Video Bilbao: Part 2

This is a more recent video, and it describes the incredible transformation that this city went through. Inspiring.

Video Bilbao

This is a cool and tightly-edited video showing many of the sights in and around Bilbao.

After just a few days, many of the scenes already look familiar.  Yesterday evening, we ventured out around 8:00 PM and started waking in the general direction of downtown.  Amazingly, we were at the Guggenheim before we new it!  The town is incredibly walkable.  The entire way, we followed a well defined and well protected bike path. This is what it looks like near our apartment.

Bike Lanes along the main drag... bueno!

One of the really cool things about the bike path is how they interact with the bus stops.  I’ll take a picture later this week, but basically, at the bus stops, the bike lanes diverge from the roadway and go behind the bus stops, that way the bikes don’t have to contend with buses pulling in and out and around them.  Very cool!

Transit update – general strike in Bilbao

Well, the transit system is really great, but…

Today was a general strike called by the public workers in Bilbao. They’re protesting the austerity measures being proposed by the Spanish government in response to their budget crisis. Not unlike the situation in Greece, but without the violence.

Nonetheless, they made their point quite clear by only running about 1/3 the number of trains today. The commute to school this morning was quite an experience. We were packed in like sardines, but it worked amazingly well. When people needed to get out at a stop, everyone accommodated. When people crammed in, there always seemed to be room for una mas.

I was able to snap a couple quick pictures just after we unloaded.

Just before the doors close

And still waiting on the platform…

Awaiting the next train

In downtown Bilbao, the demonstrators were noise and (mostly) peaceful. One of my colleagues watched them storm a coffee/pintxo bar that was open despite the strike.  Chairs and eggs were hurled, the police looked on, but no one was hurt.  With any luck, this will be the last strike we’ll experience during our time here, but you never know.

Population Density and Public Transit

Bilbao has a truly fantastic public transit system consisting of a very modern subway system, a downtown tram line and an extensive network of buses.  All this for a city whose population is just over 350,000 (greater metro close to 1 million).  Here’s a view of the town from the park above “old town”.

Bilbao from above

How does that compare to our home town of Boise?  Boise is home to just over 200,000 and the “greater metro” area has about 500,000 people.

City of Boise

So how does a town with about twice as many people support a transit system with  orders of magnitude more capacity than our modest bus system?

Clearly, part of the answer lies in the history of public projects.  The Spanish government, along with many local partners, specifically decided to invest in Bilbao and high quality public transit was a no-brainer.

But there’s another statistic that tells the story.  Biblao’s 350,000 live in a city that occupies only 1/4 the land that Boise does.  The population density of the Bilbao region is 7 times great than that of Boise!!!!! As I mentioned in a previous post, the residential neighborhoods here are mostly apartment complexes where comfortable middle-class families save up to buy a 3-bedroom flat (for as much as 450,000 euros!)

Google en Espana

Of course, we knew what we were getting ourselves into. It’s a foreign country, after all.  (As Steve Martin once famously said about the neighboring country immediately to the North here :  “The have a differenent word for…EVERYTHING!” ) It’s the little things that take you by surprise.

For example, the first time I got my laptop on the Internet,  my Firefox default homepage (which I never got around to changing on this machine) was suddenly: “Pagina de inicio de Mozilla Firefox” and it showed me the familiar google search page with a minor change, the button under the search terms is now labeled “Buscar con Google”.  Huh… go figure.

Similarly, when I load news.google.net (as is my custom to see what’s going on the the world), I get entirely Spanish language news (um, I mean noticias) sites.

OK, surely, those things should be expected, but the more interesting surprise came from GoogleMaps:

Map of the San Ignazio Barrio

There was no way for me to tell what was unusual when I first looked at this, because I didn’t know that all the streets of Bilbao are labeled with two names, a Spanish one and a Basque one.  The two names are generally fairly close translations, but unless you’re used to it, you won’t see the similarities.

Google maps shows the Basque names, not the Spanish ones.  An interesting choice, don’t you think?  On the other hand, it’s a bit dificil for the turistas because the Spanish names are much more prominantly displayed on the signage (at least, that’s how it appears to me).

In any event, I couldn’t help noticing the apparent political statement being made by Google with this choice.

Today was orientation day for the summer program, during which time, I  met my colleagues.  Two are from Chico State, both teaching business courses while most are from the local university:  Universidad del Pais Vasco, often just called UPV.  I suppose it would be more appropriate to use it’s other title: Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatearen, or for us gringos, University of the Basque Country.

In addition to the staff, there are roughly 25 American students from all over the US from New York City to Boise, Idaho.

Tomorrow is the first meeting of the class, here’s hoping it goes well!