Oy. I cannot remember the last time something was oversold so heavily to me. I am literally racking my brain for another incident like what occurred this weekend and I can't come up with anything. All week Eddie and I were so stoked to go to the mountains and run with the bulls, stuff of legends, bragging rights, an especially Spanish custom of daring and bravado. Daring and bravado my left ass cheek. Excuse the language in the post, it's not going to get much better because I'm still slightly heated although I promise to do my journalistic best to present the events as they were, positive and negatives given equal weight etc. Let's start with what was decidedly awesome about the weekend
The animals--This tradition of running these animals up the main street into the plaza just feels old. It is almost akin to the ceremonial native american dances one can take in at certain times in New Mexico. The caballeros--cowboys--are decked out in this distinctly Spanish attire and their horses are huge. We're talking their chests were higher than the top of my head. Powerful animals, well trained and ridden with the skill and grace that comes from years out in the campo--countryside. Here are photos of the Caballeros and el campo
Much like in Pamplona or anywhere else they move the animals right up the principal street of the village. All the intersections have large swinging wooden gates that get closed when the animals approach and every window is at least barred, if not boarded as well especially at ground level.
The "mountains". More hills and rolling little mountains. The trees in rows are olive trees; Spain is the largest exporter of Olive oil in all of Europe, far surpassing Greece, or so I'm told. It is one of their few true industries.
So anyways they run them into the plaza, which is roughly the size of a baseball infield, like this:
Now one of the coolest aspects of the whole deal was the Gladiator-esque "seating" or viewing areas around the arena. They are just wooden boards thrown across the poles you can see there and lashed together with rope. When the bulls charge you the people around the edges disappear like bugs scrambling into every available crack. That's for old people and women. The younger guys run until they find a pole and then jump up and grab onto it while the bull passes underneath. Doing so is incredibly satisfying especially if you can feel the bull right behind you and then you just manage to get up above the horns. Man do they ever have some wicked horns. So Eddie and I did that for maybe an hour and a half, and then what they do is they let the bulls out one by one to run back down the main street and out into the fields again. So once we got tired of running around with all these people pushing and panicking along the sides of the arena, we made sure to pick a particularly feisty animal then waited just outside the arena until they herded it out and then got it attention and raced the half mile downhill with it just behind us. Nobody in the village does that, they all just escape out of the street and watch the animal pass so we were being yelled at by the locals who thought it an unnecessary risk. Typically american. All in all, an exhilarating couple of hours during which we were only in serious physical danger several dozen times.I commented on the bravado because once I got feel for the whole deal I realized the only true danger lay in the possibility that someone else would do something stupid in their panic and screw you over, or if you'd had too much to drink and didn't give the animals enough credit. By the time the third or fourth animal was brought out I was waiting just outside the poles long past when everybody else scrambled for their hiding places. Reme's brother was yelling at me incessantly to get behind something. I think he was just genuinely worried for my safety, but it bugged me. You cower behind your wooden board while this animal runs past 15 feet away from you. Ridiculous. Walking across the street in this country is more dangerous. To their credit there were several younger guys who were really going at it, racing past the bulls and just avoiding their horns etc. One guy waited for a bull to full on charge him, then timed a jump perfectly over the animal just as it lowered its horns. That was epic.
Here are some photos of the countryside, the village, its churches and the castle. The castle especially was a terrible disappointment. I just wanted to walk in and feel some history you know? The moors or the Visigoths before them probably built this castle over a thousand years ago in order to have the best possible view over the countryside etc. etc. Inside, it's a goddamn restaurant! An expensive one too. AND it costs a Euro if you want to climb up on its one wall.
So the three hours of bull activity were very worthwhile. The rest was just painful. Eddie and I were abysmally bored. After being introduced to all that Sevilla has to offer and a great new group of friends we were just listless all weekend. To make matters worse, the people in the mountains are much less used to foreigners, especially black people. They all stared at Eddie all the time and it made him very uncomfortable, and it was hardly ever curious staring or friendly inquisitiveness. Long story short we really felt we missed out on a weekend that could have been used to go to the beach or attend one of our city visits or really anything except sitting, bored out of our skulls 8-10 hours a day. Oh and here is the absolute kicker: Reme dropped two grenades on us the second night. I will diverge here for a moment to explain to the 40 plus crowd the concept of a 'grenade'.
