Local travel instructions, conference site hotels

The conference organization has arranged for private buses between the Bilbao airport and the conference center/hotels before and after the conference. See link.

If you choose not to take one of these buses, you might find the following information helpful. You are going to the town of Oñate (that is, "Onate", where the "n" has a ~ squiggly sign over it - not supported by many keyboard character sets. The squiggly turns the "n" into an "ny" sound, so the town name is pronounced: oh NYA tay). In the Basque language it is spelled with an "i" at the end (oh NYA tee).

The conference center (Gandiaga Topagunea), and the Hospederia and the Hotel Sindica, are a few minutes walk from the Basilica of ARANTZAZU (pronounced: ah RAHN tsah soo).They are officially in the town of Onate, but are about 10 km from the center of town, up a winding mountain road. The conference center is new. Few people know of it yet, and fewer know it by name. If you are asking how to get there, ask for Arantzazu, the name of the Basilica.

Onate is in the province of Guipuzcoa (spelled Gipuzkoa in Basque), which is on the northern coast of Spain bordering on France.

A word about signs, maps and language. Virtually everyone in the Basque Country of Spain speaks Spanish, but the historical, native language is Basque, called "Euskara" in the Basque language. It has made a remarkable comeback in the last 25 years and, among other things, now many road signs and maps use Basque place names instead of the Spanish ones, or use both Basque and Spanish. The Basque language is not related to Spanish, so frequently the Basque and Spanish names are very different. Some of the most relevant ones for this conference: