San Fermin!

I honestly had low expectations for San Fermin. Between what I heard from people in Tudela (who are admittedly prone to exaggeration- whether about the freezing cold winters, which never actually dropped below freezing, the blisteringly hot summers, where the temperature hasn't actually climbed above 80 in weeks, and apparently San Fermin as well!)- you're going to die if you go on a Saturday, there's no bathrooms, you'll come home stained purple from wine, bring lots of kalimotxo (red wine and coke, offical fiestas drink of Navarra) cause you'll never be able to even get into a bar, you'll pay 10 euros for a beer- and what the English speaking news report on it (basically the same, you'll get everything you own stolen, your clothes will be ruined, etc.) I was expecting a fantastic party, but a really overwhelming crowd of drunken foreigners who I would want to punch in the face while I was covered in red wine and wondering when and how my my phone had been stolen.

Fortunately, none of that happened. I came home with everything I went with and the only stain on my pristine white shirt was a casualty while I was still in the apartment (typical Hilary, right? I would take a sample sip of our kalimotxo before I even left and dribble it down my shirt). We had no problem finding bathrooms, bars with reasonably priced drinks, and I didn't hear a word of English until my walk back to the bus station (obviously excluding any English spoken my friends, but they live in Tudela so that doesn't really count). 

Despite some low expectations, I was actually so excited about San Fermin  I couldn't sleep. As this cartoon sums up perfectly, adults are as excited about San Fermin starting on July 6th as little kids are about the three kings bringing them their Christmas presents on January 6th! 

July 5th: "Have you taken out your pañuelico (scarf)? Have you tried on your pants from last year? Have you picked a spot for lunch?" The joys of San Fermin!

I lay awake tossing and turning trying to decide what to wear, what to bring for food, for drink, if I would regret bringing my bag or my phone when they inevitably got stolen (I may have slightly overanalyzed the whole thing, but the thought of planning an overnight visit somewhere without booking a hotel was a little terrifying). The excitement (and crazy nerves) only increased as the day dawned, sunny and warm, and I donned the standard issue uniform- white shirt with a newly purchased red belt and red Tudela pañuelico. 

I'm now the proud owner of this beauty.

Living in Tudela gave me a chance to experience San Fermin as a "local" and oh my god it was incredible. In typical Tudela fashion, once we let slip to one of our favorite bartenders that we really had to make this our last round of drinks cause we were going to San Fermin the next day he pulled up a chair, grabbed a pen and paper and started scribbling away at a long list of recommendations. You may be foreign but that doesn't mean you have to do San Fermin like foreigners, he said. You´re from Tudela and you´re gonna do this right. Go here for the cheapest beers, go here for the cheapest food, go here for great mixed drinks, go here to watch the fireworks, and if anyone tries to rip you off, you just tell them you´re not gonna fall for it, you might be foreign but you´ve lived in Tudela for five years (five apparently being the magic number for anyone to take you seriously). 

While the advice was priceless, the biggest gift was still to come. And as he neared the end of his spiel, he asked us if we knew where the Cafe Iruña was in the Plaza del Castillo (Hemingway´s favorite bar in the most important square in Pamplona, for those who aren´t aware). No big deal or anything, but he was a member of this super swanky casino lounge on the second floor above the Cafe Iruña and he could give us passes to get into this members-only bar. If you´re still going at 8:30, he said, make sure you don´t miss the breakfast and dancing they do after the encierro, or running of the bulls. And all I can say is thank god we decided to get one more round because those passes were a game changer for the whole San Fermin experience. 

After what felt like an eternal bus ride through fields filled with sunflowers and the windmill-covered Navarran hills with the rest of the tudelanos making the trip up to Pamplona, we enjoyed a couple beers around the city as we scoped out the insanity. Oddly a couple places were places we´d been on previous trips to Pamplona, and it was very bizarre to see them shifted to fiestas mode- pinchos gone, plastic cups out, and packed at 6 in the afternoon!

By 7 we couldn´t resist any longer and had to try out our VIP passes. We were definitely afraid that if they looked at us too long they would realize we should not under any circumstances be allowed in, seeing as how we were broke English teachers carrying tote bags full of bottles of kalimotxo, so I gave them a quick flash of the card as I smoothly kept walking and we were in.  

Our balcony. Pure class.

The situation obviously demanded champagne. Who says San Fermin can't be classy?

Standing there, lording over the common folk of Pamplona from our balcony I fell in love with San Fermin. As the distinctive sound of gaitas playing jotas drifted across the plaza, the Pamplonans started to come out of the woodwork and joined together in the center of the plaza to dance a traditional jota. I realized the square was full of Pamplonans who were just celebrating their pride for their city, and above all for their region, for Navarra. Yes, there was a bull fight happening just down the road (which is a whole can of worms I don´t want to open now) and there were plenty of foreigners (foreign meaning both not-Spanish or not-Navarran) stinking up the square with the stench of old drinks, vomit, pee, and general fiestaness, I realized that despite all the terrible stereotypes and foreign interpretations of what San Fermin is, it actually is just a celebration of everything I love about Navarra, the region that has given me so much these past eleven months and become my home. 

