Ok, proceed.
So
Alcohol, alcohol,
Alcohol, alcohol, alcohol
Hemos venido a emborracharnos,
y es resultado nos da igual.
In other words:
Alcohol, alcohol,
Alcohol, alcohol, alcohol,
We're here to get drunk,
and nothing else matters.
Yup. Short, simple, to the point. And sung in abundance at San Fermin. So... ok, sometimes, in my entries, I try to give a historical context to the things I do and see, but I think in this case, if I tried to do that, it would really take away from the honest truth about what San Fermin is about, which is, if you hadn't guessed, drinking. Now before I go too far, let me just say, "Mom, I didn't actually drink that much, I didn't get sick, I didn't pass out, and I was sober again by 4am. (At which point we were still awake, oh, my, goodness.)" Ok, formalties behind us, allow me to chronicle the night.
Friday, July 11th
1715h: Meet in Tarragona. Load up the furgoneta, insert CD full of awesome Spanish singalongs, and depart Tarragona with the music you are currently hearing (assuming you pressed play like I said!) at full blast.
1715h-2230h: Drive from Tarragona to Pamplona. An interesting piece of information that I learned was that, much like in Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia, passengers can be drinking as long as the driver is sober. This quite immediately cut the number of potential drivers we had for the outbound trip, as some wanted to take advantage of the fact that the beer was still cold when we left. I, personally, abstained until we were within an hour of Pamplona, because I didn't want to have to pee.
2230h: Arrive in Pamplona. Park the van in an underground lot on the outskirts of the city, get our bearings, and head towards the party. Stop en route to pick up red hankerchiefs, a staple of the traditional San Fermin outfit.
2300h: Arrive at the Plaza del Castillo, the center of the action. Find a bar with good music, head inside, order drinks, and dance a bit.
2330h: Decide to head outside, drinks in hand, to take a tour of the other bars. On route, find a store selling cheap boxed wine, which we decided would be more economically viable than buying drinks in a bar. We picked up a couple boxes to go, then headed to the park/grass area of the plaza to see what was up.
0h: The Fabulosos start to play, the favorite band of one of the women in our group. The concert, unfortunately, turns out to be a dud, so after everyone takes advantage of the public restroom nearby, we continue strolling through downtown Pamplona.
Saturday, July 12th
0h-0330h: Wander through the streets, going from bar to bar, drinks and boxed wine in hand, stopping wherever we hear good music. We were one of many many many many many many many many groups doing the exact same thing. Basically, in the downtown area, every other doorway is a bar, every single bar is full (no cover of course, because that would discourage partying), and the spillover fills, nearly literally, the streets. And remember, everyone is dressed essentially the same. It was crazy. It is absolutely unavoidable to get wine spilled on you, and people walk around the streets and into bars with botas full of wine or bottles of liquor from home. There are no rules, and everyone is super-relaxed, and essentially no belligerence. It's great. Just great.
0330h: I reach my personal lull, for the night and start to get really sleepy, but luckily, a bathroom break and an extended conversation between one of my friends and someone we don't know allows me to rest a bit and regroup. Eating a bocadillo (typical sandwhich on a baguette) helps too.
0345h: Continue roaming the streets, stopping for conversations with strangers or to pop into a bar to dance a bit.
0500h: The group is starting to sag. We did, after all, all go to work on Friday, and besides a 30 minute-nap that I took in the afternoon, we had essentially been up for 22 hours by this point. However, two of the guys in our group, Thor and another coworker Jason, had decided that they were going to run with the bulls during the enciendo, probably the most famous part of this festival. The enciendo starts every day at 8am, and they close the streets off at 7am to prepare, so we figured we'd wander down to the start and take a look at the bulls.
0545h: After checking out the bulls, which we big, and bull-like, and trying one last time to persuade our friends not to run, we parted ways, leaving Thor and Jason to situated themselves (there are only 2 or so entry points into the run, which is 825 meters from the start to the bullring, through typically narrow European streets. Where there aren't store fronts and houses closing in the route, the police set up barricades, behind which spectators can watch, and with a few entry points for the brave runners. After checking out the bulls we ended up being too late to find a spot on the fence, so we headed over to the bullring, where for 6 € you can get a seat to watch the bulls and the runners flood in, about 2.5 minutes after the rocket is fired at 8.
