Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Trip to Bilbao

During this stay in Spain I was also able to visit Bilbao for a few days. Bilbao is a smaller city in the Basque country in the North on the Atlantic side. I visited the Basque Centre for Applied Mathematics (BCAM), a new research centre that seems to be very active - there were a lot of good students and PDFs there as well as some permanent staff. The current location was in an industrial park outside the city but I understand they are moving to a building in the city centre soon. They have opportunities for longer term visitors - that would be fun to do. I gave a couple of seminars there that seemed to go well (or they were just polite). In Bilbao there is a kind of snack food called "Pintxos", little cold appetizers of various kinds you can get in bars with a beer. Very fun! 

Below are some pictures of Plaza Moyua and some flowers (in November!)


One of the main attractions of the town is the Guggenheim Museum there by the river



In the museum were two things I thought were fantastic. A large piece by Richard Serra called "The Matter of Time" and a later painting by Pollock called "Ocean Greyness" that was a bit different from the paintings I know of his. The pictures below are taken from the internet - no photography was allowed in the museum

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