Touring the Basque Region in France and Spain:

Were we in another, a third, country? Yes, we knew about the Spain we were leaving and the France into which we were entering, but what of these people with their sheep, berets, jai-alai, and that incomprehensible language? The most linguistically astute among us were mystified -- where were the cognates, what hook could were find onto which we could grab and attain some sense of this obviously joyous and self-confident, yet almost opaque culture? Ah, yes, the Basques. Romanticized by outsiders, sometimes distrusted by neighbors for their elusive avuncularity, How could this ancient culture-Europe's oldest-manage to have been such an integral part of European culture for centuries, as fishermen, sailors, explorers (maybe getting to America before Columbus!) be so little affected by so many contacts? Is it cultural pride, or just an inner confidence? Arriving at St-Jean de Luz, it was clear: this is a culture that lives outside, whether in the fields or, as we saw, conversing in the lively public spaces of a small city. Basques have plenty of reasons to stay Basque, and daily, they reinforce their wonderful (excuse the French) joie de vivre. The Basques have a "traditional" culture, but somehow they've always been innovators and early adopters. Discovering beached whales in the early Middle Ages, they developed a market for red meat on Catholic Fridays, then adopted Viking boat technology to become world-renowned sailors, whalers, discoverers, and boat builders. Indeed, boat building based in Bilbao became a major Basque industry over the centuries. It is toward boats and shipbuilding that we had to look to get a handle on the fabulous new Bilbao Guggenheim museum. The presence of the Basque shipbuilding past stands as the leading metaphor for this, the most architecturally innovative building of the past several decades. With lines that flow like the a ship's hull and forms that echo wind-filled sails, the Bilbao Guggenheim is like the Basques themselves, firmly rooted in a well respected past, yet ready to innovate, change, and adopt. Steel was once a basic Basque industry, but that is now gone; hence the shell of the museum is not steel, but stunning high-tech titanium. Breathtaking interior atria reflect neither grandiosity nor elitism, but a sense of a future rising from a solid floor of local limestone and culture. The largest exhibition space is occupied today by a motorcycle history display that concentrates not on machines per se -- such would be a reversion to a Machine Age past -- but on the interaction between technology and culture. This suggests that the Basque region, only recently thought of as an industrial era relic akin to Detroit or the English Midlands, will again rise to the heights symbolized by Frank Gehry's surprising new structure.