Sleepless in San Sebastian

Or in Spanish: "Thleepleth in Than Thebathtian"



Well, I am back in Sweden, and 4 gig of photos are transferring from card to disk, so now is the time to regale anyone who's reading with a non-chronological selection of stories I deem worthy of propagation. First up, we moonwalk backwards in time to before the running of the bulls, to a night in San Sebastian.

So, I had an enjoyable and moderately calendric few days in Madrid, where after some uncertainty I met up my Phase 1 travelling companions, Jo, Tori, Jeremy and Nick, and we departed by bus for San Sebastian. We had no accomodation booked, and knew that arriving at 7pmish our chances of finding any were slim, but we were backpackers heading towards a beach town during the hot hot summer in Spain, and Nick and Tori had told us exciting stories of sleeping through rush-hour in Munich train station on a plasticated table cloth. We'll be fine, we can sleep on the beach, what could possibly go wrong?

View out the bus window as we approached San Seb:


Now, everybody knows that the rain in spain falls mainly on the plains, and whilst I can't prove this wrong, I do maintain that the legalese small print of "mainly", as opposed to "exclusively", is underemphasized to the point of misleadingity (perhaps a new word - google search finds zero hits).

Fearing the rain for its capacity to make us wet and sleeping difficult, we inhaled some burgers and set off around the old town looking for a room. San Seb old town has heaps of little pensions, basically an apartment with dorm rooms rented out by the resident, like a tiny hostel. The first five or six we buzzed we got no answer or an abrupt "we're full". But then we struck gold, or at least tin, but tin that eventually evaded us, as tin is wont to do.

We were buzzed up to an old lady in a dressing gown who apparently had a room, but spoke no English. Tori's knowledge of Italian served us well, and eventually we figured out that she would take two of us, and her manfriend the other three, put up on crappy beds in a bare room for 25 euro each a night ($50 aussie).

We went to inspect manfriend's room, a few blocks away, which was even worse. Thinking the price a bit steep, we discussed amongst ourselves, and agreed to try to talk her down to 20 each, and then there was a brief but fierce rock-paper-scissors battle to decide who got the crap beds, and who got the even crapper beds. We then went back to the woman, only to find that in the meantime she had given the room to someone else.

Back on the streets with nowhere to sleep, rain not heavy but lingering in the background.

For the next part of this story, you would do well to look at the annotated photograph located here. Perhaps you could open it in another window, and refer to it as needed.

A couple of us sat and minded bags in the street while the others went off to search for a sleeping place. The were gone a long time, and apparently they journeyed far and wide, but they came back marching proud with victorious glints in their eyes.

They had found a long portico type thing at the beach (location "A"). There were a few bums sleeping at one end, but it was quite long so we headed for the non-bum end and sat ourselves down on the concrete.

Singalong story time at Location A:


After sitting and chatting for a while, quite pleased with our location, we started thinking about getting out the sleeping bags and the plasticated table cloth and getting some shut-eye. We witnessed a domestic between a bum couple and in the process learnt what we assume is a terrible swear word in Basque. Or perhaps the name of the guy. Anyway, after a while the cops came through and started hassling the bums trying to move them on. We watched all this with fingers crossed, but slowly but surely they worked their way along the line to us.

We decided honesty was best, and explained our situation. The police were really very nice, very sweet and kind. They said "well, we can't let you sleep here, it's forbidden. But what we can do is tell you an area where you can sleep. The good news is: there are no police patrols, so you won't be moved along. The bad news is: there are no police patrols, so you'll have to be careful".

The area they spoke of was the other end of the beach past the tunnel, occupying the lower-right-hand corner of the annotated photograph. There was no covered section here, but at that stage it had stopped raining so we thought we'd take our chances in the open.

We were going to sleep on the beach amongst the rows of deck chairs, but then Jeremy and I went for a pre-sleep walk up the beach, and found the building marked with the red "B" in the photograph. It was kinda a surf-club/restaurant/kiosk type thing, but we noticed it had a rooftop dining area which was not locked. We snuck up to have a scout around and, finding it to our approval, went back for the others.

It had no roof, but had walls which provided good protection from the wind, which we would have suffered from on the beach. By now I think it was about 1am, and we lay out our sleeping bags between the rows of tables and chairs and tried to get some sleep. The floor was metal with those nonstick bumpy bits on it, and we had no sleeping mats, so it was a bit uncomfortable and bruising, but we all got a little bit of sleep, or at least some rest.

Rooftop restaurant at location B:


At, I think, about 3am it started raining again. We were slow to move, not wanting to get wet but tired and warm in our sleeping bags. Except for Tori and Nick, who didn't have sleeping bags and were getting pretty cold and wet. We slowly started packing away our stuff, kinda hoping the rain would pass and we would go back to sleep.

But then, how it hadn't happened earlier I'll never know, but one of us set off some sort of motion detector and big bright floodlights went on everywhere, blinding us in a most unwelcome way. As we recovered our vision we realised there were surveillance cameras everywhere, and we were sitting there like deer in the proverbials. So we quickly gathered together our stuff and snuck down the stairs, giving quite a shock to a bunch of spanish guys who were sitting downstairs having some quiet beers, and certainly didn't expect five backpackers to come down bleary eyed carrying sleepingbags.

At this stage the rain was coming down, so we made straight for the only cover we knew of, the pedestrian tunnel marked with the yellow "C" in the photograph. About 3:30 am now, and we lay out our sleeping bags on the cold hard tiles and tried to sleep.

At 5:00am, Sarah called me from Australia having forgotten about the time difference wanting to ask about this or that detail for Steves wedding. I wasn't really in the mood for a chat, and I think I made that fairly clear but I later apoligized and it was this phone call that gave me aussie number that helped me get new glasses in Barcelona (as per previous post).

Early morning at Location C:


Some were lucky enough to sleep. We stayed in bed until about 6:30 when the disgusted looks from morning commuters passing through the tunnel got too much. Then packed up our gear and went off to eat something and find some goddamned accomodation for the next night.

Packing up stuff at Location C:


Just after sunrise, as we went back to town to find a room:


We found a room at "Pension Aussie", but couldn't move in until 12:30 after cleaning.



The proprieter, a slightly strange aussie ex-pat, tried to convince us we should see the city and shouldn't sleep, but as soon as the clock hit 12:30 we were straight to bed for a much-needed afternoon slumber. Like logs we was.

I'm not sure if I had slept at all during the night. I didn't think I did, but perhaps I did drop in and out of sleep a bit in the tunnel. Either way, after so much bone-bruising concrete and metal, the softness of a mattress and a pillow that afternoon felt like heaven itself, I was so thankful I nearly found religion. Except I couldn't find one that worshipped comfortable bedding.

End of story.