Top 10 list
1. If you travel among the small islands of Croatia, you will quite possibly be be required to place your trust in a, let us say, non-traditional taxi service, whose sole proprietor is a dude named Ivan. I counted on random dude Ivan to give me a lift to Zadar (45 mins away) at 6 am. You should have seen me sweat when he didn't show up till 6:08 am.
2. When you sign up for a sailing course in Croatia and they say that instruction is given in English, beware. One lesson coming from living abroad is that people are most comfortable speaking in their mother tounge, and will often do so in a large group, regardless of whether you can understand them or not. So cheer up! It's not a lonely time. Just pretend you are in a James Bond movie. Pretend they are the Russian villans and you are the super-hot sidekick to James Bond.
3. Never trust the ferry boat schedule posted on the internet. Or the one in your 2-year-old and seriously outdated Croatian guide book. (See lesson in previous posting on traveling to Morocco). All in all, never trust ferries if you really have to be somewhere on time. Perhaps I'll finally learn this one lesson myself.
4. That "modern highway" that replaced the coastal ferry service in Croatia isn't exactly the Ohio turnpike. In fact, if there has been a big enough rock slide, you may be required to get out of the bus and push. And don't think you'll get to sleep on this 6 hour ride from Istria to the Southern regions near Zadar. Yeah, by the way, if you get vertigo, don't sit on the side of the bus with The View. You might see the ghosts of Vacations Past flit before your eyes.
5. Take the plane next time. 32 hours return travel time from Island Murter in Croatia to Paris, starting with Dude Called Ivan's taxi, ferry boat, walk to train station, train to Milan without a single place to sit, even in the aisle- I had to share a space with my bags for 4 hours thanks very much, then train from Milan overnight to Paris- where there was a problem with my ticket that the very nice ticket agent in the special office for first class failed to notice that my ticket was stamped for TOMORROW night. Dude, I've been on vacation for 2 weeks, I've got no friggin clue what the date is today!
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Ghetto Science
Reasons you know you are doing ghetto science (better not count, it's downright depressing)
(Background: I am happily doing science in New York, making about as much $ as the guy that sells me my bagel with cream cheese in the morning, and the boss decides to move the lab to Paris, France. Well, at least I speak some French, so that will help. The following is a description of some of the perils of doing science in a land that's not exactly known for its effeciency.)
1. We's so poor, we can't even afford no weigh boats. We use paper that's only been printed one side.
2. It takes 6 months to gear up to do in situs.
First: locate glass coplin jars. The Trick- they are in our boxes from the NY move where the guys basically wrote "plastic ware" or "glassware" on the boxes, which comprises about 95% of the shit in the boxes. Not especially descriptive if you desperately need to find something.
Step 2: order all of the chemicals and translate the USA catalog #s to something that is actually sold in France. I thought I had everything, then read through the protocol and gathered everything up. Wrong.
Turns out that SIGMA FRANCE had something on backorder for 2 months and they were NEVER going to call me. Sweet. So I give them a ring (and make them speak English- how cruel).
They need me to fill out a form to promise that I'm not using said chemical product to produce illicit drugs. They said they faxed it to me 2 months previously.
"Really? I never got that fax. Were you going to call and ask me to send it?"
Sigma- "No, we don't do that".
That's customer service right there friends.
Oh, and I have to call 3 times over the course of one afternoon and the next morning in order to inpspire someone enough to take the effort to fax the damn form to me. BTW it's all in French. I fill it out in English. Ha- take that!
Hmm, perhaps I should do some research on the internet to find out what the heck this chemical can be used for, I could use some supplimental income.
I call on Monday to find out the progress of fax reception and if the product has indeed been shipped. The switchboard operator informs me that they are having a meeting and can not answer my question. "I'm sorry, EVERYONE is in a meeting?". "Yes, can you please call back at 2pm?". Good god, what a way to run a railroad!
3. The dingo ate your baby. (yes, this IS a Seinfeld ref.)
My mice are so unhappy living in an animal house where drills and jackhammers continually disturb their sleep and odd smelling-vapors permeate their room on a continual basis, that they keep eating their pups. Joy. How can a girl collect tissues if she ain't got no mice?
4. How can a girl do mouse experiments if her mice won't mate? (see above)
5. I've been waiting for 3 months for hanging folders. I keep asking our secretary to order them, but she doesn't like doing "administrative stuff". I give up. I'll just keep piling shit up on my bench until some caustic chemical spills on it and I have to throw out the whole mess. That would simplify organization, for sure.