We decided we needed to stay on the balcony til someone we knew walked by (not as farfetched as it sounds- after being on the same bus as a friend from Tudela completely by accident, we managed to run into a coworker and one of my students within our first half hour in Pamplona. Navarra really is a small small world). After a couple hours though we decided to speed up the process, by calling up a friend we wanted to meet up with, giving them our location, and then laughing as they repeatedly said "We don't see you" and we had to guide them. (Look up! No, up! Up up up! until they finally found us and we could see their shocked "How on earth did you get up there?!" faces.)

The rest of the night included a fireworks show and a concert, which by some weird coincidence was a group I'd seen perform in Boston, at a Spain-USA football match in Gillette a week after I got home from Granada, so it felt very full-circle to now see them at San Fermin. 

We ultimately headed back to our balcony for a bit, since it was just impossible to resist that kind of luxury, until the wee hours of the morning where we grabbed some Burger King (an international necessity) and accidentally found ourselves waiting front row by the edge of the wooden gates that separate the bulls from the onlookers. Regardless of your stance on the issue, the running of the bulls is probably the most iconic moment of San Fermin and it was incredible to watch from the front row, after years of watching clips on the news, or in Spanish class, or even this week of watching the encierros every day on the Spanish news and reading up on all the details (who get gored, and when and where and how, in gruesome full-page picture glory) every morning in the Diario de Navarra since its actually local news here in Tudela (so weird!). 

We were there an hour and a half early and got to watch the entire preparation- cleaning the streets from a nights damage of partying, then the runners slowly starting to filter in, carrying their newspapers in one hand and doing little warmup exercises, stretches, hopping about in place as the police moved about, forcibly removing anyone from the route who wasn´t "fit" to run, usually meaning very drunk or carrying some kind of illegal material, like a video camera. There was a fairly steady flow of rejects getting pushed through the gate where I was standing. 

My "view"

If it looks like this picture was taken from the ground, its because it was. I had to get a little creative.

After an hour and a half wait, things finally starting to get moving.

The encierro itself was over in a second (and surprisingly undramatic to be honest). I swear I didn´t see a single one of the actual bulls, just the smaller cows that run to help shepherd the bulls. To quote my Irish friend: "I think a bunch of sheep just ran past." The buildup was incredible though, two rockets fired in the distance as the bulls were released and entered the course, and you could see the nerves increasing in the faces and bodies of the runners as they started running slowly, before finally taking off in a full sprint as the bulls arrived. 

This was the view from my little perch, squatting on the ground, stuck underneath the huge crowd leaning on top of me, making the best of my view through the vallado. I actually was so stuck in that little cubby hole that my friends had to pull me out!

If you want to see what it actually looked like, from a slightly better viewpoint than I had, check out this link: http://www.rtve.es/noticias/san-fermin/encierros/. I saw the Encierro de Adolfo Martín. at the Curva de Mecedores. 

And of course, we couldn´t forget the promised breakfast and dance party at our favorite VIP casino lounge. Nothing could have prepared us for what awaited though. We got in line with a bunch of elderly couples, waiting for the doors to open at 8 am (easily the youngest in the place by a good 30 years). Once inside we grabbed the obligatory churros y chocolate breakfast with a cafe con leche and made for the balcony to watch the sun peek out above the buildings in the plaza. 

Good morning Pamplona!

As we were eating, a band started playing this fantastic Spanish folky dance music and all the little abuelas started dancing. Of course we had to join in, because how often to you find yourself at an 8 am disco breakfast with little Pamplonan grandmothers after pulling an all-nighter at the greatest fiesta in the planet?? By 9 am, we had red wines in hand (again, if you can´t have a 9 am glass of wine at San Fermin, when in life can you??) and the room was packed with everyone from 3 to 93, literally, and just about every age in between, just having the greatest time dancing to all these classic Navarran tunes like "No te vayas de Pamplona (Don´t leave Pamplona)" and congo lining around the room. It was with the greatest despair that we pulled ourselves away from what will be one of my dearest memories of Spain (and directly disobeyed the orders of that jota!) to make our way to the bus station for our 10:00 bus home.

Breakfast disco, aka the best invention ever. How did I ever start my Sunday mornings any other way??

Not a bad place for a wine.

Craicometer spinning out of control. Too much craic to handle. 

It wasn´t til the bus ride that the insanity of the past 24 hours finally started to sink in (mostly because the first 2 buses we tried to get on were already full, despite the fact that we had already bought tickets for them!). There were simply too many people trying to get back to Tudela that they gave up on any sense of order and just set us loose on a fleet of buses, figuring everyone who wanted to go to Tudela would eventually get there. The third time was the charm, though, fortunately and we finally were sitting down and asleep before the bus had even left Pamplona. I woke up about half way back to Tudela and realized after turning around to look at the back of the bus that every single person on the bus was fast asleep (mouth open, drooling, absolutely passed out) and it was complete silence on the bus. Guess thats what San Fermin will do to you ;)

Whatever teensy part of my heart wasn't already in love with Navarra has now hopelessly fallen under its spell. Give me gigantes, give me gaitas, give me jotas, give me red pañuelicos and chistorra and kalimotxo and patxaran. Although this navarrica knows the day I'll have to leave Navarra is quickly approaching, all I can do is scream "Que no me vaya de Navarra!"