The university Im attending is the the way north of Spain known as el pais vasco, or the basque country...or in their native language Euskadi...it's a very difficult language that can not be compared to Spanish whatsoever..or any other language that Im aware of. All street/store/public signs are first in Basque and then Spanish. They are very proud of there heritage here and some don't consider themselves to be Spanish, just Basque. This makes watching Spain's World Cup games tricky...not everyone supports the Spanish team. Some say it's okay because it's the World Cup...but in one of the few bars actually playing the game vs Holland ..all of the patrons sporting Holland jerseys and colors..weird. Also interesting is that a lot of the residence in the north say that they don't speak Spanish, they speak Castellano or Castilla (in English I believe it's Castilian) ...it's the same language exactly, just helps separate them from the rest of Spain. However there are still a lot of people that know there are Spanish and admit it but are more proud to be Basque than Spanish.
This is just a typical street in the city of Bilbao
This fountain still works, it's in the middle of the
old part' of the city...pretty much it's all old-but they do distinguish the old and modern part I believe by 1700(or before)-1899 and then everything after. The apartments right around it still dont have running water and use the fountain daily-it's good water!!
These are the Metro stops ..they call them Fosteritos because they were designed by a man named Foster =)
Bilbao's biggest industry was iron mines..there for all throughout the city you can find really beautiful iron-work, mostly on windows and doors.
This is the the Casco Viejo which is the quarter in the 'old' part of town..the name on the building is an example of the language Euskura (Vasco, Basque)I think this just means Basque Government (although this is no longer the government building)
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