6. The bartender across the street is starting to understand my English accent when I speak french. I am wearing my own butt-print into one of the stools due to my frequent visits and have memorized the happy-hour prices of all of the pints they serve.
7. I have been considering self-medicating before coming to work to be able to have patience to fill out forms for shipping mice to France from the USA. It took a full work week, me being transferred a dozen times within our funding agency to find a warm body that would pick up the phone in August, and recieving phone calls on my personal cell while on vaca in Italy of all places (which cost to the tune of two Euros plus per minute) to get 2 shipments of the cleanest mice possible delivered to our hospital in Paris.
Let's hope they are happy over there in the new building!
8. Everyone uses the building as if it's their own personal ashtray. They smoke in the hallways, in the offices... don't mind the fact that they are painting the building and using hazardous chemicals all over the place, we do science here on occasion, you know. So though I am a doctor who doesn't smoke, I am likely to get lung cancer anyhow. Nice.
9. We have to steal needles from the hospital using someone's mom who is a nurse in Spain. It's too complicated to purchase them using French sources, we must order them by the gross, I think. Instead, I went to the local pharmacy to special order some. Why needles with surgical thread are available from the corner drug store- I don't know. I would feel much safer having a French medical professional sew me up, frankly, but hey- perhaps that's not the rationale here?
10. The hood doesn't work in the lab. We've been here for 4 months now. Wonder how much longer it will take. A trip upstairs to a room with a functional hood requires a cart-full of shit: pen, eppie tubes, pipetteman, tips, samples, and keys to unlock the door. Not to mention that you must dodge from 0 to 5 workman who may or may not have ladders or other crap blocking the way to the door. (Depends on if they feel like working today or not; it's a roll of the dice).
11. The ice machine is closed with a giant wooden clip, think of the world's biggest clothespin. No joke.
12. I've already mentioned there's no air conditioning right? Yeah, so when you wanna open the window, you've gotta use this lead block that weighs like 20 pounds to keeep a stiff breeze from rendering me unconcious when the window smacks me in the side of the head. So one night, I decide it's probably fine if i just leave the window open a crack, I mean, it was 37 degrees INSIDE the lab earlier that week. During the night the lead weight falls off of the window sill and the pointy part severs my computer cord in two. You know, the one that has the transformer in it? Thanks please pay 90 euros because the folks that remodeled your work space couldn't get the windows right. I clearly don't get paid enough.
13. One more reason I don't get paid enough. Ever heard of a mouse facility in the States where you've gotta change your own cages when THE animal caretaker leaves on vacation? Me neither.
14. We have entered month #5 of occupation of the all new state-of-the-art Lab Space, which still has a non-functional hood and ventilation system. But we still often work under the hood when working with some noxious chemicals, I think it's more of an ingrained habit rather than serving any functional purpose. During one of these rather amusing episodes of someone working with something smelly in the "hood" which does not actually suck smelly air out of the lab, one of our rather soft-spoken labmates said, "The hood may not work, but at least you can switch the light on and pretend that it works".
(Background: I am happily doing science in New York, making about as much $ as the guy that sells me my bagel with cream cheese in the morning, and the boss decides to move the lab to Paris, France. Well, at least I speak some French, so that will help. The following is a description of some of the perils of doing science in a land that's not exactly known for its effeciency.)
1. We's so poor, we can't even afford no weigh boats. We use paper that's only been printed one side.
2. It takes 6 months to gear up to do in situs.
First: locate glass coplin jars. The Trick- they are in our boxes from the NY move where the guys basically wrote "plastic ware" or "glassware" on the boxes, which comprises about 95% of the shit in the boxes. Not especially descriptive if you desperately need to find something.
Step 2: order all of the chemicals and translate the USA catalog #s to something that is actually sold in France. I thought I had everything, then read through the protocol and gathered everything up. Wrong.
Turns out that SIGMA FRANCE had something on backorder for 2 months and they were NEVER going to call me. Sweet. So I give them a ring (and make them speak English- how cruel).
They need me to fill out a form to promise that I'm not using said chemical product to produce illicit drugs. They said they faxed it to me 2 months previously.
"Really? I never got that fax. Were you going to call and ask me to send it?"
