Can you say, "anti-climactic"?

It was pretty appropriate that I was reading "Hell's Angels" by Hunter S. Thompson on the plane ride to Spain, the perfect accompaniment to a weekend whose most bizarre moment was watching festival goers do lines of coke off a park bench. I'll be leaving that gem out of the version I tell my mother, that's for sure.

I get to Bilbao airport with a vague game plan. My ultimate destination is Pamplona. During the Feria of San Fermin, otherwise known as The Running of The Bulls, there will be no free rooms in town so I am going to stay up all night. I hear that it's a pretty good party, so why not? My idea is to find the bus scheds. to/from both Pamplona and San Sebastian, a nearby seaside town. Check, I can get to San Sebastian, but of course she has no info on getting to Pamplona from San Sebastian. What the hell, let's go to the beach first, it's still early.

San Sebastian is part of Basque Spain, famous for tremendous Tapas, ripe Rioja red wines, and festive ferias. They have an old town with cobble-stoned streets, great for wandering, exploring the wide array of Tapas displays and watching tall pours of this tart white wine that they make in that part of the country. They pour from a height over their heads, making a great show of it and it lands in the glass all foamy and white, but has a surprisingly tart yet crisp quality to it that is very refreshing, and likely kicks you in the ass from the alcohol content.

I have learned a minuscule amount of Spanish, and absorbed some from the Galician Spaniard coworker in NYC, Gisela here in my lab in Paris (we had a tapas meal- think Sunday tea but Spanish with a generous amount of alcohol, esp. for out of town guests- with her parents, brother, and assorted family friends, and I was able to follow a bit of the goings-on then which were all in Spanish) and Julien speaks decent Spanish. It's really fun to be able to enter a totally Spanish place and eat and drink and order and feel fairly comfortable. The french gal next to my bench remarked, "but how were you able to speak and be understood?". Hell, live somewhere where folks don't understand you half of the time and it gets pretty damn easy to go off somewhere
else and just blunder your way through. It takes a certain humility, for sure. Besides, I can mime my way through nearly anything. It's just a big game of charades that you play with a huge ass smile on your face.

Right, on to Pamplona. The line for the bus tickets is LONG, and everyone is wearing white with this red sash around their waist and a red bandanna tied around their necks. Hmm... evidently there is a required uniform which no one told me about. Oh well, I'm a tourist, no problem. I get on one of about 10 buses headed to Pamplona, realizing that there are going to be a plethora of other buses from other Spanish towns
arriving in Pamplona as well. This could get a bit crazy. The adrenaline rises.

I arrive in Pamplona to a sea of white-and-red clad bodies who predominantly speak Spanish. I wander around the streets trying to gauge the direction of where the action is at. As luck would have it, some gal was standing near the bus station handing out maps. Goodie, I can leave my bag at this Placa(plaza) called San Francisco. Cool. All
I have to do is find it. I wander for about an hour and a half through the most wine-sodden, raunchy, rowdy, group of people I have ever seen. I have been to Mardi Gras; I know something of the levels of filth people will succumb to after nights of bawdy drink and rabble-rousing, but this was on a scale I was wholly unprepared for.
The main square of the town was just chock full of people, and this square is about the size of an American football field! Many of them had acquired an odd faintish-purple color from pouring wine over each other onto those nice white uniforms. Now this is not wine like you and I drink Stateside, no- this is some raunchy stuff that comes out
of a tin-lined box; they actually put coca-cola in it to make it drinkable. Unfathomable! This horrible vinegary watered-down wine with coke in it is what's in most glasses. Blech. So this smell, an acidic hazy red-wine pall hangs over the Spanish drinking team of Emperor Nero's wet dreams.

I deposit my bag at the office. I take stock of the melange of humanity surrounding me. There are still some families around at this hour as the sun has just extinguished, and some folks are just crashed out on the pavement catching a few scant minutes of shut-eye amidst the foul feria atmosphere. I sit on a bench for a time and take it all in. Oh my drunken humanity! The band comes on with a crackling mind-bending
interference in the speakers and I can't sit any longer.

I alternate between sitting on benches and dodging drunken Spaniards for the next few hours; they think that since I am unaccompanied I am looking to get laid. I can't get wasted, god knows what these pagans might do to me. And frankly, if I drink another beer I'll have to fight a crowd of 20 for a fighting chance at a toilet. I find a quiet spot where some folks are crashed out on park benches. Why not? Yep, I
slept on a park bench like a bum. There's one to put in the travel journal. I thought that sleeping behind the driver's seat in the back of a Honda Civic in the middle of
the flattest country I have ever seen in South Dakota was the most uncomfortable sleep I've had, but that pales in comparison to the park in Pamplona.

I awoke to some drunken revelers splashing water on each other from the fountain just in front of me, rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and warmed the blood back into my fingers and legs, and only then noticed that there were guys doing lines off the bench across from me. Great. Well, the lovers over there seem non-plussed, so why should I move?

Finally I have cramped so badly that it's hard to sit up. God, I feel old. I spend another few hours wandering around, for if I stand still for too long, some guy comes up to me and I have to ward him off in English, which is nowhere near as impressive as swearing in Spanish, who can out-swear NYC cab drivers. It is truly Impressive.