0615h: Get to the bullring, go inside, get seats, and spend the next 1 hour and 45 minutes in a half-asleep daze. Aside from snuggling with my buddies in an attempt to find a good napping position, I can't really tell you what else happened. There was a band, I think, and some replays of events earlier in the week on the screens inside the ring, as well an eventually successful attempt to do the wave, some singing (reference lyrics above and embedded music), and what have you.
0756h: A few people start to flood into the ring. Obviously, the bulls haven't been released yet, so they were greeted with whistles of disapproval and chants of "hijo de puta." (You look it up, I don't speak such vulgarities.)
0800h: We watch the rocket launch on the screen, see the bulls released, and watch the run on the screens.
0803h: Runners and the first bulls are streaming into the arena. As they should, the runners scatter to the sides while the people who work at the bullring attempt to lead the to the corral directly across from the entrance. For the next 2-3 minutes, runners and bulls continue into the ring. The initial group of bulls was about 4 full-grown black bulls, between something like 570kg and 675 kg. These were followed by a group of vaquillas, or young bulls, then finally a group of 3-4 absolutely enormous, yet more docile, brown and tan bulls.
0815h: We're still milling about the bullring, even though all of the bulls have been corralled. Suddenly, there is a bunch of commotion at the corral end, and before we can even see clearly, one of the vaquillas leaps out of the corral, hurdling a stack of runners who had laid down near the entrance, clearly anticipating this event. The vaquilla was allowed to run around at bit, where it tore at anyone who dared provoke it (which was a surprisingly large number of people), catching a few between its horns and tossing them to the ground. While painful, I'm sure, everyone got up again fairly quickly, as these bulls are still only at about chest height, and their horns are cut. Eventually, one of the large, more docile bulls was brought out and led over toward the vaquilla and then back toward the corral, with the vaquilla following. This process was repeated 5 times in total, which some of the vaquillas being particularly wild or onery, leading to some pretty aggressive attacks. I still haven't really been able to find an explanation as to why they do this, as the only purpose we saw it to serve was to antagonize the poor animal. Maybe that's how they prepare it for fights later in life, who knows.
From this point on, we were essentially on the return. After leaving the ring, we met up with our brave runners, who escaped with only an elbow scratch (a result of hitting another person, not a bull), and some slight soreness. We met up at the Plaza del Castillo, where we had been partying only hours before, and were thoroughly impressed (even the Spaniards among us) to see the bars still full and people still drinking, dancing, and partying. Holy crap. Seriously, I have a great respect for that kind of stamina.
Then the group of us headed to the van, piled in, and drove off, some 11 hours after arriving. We took turns driving and napping, stopping once for breakfast (more bocadillos!) and coffee, although I never got to drive :(. I think they didn't quite trust me, haha, having a non-EU driver's license and being "the baby" of the group, although no one quite said that to me directly. Psh, whatever, I've totally driven 12-passenger vans before, and since our driving age is younger in the US, I have just as much experience as someone a few years older than me! Heh, well, anyway.... yeah I guess I just miss driving a bit; I think this has been the longest I've gone without driving since I got my license, i.e., in the last 7 years (it's been almost 6 months!). I actually think in two weekends, I'm just going to rent a car for a Sunday and go driving around, with some good music and nowhere in particular to go. Maybe I'll toss in my running shoes and some food, and just go somewhere really in the country, maybe to Castilla-La Mancha, where the supposed Don Quixote windmills are. Sounds like a plan.
Anyway, that was a sidetrack (haha, nothing new). But yeah, so that was my trip to San Fermin. Definitely the most fun I've had in a given 24-hour period of time. It was insane... insanely fun. And imagine, we were only there for one day, but this is a SEVEN-DAY FESTIVAL And they do the same thing every single day. Which, I hear, basically turns into two weeks of vacation for the people of Pamplona, one to party, and one to recover. Again, partying is a serious business, and I'm not exaggerating here.
Good times, indeed. And now... I must get ready for a birthday party. Don't worry, I took a nap.