Sigma- "No, we don't do that".
That's customer service right there friends.
Oh, and I have to call 3 times over the course of one afternoon and the next morning in order to inpspire someone enough to take the effort to fax the damn form to me. BTW it's all in French. I fill it out in English. Ha- take that!
Hmm, perhaps I should do some research on the internet to find out what the heck this chemical can be used for, I could use some supplimental income.
I call on Monday to find out the progress of fax reception and if the product has indeed been shipped. The switchboard operator informs me that they are having a meeting and can not answer my question. "I'm sorry, EVERYONE is in a meeting?". "Yes, can you please call back at 2pm?". Good god, what a way to run a railroad!
3. The dingo ate your baby. (yes, this IS a Seinfeld ref.)
My mice are so unhappy living in an animal house where drills and jackhammers continually disturb their sleep and odd smelling-vapors permeate their room on a continual basis, that they keep eating their pups. Joy. How can a girl collect tissues if she ain't got no mice?
4. How can a girl do mouse experiments if her mice won't mate? (see above)
5. I've been waiting for 3 months for hanging folders. I keep asking our secretary to order them, but she doesn't like doing "administrative stuff". I give up. I'll just keep piling shit up on my bench until some caustic chemical spills on it and I have to throw out the whole mess. That would simplify organization, for sure.
6. The bartender across the street is starting to understand my English accent when I speak french. I am wearing my own butt-print into one of the stools due to my frequent visits and have memorized the happy-hour prices of all of the pints they serve.
7. I have been considering self-medicating before coming to work to be able to have patience to fill out forms for shipping mice to France from the USA. It took a full work week, me being transferred a dozen times within our funding agency to find a warm body that would pick up the phone in August, and recieving phone calls on my personal cell while on vaca in Italy of all places (which cost to the tune of two Euros plus per minute) to get 2 shipments of the cleanest mice possible delivered to our hospital in Paris.
Let's hope they are happy over there in the new building!
8. Everyone uses the building as if it's their own personal ashtray. They smoke in the hallways, in the offices... don't mind the fact that they are painting the building and using hazardous chemicals all over the place, we do science here on occasion, you know. So though I am a doctor who doesn't smoke, I am likely to get lung cancer anyhow. Nice.
9. We have to steal needles from the hospital using someone's mom who is a nurse in Spain. It's too complicated to purchase them using French sources, we must order them by the gross, I think. Instead, I went to the local pharmacy to special order some. Why needles with surgical thread are available from the corner drug store- I don't know. I would feel much safer having a French medical professional sew me up, frankly, but hey- perhaps that's not the rationale here?
10. The hood doesn't work in the lab. We've been here for 4 months now. Wonder how much longer it will take. A trip upstairs to a room with a functional hood requires a cart-full of shit: pen, eppie tubes, pipetteman, tips, samples, and keys to unlock the door. Not to mention that you must dodge from 0 to 5 workman who may or may not have ladders or other crap blocking the way to the door. (Depends on if they feel like working today or not; it's a roll of the dice).
11. The ice machine is closed with a giant wooden clip, think of the world's biggest clothespin. No joke.
12. I've already mentioned there's no air conditioning right? Yeah, so when you wanna open the window, you've gotta use this lead block that weighs like 20 pounds to keeep a stiff breeze from rendering me unconcious when the window smacks me in the side of the head. So one night, I decide it's probably fine if i just leave the window open a crack, I mean, it was 37 degrees INSIDE the lab earlier that week. During the night the lead weight falls off of the window sill and the pointy part severs my computer cord in two. You know, the one that has the transformer in it? Thanks please pay 90 euros because the folks that remodeled your work space couldn't get the windows right. I clearly don't get paid enough.
13. One more reason I don't get paid enough. Ever heard of a mouse facility in the States where you've gotta change your own cages when THE animal caretaker leaves on vacation? Me neither.
14. We have entered month #5 of occupation of the all new state-of-the-art Lab Space, which still has a non-functional hood and ventilation system. But we still often work under the hood when working with some noxious chemicals, I think it's more of an ingrained habit rather than serving any functional purpose. During one of these rather amusing episodes of someone working with something smelly in the "hood" which does not actually suck smelly air out of the lab, one of our rather soft-spoken labmates said, "The hood may not work, but at least you can switch the light on and pretend that it works".
Friday, August 04, 2006
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.
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.
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