Places where it's hip to be square

The WSJ piece attacking the Basque language has ignited a long tail of reactions. Summarizing: the original article's here, an account of the outrage, some replies are linked in my own post, the WSJ itself published some reply letters, and then there's also a big protest letter signed by 180 personalities.

Well, fortunately, not all foreign accounts about modern Basque living in the international media are so negative. Commonly, it's more about the marvels of Guggenheim (in the New York Times, last september), or delightful gastronomy (just past week in the NYT, again).

My favourite one, however, was written for Slate in 2003. Adventures in Basqueland by June Thomas was a nice piece of reporting, I think. June wrote about what she found amusing, and did so in a descriptive but personal way. This lovely paragraph, for instance:

Every day, groups performing styles of traditional regional music known as trikitrixa, alboka, and gaita tour the original seven streets of the Casco Viejo. Although some, especially the choral groups, tend to be dominated by graybeards, others are composed of twentysomething scenesters. Here and in the dances of the Basque Country performed every evening in the Plaza Nueva, I was shocked by how hip the artists were. Several of the young women playing medieval music on authentic instruments or dancing a jota had facial piercings; the guys with bells tied round their knees doing the sword dance while wearing big goofy red berets were cool kids with tattoos and novelty sideburns. In the Basque Country these days, it seems, it's hip to be square.

It's also amusing for us finding that what we might consider standard amuses the foreigner...