Finally, I decide to take some photographs to document the melee. And in the process of shooting a white and red uniformed mass of drunkenness packing the street just before dawn, this Spanish guy asks me in English with an Irish accent, "Are you here all alone?". He's all incredulous. And he asks if I'd like to hang out with them,
meaning him and his 2 other friends. They were pretty nice actually. Though Alfonso (let's call him that, as I don't really remember his name) really thought that since I was all by myself, all alone and unaccompanied, completely unchaperoned, tout seul as they say in French which literally means "all alone", that clearly I was looking to get laid. He was really offended that I didn't stay in town another day with him, or at the very least kiss him goodbye. (I can never imagine a gal thinking that she was owed some sexual favors if she spent a few weird hours with me at a festival) I realize that some things are cross-culturally universal. (sorry guys, I of course don't mean any of YOU personally are like that).

We decided to find a spot to watch the ensuing run. We climb around this wooden barricade erected about 6 feet higher than the stone wall which drops sharply about 30 feet to the ground on the other side. They climb the wall, using the wooden barrier for support and have to drag me up (did I mention I am wearing a skirt? yeah, uh huh)
so I can walk atop the wall to rest with my back against the wooden barricade to dangle my feet over the 30 foot precipice below. It is certain to be an exciting vantage point. I'm a bit mortified to be sitting here, frankly, but when in Spain for the freaky feria...

And then the cops wave us down. Boo. Hiss.

Right, so now we climb down, go under the barricade, across the street where the bulls will be running, and past the TV camera embankment to sit on the ledge. These look like fine seats. Tweet, tweet- the cop whistles at us, "You must clear out of there. Fuck. So we're left climbing the barricade once again, me now with skinned and bruised
knees just below the skirt hem and no decent place left to watch from. The other boys go home to watch on TV, and Al and I go across the ravine to find a lofty vantage point. I am foolishly hopeful in thinking we might actually be able to catch a glimpse of something.

The tension builds. The runners pray to San Fermin (patron saint of drinking and wildly reckless behavior it seems to me) which we can hear across the grassy valley. It sounds like a whole rugby team collectively grunting. We wait some more.

Finally the rocket goes off, the signal for the bulls to run through the narrow wine, beer and piss-soaked cobblestone streets of Pamplona that are now about as slippery as the surface of the Joe Louis Hockey Arena. The bulls are heading for a mass of purple-stained drunken Spaniards and half-insane Aussies clogging the street. What a show!

Wait, were those tan blurs the bulls? Dude, really?
Fucking-A did I wait a whole frigging night for that? Shit. Ok time for some much-deserved coffee and let's get the hell out of here.

On the way out of town I found some churros and Spanish chocolate. It was a pretty expensive cup of chocolate if you consider the price was spending the night on a park bench and warding off drunken horny men, but I considered it one of those great moments of really living Spanish feria culture, with me just as bedraggled and haggard as the rest of the sodden early-morning revelers, enjoying a brief moment of respite.

To the Frenchman who make lude comments, this is for you...

To the Frenchman who find it absolutely necessary to lude comments as I pass them on the street, please note the following:

I'm sorry that you are sexually frustrated, but what in your culture
makes it OK to bug a gal walking alone? Or waiting for a bus? Or
fucking walking back from the grocery store with my Oreo cookies
during my work day for god's sake! I feel like I need to carry some
brass knuckles in my purse after that guy tried to grab my boob on the
street a couple weeks ago. I mean, how the hell am I supposed to know
if you are just going to keep being verbally abusive or actually whack
me upside the head and drag me away by my hair to ravage me in some side alley?

In a country that's known for its romance and chivalry, do you really find it
absolutely necessary to offer to -whatever- just because I'm walking down the street by myself? I really love it when I can tell you're making comments when I have my headphones on too- do you think that somehow I can hear you, or give a fuck?

Just maybe I'm walking solo because my superfine foxy French boyfriend had a night out with the guys and isn't walking me home from the movies tonight. And I'm
sorry that I live alone, and this necessitates me walking home all by
myself but Mr. Horny French dude, do you talk to your Mother with that
mouth? I mean, pretend I'm your sister for about 3 seconds, do you really NEED to comment on my cleavage (which is not even juicy enough to warrant comment in normal outfits anyhow)?

In Paris in August trust me when I say that I am truly sorry that there is no fucking air-conditioning in this country and I have to wear this little scrap of cloth to work or faint from heat stroke, but that's how life is right now. But please, put your tounge back in that ugly yap of yours and don't BOTHER me! Do not offer me sex. Do not say how much you like my legs/ dress/boobs/hair/face/smile/oddly placed mole/dimple. I don't fucking KNOW you! Do not comment on how nice it is that I got caught in a rainstorm and you can see through my dress a little-I'm wearing underwear and a padded bra you creep, it is not a wet T-shirt contest.

Do I want to WhAt? Oh, really? Hang on, your totally tasteless appeals have won me over. Just because I happen to be walking "unescorted" at this particular moment in time does NOT give you the right to verbally harass me. Go soak your head, you bastard, I'm sweaty and smelly in this tiny dress and want to walk home in peace without hearing any of your shit.