San Fermin

Ever heard of San Fermin??

Words cannot describe my anticipation and excitement for this trip. I just finished Hemingway’s ‘The Sun Also Rises’ (I’ll do my review on the book later) and I was so excited. It was surreal that it was actually happening.  Mika and I got into Bilbao Thursday night, chilled Friday morning – got our outfits ready: pure white shorts with a slightly cream button down tank (I know, but it was sheer and with a white tank underneath it semi passed as white) my white Mickey Shoes and my backpack. We meet Richard, Willie & Carolina at the terminus to take the 4pm bus to Vitoria. After getting to Vitoria we meet Alex and we go to the Eroski mother store (HUGE) and get our food for the next 24 hours. We stop at a few more places for necessities. We make our way, get lost and por fiiinnnn make it to Pamplona-Iruña (its Basque name) around 8pm.

As we drive through the city, every person we pass, old and young is wearing white with a touch a red (around the neck or waist). It’s so magical. I’m really here. We park and meet up with a Pamplonian who will show us around. He brings his funny French friend. They take us to the town to where the fiesta is. First is a giant park filled with nicely set up large stand of food, beer, wine and souvenirs. My eye goes straight to the churro stand of course. There are tons of people. We continue through and the stands turn into set up blocked off tables of street vendors. These are less fancy. Less food and more t-shirts, African bags and perfumed soap. We finally make it to Casco Viejo / Casco Antigua (every Spanish town has one-except Lekeitio of course which is all the old part). We are up high, on the edge of the ‘mountain’ looking at everything below. There is a giant carnival going on, the Ferris wheel and colorful lights are hard to miss. We continue walking and notice many lined up at the edge and as we look over it seems lots of people are crowding around anticipating something. We find out that the bulls will be going through this street at 10pm to go to their holding place getting ready for tomorrow. It’s 15 till so we race down to try to get a good spot. The sun is setting now (945 and sun? I love summer). We find a way to climb up to a somewhat grassy area. It’s quite the trek. We get a little muddy and some leaf irritated my skin but we made it. Whites still white. We saw them being led, running. Cooool! Everyone cheered. It finished. WE go down to the carnival area. I love carnivals. The smell, the look, the people. I just love it. We walk through, there are so many people, nothing new. All foreigners no doubt. Willie and I get churros. It was hard to choose, they had chocolate filled, dipped, covered, but we got the classic. They were so good. A little later we all shared a ridiculously large sized cotton candy. We see the famous fireworks go off. Everyone stops where they are and looks up. It was neat. But to be honest, I feel like I never enjoy watching them as much as everyone else…is that bad? Anyway, afterwards Mika and I buy San Fermin sweaters and scarves. The guy was like super cool at first but then got all annoyed and lame by the end, weird vendors. We then made the trek to the car. We park it closer; I change into pants (so glad I brought those, habia frio!) We eat our dinner (never mind it’s about 1am). Bocadillo de Lomo, jusanitos and cerveza sin alcohol. It’s fun. We then leave to fiesta.

It’s approximately 2am now. In the giant plaza/park area there are hundreds of people listening/dancing to a live music group. They played all the popular hits (Spanish/Latin/Portuguese). Everyone was dancing, a lot of Latinos there. It was sof un. After forever s girls have to pee. The line to the “nice” bathrooms is ridiculous. We try the boys bathroom. There’s a man there that says no….who knew they’d have a bouncer for public restrooms..? So we go through the park to find some portables. Turns out those bathrooms are pretty much just like a shower. So Mika and I are in neighboring bathrooms and I’m about to pee my pants as we’re trying to talk each other through how we are going to accomplish this. Oh gosh and the smell was just wretched. It was the most awful, most funny thing ever. Joee! We go back to the concert and dance with everyone some more. The French learning Spanish boy is quite funny and dances with each of us girls all dramatically. The concert finished.

We make our way to the real Casco Antigua. It’s jam packed! And also smelly and wet and just crazy. There are random people barbequing in open spaces and selling it. We hold hands to make it through without losing anyone.  We get to the plaza, square where we can breath a little. It seems like this is where all the piss drunk people area trying to get a hold of their selves. It’s funny. I see a Hemingway monument and map thing showing where one would go to see what he saw. Man, If I was here for more than 24 hours I would try to go through it, really neat. WE finally make it to this bar our friend wanted to show us. It’s packed of course but it’s whatever. There are attractive men everywhere. It was fun to be checked out even though they were probably all drunk. I may have danced with a few randoms. Speak some spanglish. Its funny cause some people who are obviously foreigners will try to speak to us in Spanish because we look Spanish. We walk around to find another place. We get to a much bigger place. We dance. I really do like dancing. I ask for a coke and the guy gives me a half whiskey half coke mixture. I tell him cause I don’t want to pay 8e for that and he apologizes and asked if the coke was better then usual this time. Hah. It’s cool because when I’m surrounded by people who know barely any Spanish I feel fluent when talking to bartenders or random Spanish people. Yes! I’m sure these details are boring so I’ll just say it was a long fun night of fiesta-ing, I met a lot of people from lots of places, a couple Americans, English, French (this one guy, no matter how many times I told him I didn’t speak French, would only talk to me in French) and lots of Spanish.

By 630 everyone leaves the clubs and finds spots for watching the bulls run (8am) we walk around a bit, the sun is rising, get a neapolitan, and then get a spot. The fence is all filled with people so we’re betting on being able to see by standing on top of this trashcan. We wait and wait, and finally 8am comes and we hear the first shot. A couple minutes go by and we see people coming in the street. They are walking. Another shot comes. The runners begin to pick up the pace. Finally we hear the bulls coming. People run and look frightened, looking behind them as often as they can. They come! We see it! We scream and yell in Spanish! We hear another shot. Some people begin to leave. No way it can be over… So I go to the 1^st gate, then pass through to the 2^nd, bordering the streets. More come! And I’m right there! It’s so cool. And then one more batch. Woah. And then just like that it’s finished. Right now everyone is in the stadium to see the coming in of the bulls. We wait outside the stadium and when the doors open and some people leave we sneak in and find some seats. All the runners are in the arena where the trade in and out baby cows and the people will try to get as close as they can to it without being steered. It’s really cool. A lot of people get trampled but they seem to be all right. Some people held on to it’s back for a good amount of time. Everyone cheered. The sun was really coming in the arena and it was beautiful. When it finishes we leave. The actually running of the real groomed and large bulls and bull fighting is at 6pm tonight and costs a good amount of money. We decided that we would see that in Bilbao during their festival (apparently the bull fights are much nicer and better there.)

We walk back to the car, it’s about 10am now. We get in the car and drive back to Vitoria. We are all passed out. When we get to the bus station we all trample out of the car, dirty white pants and shirts, crooked red scarves. We are tired out of our minds, some drunk, it’s quite a funny site. People around are looking at us like “yeah we know exaaactly what you did.” I laugh. We take the bus, take metro, get off at Moyua, buy a pizza, eat the pizza. The Mika and I go to sleep at about 2pm.

Fiesta all night, siesta all day.