to sit and eat, you are there to drink cider, and eat bites in the process. This was really a very good time. It was 26€ a person, which is kind of up there in price range, but for all the food and cider we had, as well as the experience, I´d say it was well worth it. They don´t usually tap all the kupelas at the same time, and for much of the time there was only the same 2 or 3 ( of about 20) open, but with some vigilance and alertness I was able to catch some of the less frecuented ones, and probably tried a total of 8 different ciders in the night (when a new one is being opened, or sometimes just reopened, people start yelling "txotx", which has a literal translation that escapes me, something like the word for tapping maybe, but mostly means, run, and grab some of this cider).

Alright, yet another ridiculously long post, time to stop.