Bucks Montgomery Physician Fall 2020 - 18

CREATIVE CORNER

BROKE IN BILBAO
by Richard Weiss, MD
There we were at the entrance to the phenomenal
Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, naked as
the day we were born! Regarding pesetas, that is.

So there we were in this unique, striking
monument to the art world, and we couldn't
even rustle up the price of admission.

Days earlier, on a bus in Barcelona, my wife's wallet
had been pilfered. All of our cash and credit cards
were taken. Fortunately, we were with friends who were
able to finance our visits to various sites that day.

I approached the traveler's aid window just off
the immense lobby. I poured out our tale of
woe to the woman behind the counter, but the
language barrier prevented her from helping.

Then we flew to the northern portion of the
Iberian Peninsula, a scant few miles from the
French border. We learned that the late Spanish
dictator Francisco Franco had loved the region and
possessed a vacation home there. The language
spoken there, Euskara, is unrelated to other languages
in Europe; superficially it sounded like Finnish or
Hungarian, and was completely impenetrable to us.

Just then, two men arrived on horseback, just
outside the lobby. One fellow resembled a Native
American on a paint horse; the other, a taller man,
on a striking white stallion. The taller man entered
the lobby, immediately understood our plight after
one look at us, took out a cloth sack filled with silver
coins, and tossed the sack to us. He then departed,
with his friend, as suddenly as he had appeared.

One of the three provincial capitals in this region is
Bilbao, an industrial city where the first shots of the
Spanish Civil War were fired. Political separatists lobbied
to build a world class attraction to bring attention to
their desire to separate from Spain. Hence the regional
government contracted with the famed architect
Frank Gehry to design a museum featuring priceless
works provided by the Guggenheim Foundation.

I was dumbfounded, stunned, and tongue-tied.
No words could describe the relief we felt.

16 BUCKS/MONTGOMERY PHYSICIAN

fall 2020

I turned to the woman behind the
counter and stammered............WHO
WAS THAT BASQUE MAN!!!
Bucks Montgomery Physician Fall 2020

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