Two years ago a social phenomenon in the form of programming on MTV know as "The Jersey Shore" took off. It is, without a doubt, one the most useless shows to ever exist. If you haven't heard of it, good. You're lucky. Remain blissfully ignorant. Some terms from the show have come into common everyday usage, especially among my generation. In this case the term is entirely accurate, appropriate, and slightly hilarious. Any girl who is just disgusting, as in overweight, ugly, terrible personality, annoying etc. but who, for some reason, has attractive friends she is hanging out with is a grenade. She earns this title because if one of your buddies wants to get with one of the attractive girls, somebody has to jump on the grenade and make the ultimate sacrifice for the team. A good wingman will occasionally jump on the grenade for a buddy, in the understanding that next time the favor will be returned in kind. So now that you have the basic concept, imagine our frustration when, at 12:30 AM Sunday morning, Reme comes back into the apartment where Eddie and I have been winding down and shooting the shit for half an hour with two grade A grenades. They were not nice, they were not fun or funny, nor were they entertaining. All they did was offer us a free drink before dragging us back to the plaza, now packed with drunk townspeople, every other one of them smoking up a storm. We didn't go to dance, and we didn't go to meet anybody. We stood around like sheep, and people continued to stare at Eddie. It was just an awful situation all around. Reme meant well, i know she did, and it would've been comical if it wasn't so uncomfortable and hadn't just put the cherry on top of the suck-sunday that was our weekend.
Now to be fair, this festival is a big deal for our family, and even Reme and Juan Antonio were out late, until like 4 both nights. They know a lot of people in the village, and I was talking to Reme and she said she especially loves coming up because she doesn't have to constantly worry about Pablo. They know all his friends up there and all the parents so it's very stress-free for them and they can kick back a little, drink with friends and talk. For those reasons and just out of a sense of gratitude for the opportunity Eddie and I made absolutely sure to keep our attitudes to ourselves and to be as kind and excited as possible. I know I won't forget the bulls, or the couple of guys who showed us how and when to run from them and where to hide; I won't forget the view of the countryside from the balcony of the apartment, especially at about 7 45 AM on Saturday when I got up early to see the sun rise, a deep, dark reddish color in the haze to the east, rapidly climbing and beginning its relentless assault on central Spain. Even that won't remain untainted for me though. I told Reme about it while two of her nieces were with us in the kitchen later in the day and I described it as best I could in Spanish. Reme got it, but the oldest niece asked me what time I got up.
7:15
(in spanish)What? Why in the world would you do that? That's stupid.
Well I went to bed at 12:30 because I was tired and didn't feel like drinking.
Didn't feel like drinking? That's stupid. What a boring night.
Yeah, I went to sleep early, got up early, saw the sunrise, ate breakfast, prayed for half an hour, did pushups, sat in the sun and enjoyed the serenity of the countryside and basked in the luxury of the cool mountain breeze,read for three hours, half of it schoolwork and half of it research for my thesis and an excellent book on Pat Tillman (thanks grandma) and his story. I did all of this before you managed to drag your sorry, hungover ass out of bed at 1 in the afternoon. Oh, and what's the BEST part about all of that? Yup, you're going to do the exact same thing all over again the next day.
I do love this place but I'm a little bit.........American, I think. It's easier to see when you get to compare yourself and others to Europeans. Sometimes it's not a fun thing to see. I have been praising the experience nonstop, but I promise later this week to compile something on what is not just different but the worse parts of Spain, Spanish culture etc. There are some serious problems which are only partially reflected by their current economic woes.
