Seriously, there’s no need for you to go to San Sebastian
It’s not an injury issue, or a player registration problem. It’s not a planned air traffic controller strike, or some kind of dastardly documentation difficulty dreamed up by the hard-working folk in our passport offices.
It’s not a matter of Basque indifference, or enmity, or any such ethnic complication; it’s not the hardy perennial challenge of ticket allocations and getting around all that.
It’s this: I don’t want the game to go on there simply because I want to keep San Sebastian all to myself.
I’ll put my cards on the table. I love San Sebastian, from top to bottom. I love Bindeluze, the bar which serves the greatest gin and tonics in the whole world; I love the Kursaal bridge in the centre of the town which leaves you with a fine coating of sea spray when you cross, because the water running underneath is tidal; I love the stunning beach in the centre of the town, La Concha, with the long, slow curve of a promenade which tracks the shoreline for miles, though I most certainly didn’t love the tall crackpot who was walking along the beach on my first visit, ‘tackle out’, as Blackadder would have put it.
This is not one of those loves you share, unfortunately. It’s a selfish love. Not the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name, but certainly the Love You Dare Not Seek To Share. I won’t go into details, but there have been various travel writers, holiday makers, professionals in the holiday industry with whom I have had to have a quick word, and that word is generally ‘shtoom’, or some derivative thereof.
Michael Lewis, author of ‘Moneyball’ and ‘The Blind Side’, has a book out at the moment called ‘The Big Short’, about the financial crisis in America. Lewis says one of his contacts in Morgan Stanley knew there were problems when he approved a mortgage of $750,000 for a casual farm worker in California who earned $14,000 a year and spoke no English.
When I heard this I thought a) this is a shocking indictment of modern finance and b) why didn’t I ask Morgan Stanley for a loan for a holiday home in San Sebastian? That may not have been the order in which those thoughts occurred to me, either.
I haven’t even touched on the greatest attraction of San Sebastian: the txikiteo.
Crudely put, this is a pub crawl, but it’s far more civilised than that term suggests, with its connotations of students vomiting into their friends’ coat pockets. The txikiteo is a pre-dinner stroll with friends among the hostelries of San Sebastian, with a small glass of beer or wine accompanying a couple of snacks in each establishment.
It’s not a matter of lorrying enough beer on board to float a ferryboat, but an opportunity to catch up with your pals in a civilised setting. You take ten or 15 minutes for refreshment and a chat and then it’s on to the next bar counter for half a glass of Mahou and a little solomillo on bread.
(Don’t – if you feel you have to go – don’t call them ‘tapas’. They’re pintxos.) The odd thing is that a lot of times the txikiteo is a matter for friends of long standing who are all about the same age, so while you’re in one of the dozens of bars in the Old Town, enjoying a tiny ham-and-cheese croissant with your glass of rioja, the Real Sociedad banners gently wafting in the breeze, suddenly you’ll see six men come in, all aged 51. Or four women, all aged 47. Or nine men, all aged 32.
It’s disconcerting for about ten minutes, because then they’re gone, onto the next spot. Then another bunch pile in and it starts all over again.
Munster have been to San Sebastian before for games, so there’s no real need to go back, right? Why draw that on yourself? Go to Biarritz and lounge around outside the casino instead, or head to Bilbao and look at the Guggenheim Museum. You’ve been to a place once and the thrill is gone.
The rugby I leave to others of this parish, but I feel the need to spare those thinking of this journey. Don’t do it. Stay at home and spare your holiday euros here.
If you feel you must go, don’t make the most basic of mistakes. It’s only San Sebastian to tourists. The locals call it Donostia.
The rest you’ll have to find out for yourself. Zorte on, as we say in Euskara.
* michael.moynihan@examiner.ie; twitter MikeMoynihanEx
