I am in Basque country, in Bilbao. I met the guy separately to say a special bye, to communicate without words what his company had meant. Y'day when we were flying - an early morning flight to Valencia and then another one after a longish layover to Bilbao - my throat felt scratchy and i felt like a corpse because the European low cost airlines have uncomfortable seats and no built in mould-able pillow in the seat back such that I couldn't catch up on sleep. And then we reached the Airbnb that others had booked and invited us to, to share a holiday together. Bilbao was hot like Delhi in May, yesterday. But we still got out and sat outdoors in the heat to order numerous pintxos like tourists at a bar. Because la otras mujer is still not comfortable taking her mask off indoors with other people. And then this morning I got out for a run, to a large pretty park and then along the estuary of the Bay of Biscay, to the Guggenheim museum here, and the giant flower-garden bear/dog in front of it. I felt alive and fresh, and felt like my unexercised bums had needed just this the whole of last week. I got back sweaty and happy and had a cold water shower, which felt a lil too cold. And soon after i started to burn and feel feverish. I tested positive on a home self test covid kit. And we were soon thrown out of the shared Airbnb by the otra mujer. We are now in a hotel, the weather is cooling off, i am now feeling cold but am feeling better and hungry and asking hubby (who tested negative although we had been sharing bed, water bottle, pintxos, and what-not) to get me empanadas. I was also trying my broken Espanol y'day and at one point the waiter, exasperated, just asked in English, "what do you want?". hubby says people are much friendlier here than in Budapest (and Vienna) but the airport bathrooms in Valencia were keeping the stereotype of Spanish disorder, and Budapest really grew first on me and then on him and my sister who also visited. the grittiness of it, the laidbackness of it, it's language and its people, it's Jewishness and it's strange night life; the day we finally left we needed a cab at 2 in the morning which was proving to be difficult. In the process we realised it was the time for parties and conversations to get over, an open pub near our Airbnb suddenly let out a group of mellow drunk youngsters, men and women, who strolled out calmly, depositing their empty glasses carefully at the bar counter (where i was trying to get help calling a cab) and then one of the women walked out and sat on the ground/sidewalk to wear her lace shoes which she had taken off inside. Other people were also walking back home or getting dropped off from similar gatherings, talking but not noisy, drunk but not disoriented. A cabby finally showed up and was very courteous and polite. This is the one thing I wish I could take back to India, the physical freedom women have in the west....