So anyways they run them into the plaza, which is roughly the size of a baseball infield, like this:
So the three hours of bull activity were very worthwhile. The rest was just painful. Eddie and I were abysmally bored. After being introduced to all that Sevilla has to offer and a great new group of friends we were just listless all weekend. To make matters worse, the people in the mountains are much less used to foreigners, especially black people. They all stared at Eddie all the time and it made him very uncomfortable, and it was hardly ever curious staring or friendly inquisitiveness. Long story short we really felt we missed out on a weekend that could have been used to go to the beach or attend one of our city visits or really anything except sitting, bored out of our skulls 8-10 hours a day. Oh and here is the absolute kicker: Reme dropped two grenades on us the second night. I will diverge here for a moment to explain to the 40 plus crowd the concept of a 'grenade'.
Two years ago a social phenomenon in the form of programming on MTV know as "The Jersey Shore" took off. It is, without a doubt, one the most useless shows to ever exist. If you haven't heard of it, good. You're lucky. Remain blissfully ignorant. Some terms from the show have come into common everyday usage, especially among my generation. In this case the term is entirely accurate, appropriate, and slightly hilarious. Any girl who is just disgusting, as in overweight, ugly, terrible personality, annoying etc. but who, for some reason, has attractive friends she is hanging out with is a grenade. She earns this title because if one of your buddies wants to get with one of the attractive girls, somebody has to jump on the grenade and make the ultimate sacrifice for the team. A good wingman will occasionally jump on the grenade for a buddy, in the understanding that next time the favor will be returned in kind. So now that you have the basic concept, imagine our frustration when, at 12:30 AM Sunday morning, Reme comes back into the apartment where Eddie and I have been winding down and shooting the shit for half an hour with two grade A grenades. They were not nice, they were not fun or funny, nor were they entertaining. All they did was offer us a free drink before dragging us back to the plaza, now packed with drunk townspeople, every other one of them smoking up a storm. We didn't go to dance, and we didn't go to meet anybody. We stood around like sheep, and people continued to stare at Eddie. It was just an awful situation all around. Reme meant well, i know she did, and it would've been comical if it wasn't so uncomfortable and hadn't just put the cherry on top of the suck-sunday that was our weekend.
Now to be fair, this festival is a big deal for our family, and even Reme and Juan Antonio were out late, until like 4 both nights. They know a lot of people in the village, and I was talking to Reme and she said she especially loves coming up because she doesn't have to constantly worry about Pablo. They know all his friends up there and all the parents so it's very stress-free for them and they can kick back a little, drink with friends and talk. For those reasons and just out of a sense of gratitude for the opportunity Eddie and I made absolutely sure to keep our attitudes to ourselves and to be as kind and excited as possible. I know I won't forget the bulls, or the couple of guys who showed us how and when to run from them and where to hide; I won't forget the view of the countryside from the balcony of the apartment, especially at about 7 45 AM on Saturday when I got up early to see the sun rise, a deep, dark reddish color in the haze to the east, rapidly climbing and beginning its relentless assault on central Spain. Even that won't remain untainted for me though. I told Reme about it while two of her nieces were with us in the kitchen later in the day and I described it as best I could in Spanish. Reme got it, but the oldest niece asked me what time I got up.
7:15
(in spanish)What? Why in the world would you do that? That's stupid.
Well I went to bed at 12:30 because I was tired and didn't feel like drinking.
Didn't feel like drinking? That's stupid. What a boring night.
Yeah, I went to sleep early, got up early, saw the sunrise, ate breakfast, prayed for half an hour, did pushups, sat in the sun and enjoyed the serenity of the countryside and basked in the luxury of the cool mountain breeze,read for three hours, half of it schoolwork and half of it research for my thesis and an excellent book on Pat Tillman (thanks grandma) and his story. I did all of this before you managed to drag your sorry, hungover ass out of bed at 1 in the afternoon. Oh, and what's the BEST part about all of that? Yup, you're going to do the exact same thing all over again the next day.
I do love this place but I'm a little bit.........American, I think. It's easier to see when you get to compare yourself and others to Europeans. Sometimes it's not a fun thing to see. I have been praising the experience nonstop, but I promise later this week to compile something on what is not just different but the worse parts of Spain, Spanish culture etc. There are some serious problems which are only partially reflected by their current economic woes.
No comments:
Post a Comment